Nary a critter, other than a dog or cat, comes to the patio. This morning this fellah popped by to say hello. He stayed for a good ten minutes, even with Jesús barking. I think he came to tell me a message. He said: "dood, your garden is dead."
Music: Juta Takahashi: Seabound (2009)
Yesterday in graduate seminar we spent the better portion of class engaging Hegel's theory of experience and his critique of all things Kantian and transcendental. It has been some years since I've reengaged Hegel earnestly, and I was surprised as I was reviewing my notes on the Phenomenology of Mind and the Science of Logic how much better I understand the Hegelian project (with no help from Zizek, frankly). The older I get, the more I realize learning is a retrojective endeavor: "a-ha!" moments often happen years after the moment I have read or pondered something. So it is with Hegel's critique of Kant.
The key was reading Adorno's "Subject and Object" this week, which is really a quite a bear. Whenever I read something this difficult, I have to sit down and outline the essay, sometimes even diagram sentences. It took a whole work day to read and outline Adorno's essay, but there was a good pay off: I now better understand what Adorno is taking from Hegel, and what he is critiquing. He gets down with Hegel's critique of Kantian dualism, but of course opposes Hegel's absolute idealism with a firm materialism. What Hegel did---and why Marx et al. got down with him---was historicize philosophy in a way that brought culture to bear on philosophical endeavor. There are multiple modes of experience that philosophy simply bracketed and with Hegel argued should be brought into the domain of thinking. If philosophy is "thinking about thinking," then it only makes sense to historicize thinking in a way that doesn't exempt the subject who thinks.
Adorno, though, takes this one step further in his version of negative dialectics. I don't have the time (or desire) to explain how I understand this except to say that the critique of identitarian logic is in play, and that Adorno's central claim in "Subject and Object" is that the "subject-who-knows" is an object constituted by the socious. No big revelation there, as this has been the principle difficulty of rhetorical theory since the 1970s, I think---coming to terms with the illusion of the transcendental subject. But I think for 1969 such a claim was a major-big-deal, and it still is in a way.
What I'm wondering is how the "object-oriented ontology" Ken introduced here last week squares with Adorno's arguments in favor of the primacy of the object to negative dialectics. There's a growing number of posts over at Larval Subjects under the heading of "object-oriented philosophy," but I’m skeptical: is this the wheel, reinvented?
It seems to me that the genius of Adorno's negative dialectics is that the primacy of the object is ultimately an ethical primacy. If it is the case that the epistemic subject negates the "non-identity" of objects in our present identitarian regime to function in the paradigm world or whatever, Adorno suggests (I think) that the task of thinking is to make room for the non-identity of objects (and by extension, difference, and so on). Adorno argues that the subject-object relation has itself become reified and dominates thinking in a way that causes suffering. His negative dialectics is object-oriented, in the end, to temper the arrogance of the paradigm subject that obliterates difference in the name of Same.
Admittedly, I've not read all the posts on Larval Subjects on OOO or OOP, but I guess I'm just much more moved by the ethical urgency of Adorno's prose (as opposed, say, to the cool aloofness of the egalitarianism of objects or whatever). Anyway, just thinking aloud. Next week we take up "thing theory," so I hope to have the relationship between Adorno's thinking about the object and OOO figured out in a way that is more satisfying than my skeptical disposition today.
Music: The Antlers: Hospice (2009)
After two deep freezes this deathly scene was inevitable. The "veritable jungle," as my German neighbor says, was bound to die. And die it did. I couldn't bear to photograph the aftermath a few weeks ago. It depressed me coming home every day. I spied the pansies at Home Depot, but I couldn't betray my beloveds. Today I snipped and lugged. I pruned and chucked. I did, however, snap some shots of it after I managed to prune and clear the detritus today. I took the photos shortly after I learned that yet another uncle is in intensive care tonight.
I know so many of us---so many reading this---have family suffering from cancer. At this point in my life, it seems like cancer is to be expected; if we don't have it, someone we know will. It touches all of our lives eventually. It seems so ubiquitous. From the passing of Sonny in my teens (my Scoutmaster), to my grandfather who passed the year of my birth, to . . . well, if I start this list I won't stop writing. The disease effing sucks. If we need to choose a target for our hate, it should be diseases like cancer.
As I was clearing things out this afternoon, I mused one could see all these empty pots as forlorn. Or one could see this as earth's estrus, so many pots awaiting their bulbs. I hope to be able, one day, to see the empty as waiting, not simply a void. Regardless, the garden pales in comparison to last August.
Hope is waiting.
Hope waits.
Music: The House of Love: self-titled (1990)
I'm relieved to report my and Dana's essay on magical voluntarism was published today (here it is in pdf). Some of y'all will recall that Dana and I take Sonja Foss and her co-authors to task for advancing an untenable conception of agency. This same conception of agency has been circulating under the aegis of "power feminism" in essays by the Foss sisters in communication journals. I want to make it very clear that I respect and admire the Sonja and Karen; I have worked with them both and am especially appreciative of Sonja's mentoring. They're fantastic as people and colleagues. But, this does not mean I cannot disagree with some of their arguments, and I think it is important to critique any recovery of the transcendental subject when thinking about rhetoric.
I'm blogging about the event of publication, however, because this was another one of those essays that seemed doomed. Some readers may recall we started drafting the thing in May of 2007. We continued drafting through the spring of 2008 (see this and this post), and finally completed a draft on May 16th, 2008. Sometimes an essay can take a very long time to write!
We submitted the essay for review at Communication Theory on May 22, 2008. It was rejected on August 27th. Although two prominent scholars in the field recommended publication with little revision (these reviewers outed themselves to me at NCA---they are prominent folks!), one reviewer was insistent that the piece be rejected. Dana and I were baffled, frankly, but I respect the right of editors to reject essays regardless of what the reviewers say; editors deserve and require this power. (Here's a copy of the rejection).
Now, what was troublesome to me was that the editor rejected our essay on the basis of one reviewer's comments, and I am told that reviewer had a serious conflict of interest. As an aside, I confess I do not understand the decision of editors to send essays critical of a scholar's arguments to that very scholar (or in our case, someone very close to that scholar); on many occasions this has happened to me on both ends. On two occasions editors sent me work that was critical of my own scholarship. On both occasions the writing was good and I decided to accept the work on principle, because I knew I could not be objective. It has more often happened to me, however. Another example: some years ago I sent a piece critical of Ed Schiappa's essay on "big rhetoric" to Philosophy & Rhetoric. The editor sent it out to one reviewer, who rejected the essay. Guess who the reviewer was?
Nevertheless, Dana and I were confused by the editor's rejection. We could tell he was not firm in his decision, and so we decided to write a response letter urging him to reconsider the rejection. Because the essay was so tailored for the Communication Theory audience---because it was so specialized---we figured a quick revision of the essay's tone and a carefully argued letter was worth a shot. Eight pages. Single spaced. Here it is.
The editor, thankfully, changed his mind as a consequence of the letter. The reviewer who rejected the piece also requested to see the "appeal letter," as I call it. He accepted the manuscript.
That was the first (and probably last) time I have ever appealed an editor's decision. I don't share this with the budding scholars out there to suggest it's yet another tool. This was a very unusual circumstance, and I do not recommend folks appeal an editor's rejection. I share this information only to illustrate how much unseen labor can go into the publication process. And we're not done with this story yet! Just wait, there's more!
So after acceptance the essay goes into some sort of publishing purgatory. We don't hear a peep from CT for months. We then learn at the turn of 2009 that the editor we worked with was replaced by a new one, and obviously with an editor with no investment in the essay or the topic. Months fly by. Finally, a year after the essay was accepted we get the proofs, and as I detailed last August, it was an errata bonanza. Never had I seen so many gaffs in a publication proof.
After submitting five, single-spaced pages of corrections, the new editor responded with what seemed to us a hostile tone. She seemed to blame the mistakes on our misuse of APA style, among other things, and suggested that if we wanted to make the corrections she would be pushing back the publication date (as if to punish us or something, LOL). A month later we received a note of corrections back from the publisher, to which we responded.
A couple of weeks ago Dana and I were offered a final look-over the proof from the hired proofer, which was very much appreciated. Only seven errors (four of them were ours). The hired proofer at Wiley was incredibly professional and nice, which goes a long way when one is frustrated. Hats off to you, Michelle! You rock!
So, yeah: the doomed damned essay was published today, almost four years from conception. I normally don't announce my publications on my blog, but after the process of getting this one squeezed out there, I just gotta. here it is in pdf. Download it. Use it as kitty litter. Whatever!
Music: Tracy Chapman: Crossroads (1998)
Since graduate school, I have always considered my interests to be in this nebulous thing termed "popular culture." I never thought of myself as a scholar of politics until Nine-eleven, when I was forced to confront my naïveté regarding the political. Historically, the political and the popular have never been separate; entertainment and statecraft, while distinct in their respective ends, have always been intertwined. The conceptions of the political and entertainment have never been stable, of course, but I think in the age of cable news and talk radio, we can safely put the myth of the separation of politics and entertainment---just like its Jeffersonian counterpart---to bed.
In general, I like to think about the political in a fairly traditional way: politics concerns conflicts over space and boundaries (ideational, geographic) and power. I think at its core, politics concerns arguments about the use of force and the right of sovereignty. The scholarship I like to read and do, however, only indirectly engages these arguments; I study "cultural politics," for lack of a better term, which is something like a second order rung of rhetoric that orbits questions of state violence. So, for example, in a forthcoming essay with Tom Frentz, we examine how the film Fight Club stages anxieties over the demise of the father figure in cultural phantasy; this "father trouble" only indirectly implicates traditional politics in that it may help to explain, for example, why certain men are elected president (and not women).
Yesterday's decision by the Supreme Court, however, changed any tidy distinction between cultural politics and presidential politics, or "politics-politics" and popular politics. The reason? As Baudrillard argued decades ago, those who have the most power in the contemporary world are not those who control the means of production, but rather, those who control the means of publicity.
From my understanding (I did not read the decision, only the discussions about it), the ruling finds that: (a) the first amendment doesn't just protect speech, but also speakers; (b) corporations are speakers; and (c) money is speech. Or something like this. Across the "political spectrum"---which we can anchor at one end with greedy capitalists, of course---folks agree that we have just radically transformed politics-politics. Before this decision the installation of politicians by corporations was difficult (but still possible); now it will be commonplace.
What I find astonishing is that no talking head has made the point that all large corporations are de-facto media companies, and among large corporations, media conglomerates reign supreme. I suspect it's only a matter of time before Viacom and Rupe are battling it out over the next presidential candidate. The Supreme Court just eliminated any last remaining whiff of fairness in electoral politics (or perhaps, as Jodi Dean might argue, gave the lie to the illusion of democracy). It's as if we've stepped into a Gibson or Dick novel . . . .
Of course, there is an elephant in the room that folks don't want to talk about: cultural politics displaced politics-politics decades ago. This decision may not matter in the end, since our officials have been elected dishonestly since forever; politics-politics has been premised on a branding model since the 1950s. This decision simply moves us completely from the branding model infrastructure to the celebrity model infrastructure, or as media executives would have it, fully into reality television politics, a complete implosion of the cultural and political-political. 2010 is going to be a very interesting year. Will it be a Duracell or Energizer White House?
Music: Manhole Vortex: Agents of Goldstein (1999)
Shaunnessy pointed me to an essay in the New York Times by Ethan Watters titled, "The Americanization of Mental Illness." Extracted from a book to be released next month, the essay suggests there is overwhelming and compelling evidence to support the idea that the expression (symptoms) of psychopathology are social constructions. This is not to say there is not a problem---biological or otherwise---with someone suffering from anorexia nervosa; it is to say, however, that anorexia nervosa is a culturally crafted symptom that is triggered. Suffering is real, unquestionably; how suffering is expressed and experienced seems culturally dependent.
I am anxious to get the book and read more. If I get a closer look at the empirical data he is suggesting exists, we may have a good answer for why hysteria symptoms disappeared and have been replace by other (body dismorphic disorder seems all the rage). Watters reports that the United States disease and drug machine is so powerful that our cultural repertoire of symptoms of mental illness are globalizing (as are, of course, our treatments).
There's much more to think about and say here, but I have to say it points in the direction of Lacan's understanding of the symptom and psychical structures. (And, to you Deleuzian's out there, read the essay first; it also would seem to confirm some of Deleuze's thinking about the psyche too).
Music: Jackson Browne: Saturate Before Using (1972)
Every time I see course evaluation folders in my mailbox, I am reminded of a specific episode of Seinfeld: Jerry is dating Jodi, a masseuse, who refuses to give him a massage. The dramatic tension is caused, however, by Jodi's profound dislike of George, which drives George crazy. George becomes obsessed with getting Jodi to like him for the remainder of the episode (hilarity ensues; a clip of the episode is here). I've always loved this episode because I can identify with George---I suspect many of us can. You can meet a sea of people at a party, but it's just that one person who makes it known he or she doesn't care for you that will bother you for the remainder of the evening. I call this "George Costanza Syndrome" (GCS), and I think it plagues many of us who teach---especially new teachers.
I vividly remember getting my teaching evaluations after having taught for the first time as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. I had planned the class so carefully and prepared so thoroughly that surely my evaluations would be stellar. Nope. They were not terrible, of course, but not what I had expected either. The next semester I worked harder and received an evaluation that literally made me cry: it was so cruel and nasty I simply wasn't prepared for it. The student was a transfer, and resentful that she had to take public speaking a second time. Although her vitriol really was about the university's requirements, she did take it out on me and in a way that was very personal. Eventually, with the good counseling of older, more experienced grads I got over it by framing the evaluation and hanging it in the office. It became the benchmark of a "bad evaluation." I still have it in my office today, thirteen years later.
So, how do I deal with bad evaluations today? I confess not much differently. It never fails to hurt when a student writes your class "essentially failed," they "regret taking this class" or that you have "no compassion for students" (comments from last semester). And at some level a little hurt probably helps me be a better teacher, by keeping me sensitive to the needs (and increasing demands) of students. There's always the possibility I've taught a bad class too---and I know that's happened at least twice, and often because of personal issues outside of the classroom (e.g., a bad break-up).
Intellectually, however, I try to remember two things. First, the ratio: I received six bad evaluations out of eighty-five. That's about seven percent of the class, and in my view, if only 10% of your course is pissed off, you're doing an ok job.
Second, projection: While nasty course reviews feel personal, they're usually more figural in the sense that as a teacher, you are a stand-in for a figure of authority. As a stand-in, you often become a person who is projected upon; you come to personify a figure for students---and expectations for that figuration are going to differ from one student to the next. Now, Laplanche and Pontalis define projection this way:
[An] operation whereby qualities, feelings, wishes, or even objects, which the subject refuse to recognize or rejects himself, are expelled from the self and located in another person or thing. Projection so understood is a defence of very primitive origin which may be seen at work especially in paranoia, but also in 'normal' modes of thought such as superstition.
With what I've been learning about cognition, I would take projection even further: it's not just the attribution of my inner-most onto another person, but rather, all meaning is projective in the sense that we must impose "order"---a la Kant---onto the world to make sense of it. In this respect, all of us are the projections of other people. This explains how so many of us are liked by some but disliked by others; each "other" has a different projection of who "I" am. In fact, we often fall I love with the person whose projection matches our ideal self-conceptions, right?
I'm veering into a tangent, so, back to the main: one can read unpleasant course evaluations as the product of projection. Let me take the worst one from this semester as an example. The student remarks "the material was so boring" and that I was rude to him/her from not letting him/her take a quiz late. On the evaluation almost every item on the inventory, from course organization and objectives to "the structure gave adequate instructions concerning assignments" has received a negative score. For 94% of the evaluations, however, the highest marks were for course organization and stated objectives. Clearly this student went for the blanket nasty review despite the fact the course was overly organized, if I do say so myself. It's a wholesale rejection because regardless of my teaching or the class, I have become the Bad Professor and there was little I could have done to change this projection.
By the way, Klein's conception of "projective identification" is also relevant here. For Klein, projective identification is when someone sends out so many cues about how they are projecting that you unwittingly change your behavior to conform. So, let's say you ticked-off a student because s/he was late to class and you would not allow him or her to take a quiz (which is my actual policy). This student believes you are uncaring and cold, and comes to your office ready for a fight. Projective identification would occur if you actually participated in the struggle (in this case, over power and not the quiz any more)---if you gave into the role you are expected to occupy. I've learned to avoid this kind of situation: you cannot get testy with a student, as this will have the ultimate effect of closing her off to learning and turning you into the Bad Professor.
So, there's the coping device: intellectualize to avoid GCS. Thinking about ratios and trying not to take nasty reviews personally via an understanding of projection helps. And, of course, there's always the route of improving one's teaching!
Even with these three things in mind, it still can bum me out to receive a bad review, especially for graduate seminars. I received a bad one for my graduate seminar last semester, which is what prompted this post. It is actually my first one in eight years of teaching graduate courses. That surprised me. But I must remember not to do like George: there is the ratio, and then, there is the projection . . . . ratio, projection, ratio, projection. Rinse. Repeat.
Music: A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Ashes Grammar (2009)
Last semester I prepared or "prepped" a new undergraduate course titled "Celebrity Culture." I hadn't developed a new course from the ground-up in over five years, and dudes, I forgot how much work developing a new course is! Then again, I think the longer that I teach (going on fifteen years now, if you can believe that!) the more time I take to develop classes. When I think back to my graduate school days, I can recall literally throwing a class together in a week. As a professor, however, I spend half a year---sometimes longer---thinking about a new course, and about two months putting together the readings and syllabus. "Celebrity Culture" was also exceptionally challenging because I made the leap into slide software for the lectures (Apple's Keynote program, which is amazing; I detest PowerPoint). I'm still anxious to see my student evaluations: did the course do what I hoped it would? Did the students find it useful to their everyday lives? Did I convince the students that Paris Hilton is really quite brilliant? We shall see.
I'm also in the middle of putting together a new graduate student seminar this week. For some reason, I feel much less anxiety about this. In a graduate student seminar, your students are actually your colleagues, and so the whole tone is different. Basically, I get to walk in on the first day and say, "this is a new class, this is an experiment. Work with me here, lets explore this new world together." It's really kind of exciting, in a way, because I don't know at this moment what I am going to say or where the class will go. For undergraduate preps, I set down three or four goals for the class and I map everything out. For the new graduate seminar, I have a map of topics, but I don't really have a set endpoint. A new graduate seminar is a glorified reading group, basically. I've found if I say this on the first day of a new seminar, folks are generally cool with it. If I learned anything from my advisor, R.L. Scott, it's that graduate seminars are opportunities to enjoy everyone thinking aloud (but within reason, of course; we don't suffer "the rhetoric of horses").
So, what is the course? I'm calling it "the object." The seminar is actually inspired by course that Badiou teaches of the same title (which is hilarious), but I confess I decided against teaching Badiou in the class because Badiou is actually much more invested in theorizing the subject. The general idea behind the class is to survey anxieties about "the object" vis-à-vis disciplinarity. I already teach a course titled "The Subject," which is a survey of subjectivity theory, so I think "The Object" will be a nice curricular counterpoint. In my mind, this course is yet another "nuts and bolts" seminar that, I hope, will prepare graduate students for the field of communication studies (and rhetorical studies, in particular). At the very least, I think a course that theorizes "the object" will really help to set-up our seminar in rhetorical criticism.
As a graduate instructor, I see it as my job to offer survey-style courses for our graduate students to provide good conceptual background. I often teach material that I do not personally enjoy or agree with---and I try not to pass judgment (ok, so, I really have issues with Badiou, but I teach him; same goes with Richard Vatz). In my roster of graduate courses---Basic Rhetorical Criticism, The Idiom of Haunting, Rhetoric and Film, Rhetoric and Psychoanalysis, and The Subject---only one class is geared toward a specific interest of mine, "The Idiom of Haunting." Classes on specific interests, in my opinion, should be limited to something "on occasion"---and in my case the haunting class trucks in material I'm currently writing a book on. Once I finish the book, I will no longer offer the haunting seminar.
If I can toot our horn here at UT just a bit, the graduate curriculum in rhetoric consists of survey-style courses on major theoretical nodes. So, for example, Dana Cloud teaches seminars on ideology, public sphere theory, postmodern theory, and feminism, while Barry Brummett teaches a general rhetorical theory survey course, as well as one on Burke, and Rick Cherwitz covers our contemporary rhetorical theory and new rhetoric angles. Our newest hire, Scott Stroud, is gearing up to teach a new seminar on rhetoric and pragmatism---and Dewey unquestionably runs very deep in our field. If you take Talia Stroud and Sharon Jarvis's courses in political communication into account, we really have a lot of the bases covered, I think. The only things we lack here are sustained courses on public address and classical rhetoric---but students can take courses over in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing that do just that (Jeff Walker is an expert on the classics, Trish Roberts-Miller and Mark Longacker has pub addy down). It does "take a village," but if you come to study rhetoric at UT, you're going to have the opportunity to get a really good lay of the land.
What I'm thinking is that a seminar on "The Object" would add a theoretical foundation for understanding disciplinarity and the tensions any discipline has between its "object" and "methods." What I learned teaching the basic rhetorical criticism seminar for the fist time last year was that many graduate students today don't have a strong grasp of the history of the field. Country-wide, rhetorical criticism courses usually attempt to provide at least a cursory history of the field, but it's just that: cursory! So I decided that a course on "the object" could double as a history of the field in an interesting way.
Yesterday I finalized the conceptual course outline. I hope to have the syllabus and reading list developed by the end of the week (I'm still reading). I thought I'd share what I've come up with thus far, because I know a number of regular RoseChron readers might be interested and have some suggestions. Here goes:
Part One: What is an Object?
The first part of the seminar examines how the object has been intellectually conceptualized. The field to do this most directly is, of course, philosophy, so we begin by reading Hume and Kant on the subject/object distinction. We move to Heidegger and "thing theory." Then, we turn to critical theory and read Hegel, Adorno, and others who critique the Enlightenment conception.
After critical theory, the course moves on to consider object relations psychology. This begins with Mauss on "the gift," then Melanie Klein, Winnicott, and other object relations people in psychology. The final stroke here is on reification, fetishism, and the commodity (yes, Lacan).
Part One of the course rounds-out with a number of different essays on the object of disciplinarity: essays about the proper object of art history, sociology, and anthropology make an appearance. We'll spend some time on Kant's argument about "the object of reason" as the center of philosophy, and probably some of the essays about "Big rhetoric" too.
Part Two: The Object of Speech
The second section of the class---and the one we spend the most time in---will look at the history of the field of Speech Communication. We'll examine here formative essays in The Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking, and later, The Quarterly Journal of Speech, that concern centering "speech" as the object of an academic discipline. "Speech" is killed off at the end of the twentieth century, and so we'll examine the debate on whether or not to drop "speech" in the 1990s in relation to Derrida's critique of speech and Mladen Dolar's excellent analysis of "voice." The idea here is that objects are inherently unstable, and "speech" is something of a monster (there's a parallel here with "text" as an object, but I think this has already been done to death in the theoretical humanities).
Part Three: The Un-Object of Cultural Studies
The final few weeks of the class will be devoted to looking at an academic field or identity that disavowed the object: cultural studies. What happens when a field exchanges politics for the object? I think cultural studies is a good example of an object-less field (or at least an attempt to avoid object-ing its center). Right now, James Carey and Larry Grossberg's work will center the discussion. I plan to focus on parallels between the adult education movements in Britain and the United States.
Ok, so that's the rough outline of the course. I don't know how well this will come off, or if it will even work. But I figure by the end of the class we'll all have a better understanding of what "the object" is in intellectual life, and how it has been figured. I'm my mind, it seems to be my own contribution to "the political" in our curriculum. Whereas the seminar on "the subject" ends up soundly in questions of ethics, it seems to me a course on "the object" lends itself to taking up the question of politics. The tacit assumption here is that objects, in the end, betoken people. This is unquestionably a psychoanalytic habit, but that's why rhetoric is fundamentally distinct from philosophy. In the final analysis, principles are really about the other, about people.
Anyone who knows me in meat space can testify that I am addicted to music even more than bourbon. You can take my shelter, you can take my food, you can take my booze. But if you take away my music---my speakers and headphones---I think that would be akin to death. Nothing brings me more joy than good music (well, I can think of a person or two sitting next to me who does more, but that's another post). This year in music did not disappoint. I've tried to winnow down what I liked this year to ten albums---which was torture. Believe me. I had ten albums, but then realized I had spent five hours working on this, so I deleted the last two. So, below is my top eight picks for this year's pop albums (I could come up with lists for other genres, but I need to reserve my writing for, uh, making a living). Please feel free to comment with your own recommendations. I probably won't disagree. Here are the albums that I found myself listening to the most:
Antony & the Johnsons, The Crying Light: Antony Hegarty's main outfit has released yet another powerful album of storytelling songcraft that defies description. I could go on, but I worry whatever I say would do damage to the strange beauty Hagarty manages to create with his unusual arrangements and torch-song stylings. This is late night, contemplative music---slow, contemplative, and searching. And it's unquestionably a very sad album, but there is a weird joy in this sadness. Frankly, I'm not sure how to describe this album except to say it is moving and not for easy listening. Sit down with this album when you have time to think and feel. Hercules & Love Affair this is not. This is the closest to beautiful a pop album can get.
Avett Brothers, I and Love and You: This threesome is the darling of the independent music press, but I must confess this is among the most genuine Americana rock albums of the year (even better than the Drive-By Truckers b-side collection this year). Listening to this album reminds me of early Jackson Browne albums ("Doctor My Eyes" comes to mind), but it's still unique in youth and sensibility and harmonics. Piano and organ and guitar in equal measure, this is heart-felt songcraft about love and longing and traveling and hope. I'm so terrible at describing music, so I'm left with comparisons: think here of Neil Young on living life everyday, on feeling weary, on the kind of living that leads you to think you don't need to shave today---that shaving is not what's important. The title track really does capture the mood: three words that are hard to say, so two "ands" are inserted to make it ok. This is country-ish in tone, but only in that California country way. If you like the Eagles or Nash, I cannot recommend this album enough. Hell, if you like American folk rock, this one is a must. Better than Wilco's entry this year. Seriously.
The Church, Untitled #23: It's hard to let go of the memory of the Church's "Ripple" video, tripped out on acid with friends in my bedroom . . . at that moment we were all convinced of the band's genius. I saw them live in Minneapolis in graduate school, and my jaw dropped at how good they were, absent the radio hits and drugs and them just playing their normal, non-hits. Since that live experience, I've kept up with the Church and have, for the most part, really admired their work (ok that double-album was not so good, I agree). I know folks think these guys are past-beens, but Untitled #23 really proves that assumption wrong. This album is so smart, so well put together---so tight---that I'm almost outraged to see it not mentioned in anyone's best-of lists for the year. The signature, hypnotic guitar work is still there, the signature breathy vocals are still there, but the Church keep evolving, writing, thinking. There are so many good songs on this album, but the stand-out track is "Anchorage," a torch song that should win back any lost lover---intense. This is dark, jangly pop at its best. La Roux (below) had stolen my best album of the year spot, but this is a very close second. Seek it out.
Fever Ray, Self-titled: I picked up Karin Dreijer Andersson's The Knife albums many years ago and have been a fan. It's not quite dance music, but not quite pop either; the Knife occupied a sort of intriguing middle space between mood music and Sheik Yer Bootie. The last Knife album had a couple of moody pieces that hinted at what Fever Ray was to be: contemplative, electronic mood music. This solo project by Karin opens with a looped drone (sounds like a cello) with "chopped and screwed" lyrics (that is, vocals slowed down to crate a low, male voice effect), that gives way to a song with tinny female vocals with an intonation that reminds one of popular Asian music. This is a hypnotic and repetitive moody album, dark to be sure, but in a way that is crisp and thoroughly postmodern (ok, so what does that mean? Well, it means . . uh. . . give me some time to explain). Nothing on this album sounds organic---it's all very synthetic and cold; the vocals range from "scream-happy" female chants to slowed-down speech (such that the vocals become a kind of melodic moan). This album walks periously close to ambient were it not for the vocals and percussive elements. It's late night music, to be sure, and thoroughly intoxicating. I know Andersson is from Sweden, but there's definitely an Asian aesthetic going on here . . . .
La Roux, Self-titled: I have to thank a RoseChron reader for urging me to listen to this gem (thanks Diane!!!!!). Elly Jackson (and a team of writers, although most of this album is decidedly Elly's craft) has put together one of the most marvelous albums never made since 1988. The synth-work is definitely retro (think Sega Master System), but the sensibility and lyrics are not: from the opening track "In for the Kill" to the fiendishly addictive single "Bulletproof," Jackson's knack for a pop melody with a postmodern cynical edge are unmatched. Nothing I've heard this year sticks in your head as much as these songs. This is pop genius, there's just no denying her talent or knack for a riff. Her voice is raspy, not necessarily beautiful or altogether feminine---sometimes it sounds as if she's about to lose her voice. Her voice's sense of toughness and intimacy reminds me of Cyndi Lauper in tone, but the sound is altogether unique, bluesy at times but also on the top and reluctant (again, there's a sort of 80s brittleness to the vocals). It's Hall & Oates meets cynical reason and a soul, but with a hot red-head. This album should be on your work-out rotation, and your pump-up for going out "mix tape." I've had it on non-stop in the car to work and on work-outs. This is my top pick for 2009. Seriously: if you like pop music and synth, this album is a must have.
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, Through the Devil Softly: When I was a boy, before I lost Jesus and he lost Music, my father was fond of acoustic guitar and artists on the Windham Hill label (in part because their early discs were fully digital when the standard were all analog to digital). Windham Hill is most known as the label and principle outlet for the work of Will Ackerman, who wrote simple, slightly melancholy instrumental folk songs, sometimes with the accompaniment of strings and the occasional flute. Unfortunately, Ackerman's music got stuck the label "New Age," which has limited its exposure. Former Mazzy Star mumbler Hope Sandoval's new album strikes me as Windham Hill with vocals---what melancholic New Age might sound like with a voice. The comparisons to Mazzy Star go without saying, but still, the soothing cleverness of Sandoval's stylings bring a smile. Hands-down the love-making album of the year.
Gossip, Music for Men: The fourth album from this three piece is a genuine surprise. 2006's Standing alerted us to the power of Beth Ditto's insistent diva-ness, but I honestly thought that would be the peak and the band would topple under their three-chord charm. Boy did I misjudge. This year's Music for Men is a soulful, dance-floor wallop, heavy and insistent but . . . surprisingly experimental! Amid the dance tracks are a few rockers---heavy drumming, heavy strumming screamers! Clearly Gossip (formerly The Gossip) have embraced their queer culture appeal---the title of the album references the album's single promise, an anthem to gay club rotation---but this is not a "sell-out" (I'm thinking of Erasure here, who have given up on the universal appeal of queer sensibility). The funky, bass-heavy tunes register a self-smugness, but they never fail to deliver on a good groove and infectious melody, and piano and synth riffs have made their way into the mix (as well as a few, well-placed shout-outs to soul hits from the past). This is a great, feel-good punk disco with a few rock tunes thrown in. You cannot help but move your ass to these tunes. Ditto's voice would convince anyone to make out with her; she's just delicious. Very, very good.
School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms: "Dreampop" is a term that has been around for some twenty years, affixed to Cocteau Twins and Slowdive and Lush, meaning . . . well, breathy voices and swirly guitars. Formed by twin sisters and a defector from the Secret Machines, the School of Seven Bells make the kind of music us acid-dropping shoegazers used to put on heavy rotation. The twins harmonize over drones and twingly guitars, with unique percussive beats in a way that cannot help but invite the label---and dammit, I like it. A lot. There's not much "new" here musically, except a rather innovative return to a musical idiom that many of us feared was long gone. The music is beautiful and moving, if not altogether unique. The album ender, "My Cabal," is perhaps one of the most perfect dreampop songs ever recorded---I regret I'm too old to get down with psychadelics. But if I had some mushrooms . . . . Fans of Lush, early Blur, Lucious Jackson, please take note!
Music: Lusine: Language Barrier (2007)
I think one can file this post under "narcissism," but I'm not sure. Then again, given the dynamics of blogging, I'm not sure one can exempt any post from this label, an observation in keeping with the overall trend toward what we might term the Mirror Function of Internet sociability. Nevertheless, I persist.
One of our best and brightest Ph.D. students recently interviewed at my undergraduate alma mater in Washington, DC. The chair of the department formerly known as "Communication" sent back a copy of a paper I wrote for him in 1995. It appeared in my school mailbox mysteriously the week before school let out, and until our student emailed me to explain why it was there, I was a bit baffled. She said my former professor kept the paper because it was one of his favorites.
In 1995 I was a 22-year old junior at the George Washington University, double-majoring in communication (interpersonal focus) and philosophy. The paper I wrote was for a class titled "Persuasion," and subliminal or unconscious persuasion was a topic we touched on in class that intrigued me. I remember for this assignment we were to analyze a print-ad for unconscious prompts and subliminal messages. My paper begins:
The knowing advertiser, armed with knowledge of the weak points of the American consumer---his or her fears, appetites, drives, and vanity---seeks to conquer all the battles of economic survival, without fighting. Fighting would be too honest, for it would force the advertiser to reveal his/her strategy in a rational, clearly understood way. I want you to buy my product and here is how I am going to get you to buy it. In an ideal world, all our advertisers would fight.
Well, fourteen years ago I see I was a little more pugnacious than I am today; reading the paper, however, I also see the roots of a nascent Freudian. I've uploaded a PDF scan of my paper here. In the paper I can see I've already embraced a number of Freudian insights about the drives.
What's a surprise to me about getting this paper is that it ruptures my own scholarly self-narrative. I have often described my interest in the psychoanalytic as beginning in graduate school and coming from three sources: A course I took on Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams in the cultural studies department my last semester of coursework; reading Kenneth Burke; and reading Fredric Jameson. I have tended to think of my detour (hat tip to Jim) through Zizek, then Lacan and Freud, as a recent one that began after my dissertation was complete. Now I see, however, I was drawn to thinking about psychology and early formative experiences much earlier.
In the previous post Jim Aune asked the question, "is there a psychoanalytic dimension to why we choose our theoretical lenses?" Certainly there is, of course, as well as a dimension for a certain refashioned intellectual past (one that forgets an interest in a theoretical lens much earlier than one says).
Remembering what it was like to be in this undergraduate class, as well as my decision to go to graduate school, there is a certain compulsion to confess. Foucault notwithstanding, I think one of the reasons Freud's writings resonate with me is because of his obsession with the question, "what is a father?"
Music: Pieter Note: Our space (2006)
I've been having a lovely time this holiday break seeing friends and family. Yesterday I visited with my grandmother in the home, then with some folks in Buckhead for early supper, and ended the evening chatting with a dear friend at her home in Decatur. Within the last few years so many people I adore have moved to Atlanta or Athens, and so coming "home" now affords social opportunities that makes visits literally whoosh by.
Last night my friend challenged me with a question: why psychoanalysis? She noted that my discussions of popular culture on RoseChron always resort to a psychoanalytic lens, and much of my analysis seems to point toward a form of universalism, as if I'm after the answer. "This was never how you taught seminar," she noted, saying that my blog persona contrasts starkly with who I am in the classroom. "Not everything is about mommy, daddy, and penises," she said jokingly. Explanations of events are multiple, complex, and historically specific.
I didn't disagree with her; I worry, however, that things here appear dogmatic after her comments. I noted that this blog is often a place to "try out" arguments and test things out. I'm often deliberately polemical and not as careful as I would be, say, writing for publication. We discussed the differences between those of us with a debate background and others who haven't been trained to think in terms of the autonomy of argument. She thoughtfully suggested that perhaps part of the resistance folks have to psychoanalytic scholarship is its style of argumentation; it carries the tone of "the answer." Of course, this "I've got it!" tonal quality is central to the argumentative tradition rooted in Speech Communication.
Do you really believe, she questioned, that early childhood experiences affect behavior in the ways your arguments seem to suggest? My answer was yes, I do have to believe at some level there is a coherent truth to some of the things I argue here (and in scholarship). But I stop short of saying a psychoanalytic approach to criticism is the only approach, or that it is mutually exclusive to other approaches.
In graduate school, my coursework with Ed Schiappa taught me a lot of things, and one of them was an understanding of "theory" as vocabulary. Following Rorty, the idea is this: different theories comprise different vocabularies or "language games" that yield meaning in this way or that way. Psychoanalysis in the theoretical humanities comprises a vocabulary for formative experiences and affects that allows for certain kinds of discussions, but does not allow for others. For example, psychoanalysis has a lot to say about the individual subject. It meets a limit when we attempt to use psychoanalytic vocabularies to talk about social movements---it just has not been theorized (very well) to address questions of that scope (hence, the Freudo-Marxisms of the 20th century). Deleuzian approaches to popular culture begin from different premises (e.g., no constitutive lack) and therefore comprise a different vocabulary allowing one to make meaning of an event alternatively; Deleuze's philosophy lends itself more easily to making claims about social movements because of its affiliation, for example, with complexity theory.
I'm not sure I did a good job explaining to my friend that I did not embrace psychoanalysis as a kind of religion, but rather, as a perspective that allows me to answer certain questions. Fundamentally, I think psychoanalysis has an excellent explanatory mechanism for understanding persuasion on an individual-to-individual level, or individual to group. I do think more Deleuzian/Foucauldian approaches lend themselves to answering questions about larger social or group processes, the suasive forces of discipline and control, the function of norms, the constitutive assemblies of various dispositifs and they way they work, and so on. Theoretical fidelities should be chosen on the basis of what kinds of questions one wishes to answer.
Lately I've been moving into discussions about media ecology and "thing theory" too---I may be adopting these vocabularies because of questions I am now starting to ask (e.g., what is the role of technology in influencing how we understand speech today?). I don't see myself as inextricably wed to psychoanalysis as a scholarly identity, even though I know I have been branded with this dreaded "P" word. I wonder to what extent my own argumentative practices---here and in scholarship---contribute to this brand, and to what extent the way disciplinarily seems to work in my field contributes to this brand? Obviously it's a little of column A and a smidge from column B. I suppose I have never really thought about the import of how one's work and thinking is branded until last night. I'm grateful to my brilliant buddy for pressing the issue and making me think more deeply about the consequences of one's theoretical pieties, whether actual or attributed.
Music: Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light (2009)
In a couple of hours I'll be giving a speech tonight at my Masonic lodge for our holiday party and potluck. In the spirit of the holidays, I thought I would share.
[Later edit: the speech seemed to go over well. The WM remarked "you really like to push the envelope, don't you?" with a nervous laugh. I didn't see this as very risky, but I suppose it could be. Anyhoo, I've revised some things from comments after the speech, and from comments here]:
AFTER DINNER SPEECH FOR DECEMBER 21, 2009
STATED MEETING OF AUSTIN LODGE #12 (AUSTIN, TEXAS)
RELIGION AND POLITICS ON SOLSTICE
Thank you, worshipful, for that introduction and for the opportunity to address you this evening, most especially this particular evening, which is auspicious.[1] I want to begin with a provocation: it is often said by Masons, as well as our mothers, that two topics are not allowed for discussion at the dinner table: religion and politics. In keeping with the contradictions that plague any three hundred year old organization, I intend to speak briefly about precisely these two things: religion and politics.
First, religion: Today is the winter solstice or what some have termed "midwinter," and by midnight, the earth will be tilting farthest away from the sun. Consequently, today is the shortest day of the year for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and it is the day that is most deprived of what Masons cherish: light.
The winter solstice is important to Masons, however, because of its regularity. For us, the solstice is also a reminder for us to be upstanding, to follow-through on our promises, and give our love with unrelenting consistency. Because astrologically the winter solstice is unfailingly reliable, this is also why this day marks the beginning of some of the most significant religious holidays around the world: From the Japanese Amaterasu celebration, to the Incan Festival of the Sun, to Christmas, the days around the winter solstice have been religious for billions of people around the world for centuries. No matter what your faith, this evening encourages a good mood, which is simply another way of saying goodwill, and goodwill toward all people is what our holidays this season are about.
And speaking of religion, tonight is also important because next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of St. John. The feast of St. John is in honor of the Apostle of that name, also known as John the Evangelist, who is likely a composite of different Johns in the Christian tradition.
As many of you know, Lodges are symbolically erected and dedicated to the Holy Saints John. The other John is John the Baptist, who is often described as the "voice in the wilderness" that prepared the way for Christ. We are told it was John the Baptist who first saw the light of Divinity emanating from Jesus. John the Baptist was a stern and unrelenting believer in the gospel, and it was his unwavering fidelity to Christ's teachings that led to his beheading. Masons celebrate John the Baptist for his fidelity of faith in midsummer, and it is in honor of him that our Masonic calendar in Texas begins on June 24---the first feast of St. John.
John the Evangelist, however, is very different from John the Baptist. His Sunday feast is fitting for this holiday season because he is the apostle most closely associated with brotherly love. The Evangelist is sometimes described as Jesus' favorite because of his devotion and chastity. It was John the Evangelist whom Jesus allowed to rest his head on his breast, and it was John the Evangelist whom Jesus trusted to take care of his mother after death.
The apostle is among the most elegant writers of the new testament, and it was John the Evangelist who so closely associated the metaphor of light with speech---or as my profession would have it, with rhetoric. His gospel begins: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." While at one level St. John is attempting to stress that Christ is the embodied word, he also goes on to equate speech with light: "What has come to being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and darkness did not overcome it." It is thus from John the Evangelicst that Masons receive their most fundamental metaphor---light---and it is from him that we understand this light as both knowledge and love. Knowledge and love combined is divinity.
I'm especially pleased to be speaking to you tonight because I try to model my own conduct in accord with St. John the apostle, rather than St. John the Baptist. For me, brotherly love is more important than dogma and a strict adherence to a certain way of thinking. Nevertheless, I think both saints are important to Masonry because they represent two ways of being good. It is important to stress here that Jesus loved and honored them both.
Symbolism in Masonry is complicated and it's easy to get things confused. To help me remember the symbolism of the Saints John, I like to think of each one as a pillar on the porch of Solomon's Temple. We know these columns as Jachin and Boaz, the former often representing beauty and the latter, of course, strength. There is much disagreement among scholars as to which column is "right" or "left," and this leads me to the politics of my discussion.
Jachin and Boaz are often said to represent deity; they are two columns that, paradoxically, represent one being. I think the Saints John are also described as pillars of Masonry because their respective virtues were not mutually exclusive; these holy men were compatible role models. That is why Jesus cherished them both.
In closing, then, I would like to suggest this: each of us leans politically toward strength, fidelity, and charity, as well as brotherly love. And although this is the time of year we celebrate brotherly love, that doesn't mean commitment and regularity go out the window. We need John the Baptist too!
We are offered, then, the Saints John as two extremes or poles on a continuum of virtue. Being a good Mason requires that we figure ourselves between these columns, between the evangelist and Baptist, in pursuit of moral being. Sure, we may lean toward one pole or the other, and this is a literal parallel of the solstices and feasts: as we leave June behind and move toward December, our minds and hearts increasingly move toward the message of brotherly love.
This is a lesson that I think our political leaders could learn from Masonry. We have, at the moment, two parties vying over a health care bill designed to alleviate human suffering. It is not my intention to argue at dinner for or against this policy; I respect the spirit of the rule against talking about politics in the lodge. Rather, it is my intention to suggest this: our political system was crafted from Masonic principles, principles deliberately designed to promote fidelity, love, harmony, and peace. It is time for our political leaders to return to those principles. They can and should figure out how to meet on the level.
To put it metaphorically, these Masonic principles do not ask us to choose one saint over the other, or to embrace Jachin over Boaz. Whether or not you are a Christian---and I confess I am not---Jesus' teaching is worth learning by heart: all good, moral people are worthy of consideration and love, regardless of their religion or politics.
Note
[1] Typically, speeches are not "sourced" as scholarly papers often are. Even so, my remarks are heavily informed by the following two sources: Harvey L. Ward, "'And Dedicated to the Holy Saints John': An Inquiry Into the Designation of the Saints John as Patron Saints of Freemasonry," Pietre Stones: Review of Freemasonry, available here; and Henry Wilson Coil, Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, eds. Wiliam Moseley Brown, William L. Cummings, Harold Van Buren Voorhis, and Allen E. Roberts (Richmond, VA: Macoy Publishing, 1996).
Music: American Music Club: Mercury
A friend was teasing me yesterday because I said I was doing research instead of enjoying my holiday. I often feel like I'm "missing out" on the holiday, but then again, I'm also a bachelor and attending to the needs of others (well, with the exception of spoiled pets) is not a pressing issue. And I have come to expect working on the holidays as a part of the basic research academic lifestyle: during the semester, one focuses on teaching (my priority last semester with a new prep, that's for certain), traveling, guest lecturing, and conferencing. The breaks between the semesters is when one attempts to get serious writing and research done (oh, and grading: hey gang, I'm working on them, but progress is slow). So, the past few days I've been reading and writing on a new project. I can't disclose this entire project, as I've become somewhat paranoid about scholarly plagiarism, but I did want to share an argument that came to me yesterday---and discuss how weird the process of invention sometimes works.
I'm working on a project that thinks through the role of politics in scholarship. This week I was hangin' out with Christopher Swift and we were talking about his work in this area. He gave a very smart and exciting talk on the disagreement between Adorno and Marcuse on the political in scholarship (it's coming out next year in RSQ) for us here last spring. He recommended I go back and read the Adorno essay on Brecht and Sartre in Jameson's Aesthetics and Politics collection, so I did.
Fast forward two days.
So, I get up in the morning and a song is playing in my head: The Rolling Stone's "Gimme Shelter." It's a very dark, apocalyptic song that Jagger admitted was about the Vietnam war, and it has this amazingly powerful vocal by New Orleanian Merry Clayton on the top that is almost terrifying (like a scream). They wrote it in the wake of Altamont, which I am always prone to argue was a death knell for 60s idealism. After that disaster, black metal took over---and from what I gather Jagger and Richards slumped into a kind of drug-hazed depression. (If you've seen the film Performance, this mood is very clear.)
I listened to the song a couple of times as I drank my morning coffee. I then started thinking about Vietnam and Richard Nixon, and then I remembered in grad school I read a debate between Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Forbes Hill presumably about Nixon's Vietnamization speech. "What the hell," I thought, "why not go back and read that today?" So I did.
Rereading the debate had an immediate resonance with the Adorno essay Christopher pointed me to: for Campbell, any choice in the critical act is a political choice, and to downplay one's politics is a politics. Adorno agrees, however, Adorno warns outright politics runs the danger of propping the very conditions that gave rise to evil leaders in the first place. After Bush II, I am personally ambivalent about where I stand here and worry Adorno is right.
Regardless, in the exchange, Hill critiques Campbell for having an political interest in Nixon's deceptions. He prefers an "objective" Neo-Aristotelian approach to speech criticism that limits observation to an assessment of the immediate effects on the intended audience. Campbell responds that Hill's approach:
hardly qualifies as objectivity. It is, in fact, to chose the most favorable and partisan account a critic can render. For example, it is to accept the perspective of the advertiser and applaud the skill with which, say, Anacin [a brand of caffeinated aspirin] commercials create the false belief that their product is more a more effective pain reliever than ordinary aspirin. As a consequence, the methodology produces analyses that are at least covert advocacy of the point of view taken in the rhetorical act---under the guise of objectivity.
Hill responded that "rhetoric is the study of our use of the means, not our commitment to ends."
It seems to me Campbell's argument in these four sentences was the right thing to say at the right time, thereby eclipsing the functional dominance of the good of "civic engagement" with a scholarly acknowledgement of political engagement. Yes, there were self-consciously political essays before this debate, and the Forbes/Campbell controversy comes at the end of about five or six years of critiquing Nixon's rhetoric (Newman had a pretty barbed one in '69). But this was the polemical exchange that created what we might call the "political turn" in communication-style rhetorical studies.
Campbell's argument came at what must have been a very, very scary moment. "Gimme Shelter" really does capture the affect of the time I think---listen to it. That ominous key, and then Merry's very scary and soulful wails, and the lyrical chant "War, children, it's just a shot away." The Golden Age of Television was arguably the 1960s, the first presidential debates were televised, and we had embedded journalists in Vietnam. Suddenly the media sped up as more and more graphic depictions of the war showed up in people's living rooms. Nixon was a doing very bad things. Students were rioting and protesting---the war, misogyny, sexism. If we can imagine all of this, it must have been something akin to Nine-eleven in cultural tone. Taking this into account, Karlyn's argument reads much differently to me now than it did in 1998.
It not only changed how we do rhetorical criticism by making our politics explicit, but like much of Karlyn's work in the 1970s onward, it yoked critical work to socio-cultural exigencies in a way that sounded the death knell for disinterested critique. Suddenly studying texts or speeches for their own sake seemed less responsive or engaged (causing a struggle over object that culminated in the first public address compromise over "text"; the first attempt at one via genre theory didn't work). Four sentences became a representational voice for what must have be a common sentiment of fear and desperation. I wonder if those of you who lived through the 60s implosion can remember what it was like, and if there is any comparison to be made to the apocalyptic mood after Nine-eleven?
In short, I'm arguing Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's essay, "'Conventional Wisdom—Traditional Form': A Rejoinder" is my field's "Gimme Shelter."