our national obduracy

Music: The Orb: The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1989)

A number of folks have asked my opinion concerning NCA Executive Director Nancy Kidd's response to charges of cronyism. Readers may recall I posted an open letter, here and to our professional organization's listserv, calling into question Kidd's choice of Betsy Bach for a staff position directing research initiatives. As former president of the organization, Bach pushed for Kidd to become the director of research. Now that Kidd is the executive director, she has appointed Bach as her replacement for director of research. From just about any vantage you come at this, the move does not look good and is embarrassing to the organization.

In her long, 35-paragraph letter, Kidd apologizes only for the strange way in which the announcement of the appointment was made. The apology seems insincere, however, as she blames individual members of the Executive Committee for the announcement's delay. Kidd only offers two paragraphs in support of Bach's qualifications, using the bulk of her letter, instead, to explain how she followed NCA by-laws to the letter. The larger argument she advances is that the national debacle really has to do with the failure of the Executive Council to "speak as one body." If one wades through all the verbiage, Kidd seems to suggest the Executive Council embodied widely differing views, and consequently, she looked to the association President, Dawn Braithwaite, as the ultimate voice of the EC. Kidd believes she has been treated disrespectfully and that the EC is guilty of sarcasm and incivility.

Of course, there are two major problems with Kidd's rationale. First, she wants it both ways: while she demands loyalty and that the EC should speak as one voice, she nevertheless decided that voice was Braithwaite's. Second, Braithwaite is a close personal friend of Bach; they each ran for association president back-to-back. Explaining that one consulted Braithwaite for her opinion about hiring one of her close friends does not constitute seeking the advice of the EC. Moreover, even if we could agree the president is the ultimate voice of the EC, the fact that the president and Bach are close friends should merit talking to other members of the Executive Council (indeed, this would not only be "best practice," but simple common sense). Rather, Kidd's actions and subsequent explanation constitutes cronyism, a fact only underscored by the fluffy, two-paragraph justification Bach's qualifications.

Braithwaite's letter is a waste of the screen and one's time. Bach's letter, however, does helpfully explain her thought process in a way that makes perfect sense: they couldn't get anyone to run for the staff position, and it went vacant for two months. After trying for months to encourage folks to apply, Bach threw her hat in the ring, not simply out of desire, but to some extent desperation. Although this rationale is entirely understandable, the fact remains Bach's willingness to serve cannot overcome the professional damage accepting the position has done. Nor does it overcome the fact of cronyism. Well-meaning cronyism is still cronyism.

Despite Kidd's accusations, however, the EC certainly did speak with one voice this week---all eight of them. In the letter they submitted to NCA members, Lynn Turner, Richard West, James Darsey, David Henry, Lyn Disbrow, Roseann Mandziuk, Ronald Jackson, and Ron Sheilds seem to suggest that they all disagree with Kidd's obstinate decision to defend Bach's appointment. While they advance a desire to work with Kidd and Bach, they also argue there has been a violation of "expectation and desire." The EC identifies two major issues: (1) the actual collusion of Bach, Braithwaite, and Kidd in the appointment of Bach; and (2) ambiguous policies and operating procedures. The conclusion of the letter is quite clear: the EC will continue to serve the interests of NCA membership, however, the membership and legislative assembly should determine what price Braithwaite and Kidd should pay for this colossal embarrassment. Kidd's contract is up for renewal, for example, in two years.

What we have here is a public drama or war between a "criminal three" and a "gang of eight," if you will. I use those terms with humor to point up the role of law in this skirmish. Basically, what we have here is a biblical conflict between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law (see Romans 2:29). The law in question is a NCA bylaw (Article IV, Section 5.1): “The Executive Director shall, with the advice of the Executive Committee, appoint the staff of the Association.” Apparently, lawyers on both sides have concluded that Kidd did nothing technically wrong, a point she hammers on repeatedly in her letter. The Executive Committee is arguing, however, the spirit of the bylaw is captured in its obvious intent: to make sure staff appointments are people the voluntary leadership can work with. It is intended as a basic "check and balance."

My opinion is that Kidd did not really consult the EC for advice on the appointment, and that she did not do so because she knew there would be resistance. She elected to advance a "letter of the law" argument to champion her choice. Of course, there were all sorts of private conversations we are not privy to; I suspect part of the problem is that Kidd gave her word in private space but did not live up to her word. This is the only way the tone of the EC's letter makes any sense. My sense is that many in the EC believe Kidd has double-crossed them.

Given the troubles the national office has had over the past decade, I confess I find Kidd's decision to dig in her heels on this issue not only stupid, but baffling. I also believe that she and Bach must have known the appointment would be controversial, and yet did it anyway. What this says to me is that the criminal three decided to spend valuable time and energy on personal drama at the expense of the organization and its membership. To me, the issue is not really about whether or not Kidd followed the letter of the law; the issue is that Kidd chose a predictable division and drama over peace, harmony and, frankly, good PR.

Finally, the elephant in the room has already been mentioned by Jim Aune on The Blogora, but it bears repeating here: increasingly NCA is governed by administrators with less-scholarly backgrounds. This differs from a number of major academic professional organizations (e.g., the MLA, the APA, and so on), which are often governed by prominent scholars or, as they say, "big names." Looking at past issues of Spectra, it's clear that NCA was also governed by "big names" until more recently.

I have been doing research in my field since I started graduate school in 1996, almost fifteen years, but every year I am confronted with a ballot increasingly consisting of folks whom I do not know or have not heard of. I do not mean to suggest we should have prominent scholars in all of our leadership positions. I do mean to suggest, however, that a director of research should be a well-known and respected researcher.

plantin' seed

Music: The Orb: U.F. Orb (1992)

Thank goodness spring has sprung. I returned home from the Obamathon conference on Sunday to discover my camellia had bloomed! The buds had been growing for about a year, and I thought I had underfed the poor plant---but no, three popping red flowers appeared, and a forth is on the way. I've never had a camellia before, so I didn't frankly know it took so long for them to bloom.

I've taken some photos of my garden, which I finished replanting yesterday. This year I planted a number of bulbs and seeds, so it will take a while for the garden to fill in. Nevertheless, every time I get out there and dig in the dirt I am cheered. I don't know why gardening makes me happy, but it does.

This year I'm trying a few different things: serrano peppers instead of banana peppers, a purple elephant ear, and a number of flowering plants whose names I cannot remember. Also, just in case you thought my mundane life was too exciting to bear, I also purchased a new houseplant! It's a weird Texas spindly green thing! And, to top things off, I made a new batch of kimchi which is rotting fermenting away as I type. It should be good and stinky in a week or two.

Spring: Yay!

it's synth-pop friday!

thoughts on avatar

Music: Christian Death: Ashes (1985)

And since we're on the topic of violence, I saw Avatar last night, because this is the final week of its showing in the local IMAX theatre. I am not a fan of CGI effects---things always seem very fake and unnatural. I grew up during the era of Rick Baker and Jim Henson, so I am moved by puppets. Avatar had that CGI-fake feeling, but I confess that the third dimension did add an element to the graphics that made it much more tolerable---often downright thrilling. The color schemes were amazing, and I think if films like this existed during the psychedelic drug-taking phase of my life, I would be . . er, happy. As I watched the vivid, glow-in-the-dark colors and sparkly, floaty creatures milling about all I could think about was poor Timothy Leary: dude didn't make it long enough to see this film on acid. Eye candy, indeed! I will bow and gesture where both are due: this film is an amazing feat of visual debauchery. I cannot imagine how this will translate to the home theatre, but in 3D-IMAX, it was well worth the twenty-bucks. My proof was my fortitude: I am the kind of person who must be "empty." For just about any film I leave the theatre once to refresh. For this film, however, I made it to the final battle before I had to ditch for the bathroom.

So, does it deserve top honors at the Oscars?

No.

As impressive as the film is for its "Six Flags over Gaia" message, it's difficult to support precisely because of its do-gooder idealism. That doo-gooderism is a not-so-thinly-veiled working-through of racism, and while I recognize the good intentions behind the heavy-handed lecture the film advances, it still nevertheless delivers the narrative of "white guy saves black people from other bad white guys." White guy convinces black people---oh, sorry, blue people---that they must overcome their primitive instincts to defeat white guys . . . ugh.

I recognize, given the constraints of the entertainment industry, that it is difficult to deliver a narrative that is responsible---a narrative that confronts us with our problems in a way that does not suggest status quo solutions (that is, that advances magic as the way). Even so, this is a film that chooses to directly address the problem of racism. I laud the critique of capitalism. I cringe at the sexualized exoticization of the racial other. I need to think more about my reaction, of course. But I feel dirty: we should not let our dazzled and psyched-out giddiness over the aesthetic achievements eclipse the symbolic force of the narrative.

on suicide notes

Music: The Mary Onette's: Islands (2009)

Not too long ago a 53-year Austinite and software engineer plowed his small airplane into a building that housed the local IRS office. He killed himself and one person, which is bad enough, as the man he took out was a great guy, although I'm not so sure about the grieving wife. Joseph Stack clearly hoped to kill many people, as evidenced by his "suicide manifesto", which he posted to his website before his failed kamikaze mission.

This violent event happened to occur on the day my graduate seminar was reading Lacan on psychosis and schema L. The lecture I had prepared was about the University of Alabama-Huntsville professor who killed three of her colleagues (clearly a psychotic break), however, we ended up reading Stack's "suicide manifesto" and discussing it. I remember remarking that I "he's clearly not psychotic" and all of us agreed he seemed smart. This was apparently the reaction of a number of people, who found the apparent reasoning of the manifesto persuasive.

But when you take a closer look, the "manifesto" isn't particularly smart or sane. His reasoning is of the order of the stupid, if we define stupidity as an inability to think clearly. More to the point, Stack's manifesto reflects an inability to think at all.

Stack refused to give himself over to cultural fantasy in a manner that would be an ethical traversal---that is, to stop demanding the Big Other to produce the lost object, to recognize he is the one who projects the lost object, and so forth. Stack's refusal to give up on demand resulted in the most unthinking act possible: like a toddler jumping up and down, screaming, and sealing himself off from the world in a closed-eye tantrum, Stack held his breath.

That the killer stopped thinking is made clear in the opening paragraph, which begins "in the middle of things" much like Lysias's bad speech in Plato's dialogue The Phaedrus:

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Stack sets-up the manifesto as an answer to the question, "why'd ya do it?" He alerts us to "the writing process," which seems to indicate he is referring to the process of writing this letter. He self-characterizes his rhetoric as a "rant," which gives us an indication of his degree of self-awareness (a narcissism attempting to cover-over feelings of worthlessness, in many senses). Tellingly, he also admits a difficulty with writing---that he cannot seem to express "the storm" of his mind, and finally a collapse into a cliché: "desperate times call for desperate measures." The recourse to a dumb cultural idiom is symptomatic of a failure to take responsibility for the cultural fantasy of mass murder---to see himself as a figure in the larger fantasy of despondency. As the letter continues, we witness a tortured struggle to assert a sense of self-importance---and to invoke another cliché,at all costs.

The letter in its entirety is rambling. Stack begins by arguing U.S. citizens are "brainwashed" into a sense of order and decency. The primary example is the U.S. tax code, which Stack says runs cover for politicians, "thugs and plunderers" who make justice "a joke." He then narrates a life story in relationship to taxes (to the exclusion of just about everything else), how he was apparently involved with an anti-tax group, got busted, moved to Austin, and watched his savings and retirement disappear.

At each turn, of course, is a seething anger and sense of entitlement: they took it from him, they took it away, and he's gonna show them, he's gonna get them. The script is easily summed up by Susan Sontag in the lyrics she wrote for a pop song: " If they mess with us/ If we think they might mess with us/ If we say they might mess with us / If we think we need a war, we need a war." When one clicks into this logic of victimage, reality hardens into principled, black and white façade in which the singular source of one's unhappiness is them. It's easily understandable why some commentators have associated the suicide manifesto with the "Tea Party Movement"; the politics are different, but the underlying logic is the same:

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.

The Other is comprised of all-knowing, conspiratorial politicians (the same ones who horde "the secret" in board rooms, seated around a conference table and holding cigars with their sausagey fingers). The irony, however, is that such visions are as deeply scripted as zombie films, and that the person who is truly asleep and unthinking here is Stack: for these images, then, death?

Stack continues that he sadly " spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along." The Big Other, again, is pulling the strings and they know the answer: violence. So we have a letter that suggests nationalism is a lie (duh) an account of one's demise because of taxation (really, it was the taxes?), and this is evidence in support of the claim violence is needed. What is the reasoning, then, connecting the evidence (nationalism bad, my life sucks) with the necessity of violence?

There isn't any reasoning here. It's simply, "I'LL SHOW THEM!"

Or rather, if we want to dub this reasoning, then it is Hollywood reasoning: there are bad guys, and they want your life and your money, and they only way to deal with bad guys is to blow them up.

The clichéd but nevertheless chilling final remarks of Stack's screed reads like a movie script:

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Stack's definition of insanity is actually a good definition of reality (and the reason why one would chose to live---reality also bounces along because of unforeseen moments of contingency, which is why we have expectations of difference). Nevertheless, the rhetoric here is almost cartoonish, ending in sloganeering and fantasies of fatalistic heroism. What we have here is a regression to literate adolescence and all the signs of the type of resignation that allows one to be animated by cultural fantasies---capital-I Irony. Flying planes into buildings is hardly the novel symbolism that will inspire a revolution. And last I checked, the ultimate summation of Stack's rhetoric can be reduced to the Teen Age title of Metallica's first album. Fortunately, teenagers know to enjoy metal lyrics, which is how they enjoy their hip-hop: it's a form of play, not to be taken literally.

from the goo

it's synth-pop friday!

snowed in aus-vegas!

Music: Judge Judy

For someone who often misses the Midwestern snows, I have to say nothing cheers like flurries in Austin. This morning it started to snow---fairly hard at my house with huge, fat flakes---and accumulated for about a quarter of an inch. The snow quickly melted (apparently while I was in class) as the temperature increased. Still, I feel just giddy. Fortunately, it's not cold enough to freeze into something dangerous (yet).

The sight of UT and my yard with the white stuff is so strange, especially when I'm caused to reflect on the whopper, triple-digit summer of last. I'm proud of my fellow Longhorns for not canceling class, and that my neighborly Texans didn't completely evacuate the bread and milk from the grocery store.

Still, what a treat! A small gallery here.

A Open Letter to Executive Director Nancy Kidd

Music: Kings of Convenience: Riot on an Empty Street (2004)

My professional organization, the National Communication Association, has faced some leadership challenges in recent years. One of those challenges concerns presidents and national directors who grossly misunderstand the essentials of public relations. I can recall this started (for me) many years ago when the NCA president published a front-page screed about "deadbeats" at conventions (folks who do not pay the registration fee, but go anyway). This message, while it needed to be said, could have been said much differently and, consequently, alienated a number of members (while I paid my fee, I was part of the group who attended the conference with "Deadbeat" on my name badge). Despite replacing an incompetent director last year, unthoughtful and divisive messages have continued to come from the leadership---especially the outgoing president, which I have detailed here.

Just when I thought the outgoing president is gone, however, she returns as an appointee to the director of research position! I've learned the Executive Director, Nancy Kidd, made the appointment without consulting the key leadership committee (the Executive Council) and against the objections of many folks. A contract has been signed already. Kidd would prefer that this news had remained secret, however, last week the national office actually posted it---presumably by "accident"---on the NCA website. I emailed the Executive Director to ask if she had made such an appointment. Speaking in the royal voice of "we," Kidd responded that there are differing interpretations "about the issue you've raised" and that she and the current president of NCA will respond to my query on March 1st. There is a meeting of the Executive Committee next weekend to discuss the issue, apparently.

These kind of cronyist gestures make my professional organization look childish. It is embarrassing.

The refusal to confirm or deny Bach's appointment is curious, to say the least. I have written an open letter to Kidd and sent it to CRTNET, which is a field wide listserver. I have every reason to believe it will be censored because clearly Dr. Kidd [later edit: or better, the Bach-Braithwaite-Kidd trinity] would like to keep the matter secret. For that reason, I'm posting the letter here and hope members of my organization will read and circulate it widely:

Dear Dr. Kidd,

As you know, word has been circulating among the membership that you have appointed Betsy Bach to the position of Associate Director for Research Initiatives. I have also learned that a contract has been signed and that Prof. Bach is already at work in this new position. It has been reported that you have appointed Bach without consulting with the Executive Committee. I am disappointed that you will neither confirm nor deny these statements in personal communication. Nevertheless, assuming these facts to be true, I'm writing to express my profound disappointment with your decision, to criticize the appearance of cronyism at the national office, and to argue that Bach is a poor choice.

First, I am disappointed with your decision to ignore the Executive Committee, as it is my understanding that the NCA by-laws require you to seek their advice. You are potentially opening NCA to litigation, which would be embarrassing to the organization.

Second, that you did not consult the EC indicates the appointment is a gesture of cronyism, which only diminishes the reputation of our field. Had Bach been appointed in consultation with the Executive Committee, at least the appearance of impropriety would have been lessened. Regardless, like "grease," cronyism would still be "the word" if you had sought the advice but persisted with the appointment.

Third and most importantly, the decision to continue promoting Bach in a leadership role is misguided because her rhetoric is divisive. I'm told Prof. Bach is a lovely person, however, she is the not a good representative of our membership because her messages are unreflective.

For example, as NCA president Bach managed to alienate major constituencies in our organization with the rhetorically insensitive way she attempted to address membership diversity. By giving her SPECTRA column over to "voices from the margins," Bach stated that she was "looking for personal accounts from people who feel 'marginalized.'" Of course, many of those who have been researching and teaching on issues of race, gender, sexual, political, and religious identity find such a criterion misguided, as it requires one to identify as a victim for the permission to speak.

Regardless, after a year of "giving voice" to the "marginal," Bach refused to give voice to those who participated in the 2008 hotel boycott and alternative convention to fight bigotry and labor abuse. "Y'all had your say in San Diego," Bach reasoned in personal communication. Yet, after a year had come and gone and the controversy abated, Bach chose to revisit this deeply schismatic disagreement last December by criticizing participants in the UNconvention as discriminating against members with disabilities. This "let them fight among themselves" move is not only dirty, but contradicts everything this "box of chocolates" approach to diversity was attempting to achieve.

When I asked Prof. Bach to explain the wisdom behind her decision to reopen this controversy, she offered no answer. It would seem the timing of the critique, then, was so that there could not be a rebuttal. Rather, than answer my question, Bach explained that it was her "opinion, and not NCA's," a curious qualification for an outgoing president to make about a SPECTRA column. After stating she was too busy with grading finals to have a conversation with me, Bach concluded by stating that she was "happy to chat more after finals, but frankly don't know what else to say at this point. It is my opinion, and I voiced it. I thank you for voicing your opinion." Such remarks echo her presidential call for "civil discourse," but betray an ignorance of the large amount of research that has been conducted on the topic of civility in our field over past decade.

Moreover, this "it's my opinion and I'll voice it if I want to" sense of entitlement is hardly indicative of an inclusive attitude. Rather, it betrays an understanding of argumentation that many of our undergraduates frequently voice when taking the basic course. Of course, we also teach our students that some opinions are more informed than others, and further, that feelings of entitlement do not a right make.

A second reason why it is wrong to promote Bach to the Associate Director of Research Initiatives is her expressed attitude toward the research community. Bach's presidential remarks at last year's convention raised a few eyebrows---as was probably intended---but they also deeply offended a number of scholars. Although the source of offense was, in part, the tone of her delivery, Bach's "On Practicing What We Preach" speech suggested communication researchers actively excluded the interests of those teaching in secondary and community contexts. She also suggested those of us at research universities were guilty of "making [graduates] feel like second-class citizens if they do not land a job a doctoral granting institution," a controversial claim at best. For a number of members, Bach's remarks were received as an admonition and a snub to those of us who ARE at research universities. I certainly agree the organization serves a variety of constituencies and a many different institutions. Yet, as with Bach's column, her tendency to pit one constituency against another is clear. This does not bode well for an incoming director of research.

My experience to the contrary, I'm told Prof. Bach is widely regarded as a warm and welcoming person. Be that as it may, our professional leaders need to be thoughtful and reflective because the decisions they make will have consequences for the professional lives of thousands of teachers and scholars. I confess I am more interested in thoughtful leadership than I am (seemingly) nice people. I urge you to think beyond the benefits of cronyism and to reconsider your decision to appoint Bach as the Associate Director for Research Initiatives. We need someone whose public messages are not cowardly, divisive, or hypocritical. We need someone whose public statements are reflexive and thoughtful.

If you decide to continue Bach's appointment, I would request that you take the time explain to NCA members why you are willing to risk the reputation of NCA, the alienation of the membership, and the cooperation of members of the Executive Committee and Research Board to follow through on a political gesture.

Sincerely,

Joshua Gunn

University of Texas at Austin

it's synth-pop friday!

killer professors from outer space

Music: Sade: Soldier for Love (2010)

It's been such a dizzingly busy weekend that I only learned recently about Prof. Amy Bishop's shooting rampage last week at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. For the three of you like me who didn't hear the details, this apparently brilliant but "socially awkward" biology professor shot and killed numerous colleagues who voted against her bid for tenure (ok, is it just me, or does she seem a bit old or late in the game to be up for tenure just now?). Having just went through the process, I can understand how anxiety about promotion and security can lead one to fantasize---but for the life of me I cannot understand how one can turn life into a video game. Apparently after Bishop killed a number of her colleagues she spoke on the phone with her husband and confirmed "date night" was still a go.

WTF? Clearly these colleagues were not people to Bishop. I can understand getting really crazy about one person who upset you---even though I could never understand wanting to kill someone. But she shot multiple people---it's paranoia on a stick.

Since I'm knee-deep in reading Lacan's thoughts about object relations theory for our graduate seminar on "The Object," it's tough not to think about Bishop's killing spree in relation to psychosis. Lacan actually came to psychoanalysis because he was obsessed with understanding psychosis---what it is, how it happens, how to explain it. Lacan eventually defined psychosis structurally as a foreclosure of the paternal metaphor. I won't go into all of that---there's a lot in the blog archives about it---except to say there are both a biological and a cultural explanations. There's no question Bishop has a problem, and she has a long, documented history of having problems that reek of psychosis. What I'm interested in, however, is the kind of cultural psychosis that does to Bishop what she has done to her victims: turn them into objects to love or destroy for satisfaction.

That is to say, there's something to say about the type of system that is productive of psychosis. Bracketing for the moment this person was definitely off, the context nevertheless evoked a certain violent response. Lately we've been hearing a great deal about violence in the academy---psychotic violence. Is there something about the scholastic setting that is productive of psychosis? The reward system of the academy (versus, say, the corporate sector)?

Bracketing Lacan for the moment, we can all agree---at least semantically---that psychosis means a loss of contact or relation with "reality." I think the general definition is something like this: a psychotic person is someone who is so emotionally and psychologically warped that he or she loses touch with "reality," when reality is something like that most people have consensus about as being "real." For the psychotic, other people are akin to objects that are not real. It's like a childhood fantasy in which the child imagines its parents and others are robots programmed to "test" him or her. I'm thinking of The Truman Show and films such as this, when other people are reduced to characters in one's "show." I cannot confess to ever being psychotic (well, there was some LSD experimentation in my teen years . . . ), but I think I can smell it when it's around. Clinically Bishop may or may not be psychotic, but it certainly seems like she embodies all the characteristics of the basic definition.

I was reading the second seminar of Lacan today, and in the lecture in which he advances the conception of "the Big Other," his opening provocation is a question: why are subjects not planets? The answer is that plants do not have mouths. This is to say many things, however, one of them is the predictability of a planets orbit---they are not dynamic bodies that move and change in complex and sometimes unpredictable ways, much like human speech. While it's only implied, Lacan's suggestion seems to be that psychosis reduces the Other to so many orbiting planets. The psychotic reduces others to mere bodies occupying space.

What I'm thinking about is how various institutional contexts reduce folks to objects orbiting in space, as if they did not have the capacity to speak. Of course, this is Marx's critique of the capitalist; this also is Heidegger's worry about the "standing stock" produced by "technology." The ultimate symbol of evil from my childhood was Darth Vader and the Death Star, a planet that didn't have a mouth, but rather a laser that destroyed other planets. Psychosis papers over the mouth of the other, forcing it into a false predictability.

Just thinking aloud here, and I really don't have a point or argument (per usual). Still, as I contemplate the horror of this troubled professor's actions---and what "tenure" apparently meant to her---I'm also caused to think about the ways in which the academy can encourage psychosis: yes, she was not right "in the head," but still, were there scenic triggers? There's something about the way in which the academy advances a family metaphor in order to mask an increasingly corporate mentality that leads people to unhealthy decisions.

I really don't know what to think, and I debated whether or not to post my confusion/indecision. I just know that by reducing this person's acting-out to her individual psychosis, we may be overlooking a larger, systemic psychosis of which this acting-out is an expression. I'll keep thinking . . . .

pissy/happy vd!

Music: And One: Bodypop 1.5 (2009)

Presumably, today we honor Martyr Valentinus the Presbyter and those with him at Rome who were martyred in late antiquity. The feast of St. Valentine refers to many saints, actually, and no one knows their godly feats except the Almighty Herself. So, how today's holiday came to be a celebration of romantic or courtly love is anyone's guess (some blame Chaucer), but as a celebration Valentine's Day is no older than the eighteenth century. In other words, it's a commercial holiday.

But, as I note every year, I always come through for you, because I love you, and of course, because I hate you too. These aggressive emotions are two sides of the same coin, are they not?

Side one, as you know, is Philophobia and consists entirely of expressions of bitterness and frustration (as in, "Goddammit, I want to be your lover, not your friend!" Hat tip to Thom). You can find the artwork here as a pdf file (just print it out, and then cut with scissors to fit in a traditional jewel case). You can find the mp3 stream here. Here's the track listing:

1. soul whirling somewhere: “forget it. I give up.”
2. phillip boa: "all I hate is you”
3. velvet acid christ: “the art of falling apart”
4. and one: “love is a drug abuser”
5. mesh: “how long?”
6. la roux: “i’m not your toy”
7. assemblage 23: “how can you sleep?”
8. radiohead: “house of cards”
9. beautiful south: “especially for you”
10. the smiths: “i want the one i can’t have”
11. r.e.m.: “so. central rain”
12. amy winehouse: “love is a losing game”
13. sharon robinson: “party for the lonely”
14. sade: “skin”
15. hope sandoval & the warm inventions: “trouble”
16. the magnetic fields: “you must be out of your mind”
17. neko case: “if you knew”
18. blaze foley: “clay pigeons.”

Side two is the pro-love mix, but it is a bit different this year. In years past I've always thrown in a couple of racy tracks, however, this year I've made them all racy tracks. In fact, the tunes are so racy that they are not safe for work listening! This mix, lovers, is rated X and if you are easily offended by sexual themes, vulgarity, or lewdness, you might use this year's little heart-shaped beasties mix to help desensitize yourself. I recommended putting it on your iPod and listening to it during a Sunday church service. You can download the CD art here. And you can find the mp3 file here. If you elect to get down with these naughty tunes, please remember I did warn you! The track listing:

1. johnnie taylor: “your love is rated x”
2. the outthere brothers: “i wanna f---k you in the asp”
3. kool keith: “lick my asp”
4. flight of the conchords: “business time”
5. r. kelly: “sex planet”
6. meshell ndegeocello: “trust”
7. air: “love”
8. peaches: “i feel cream”
9. lonely island: “jizz in my pants”
10. sheena easton: “sugar walls”
11. prince: “erotic city”
12. frankie goes to hollywood: “krisco kisses”
13. morningwood: “hot tonight”
14. cwa: “only straight girls wear dresses”
15. gossip: “men in love”
16. ray wylie hubbard: “pots and pans”
17. dr. john: “shave ‘em dry”
18. millie jackson: “slow tongue."

Please note these holiday compilations are for preview purposes only; if you like an artist, I encourage you to go out and buy one of their albums. And, of course, please enjoy these mixes responsibly. Whether you celebrate or celehate, enjoy your day!

affective affinities of a different order

Music: The Byrds: Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)

Yesterday, UT professor Sam Gosling gave a masterful talk on one of his many research programs: Snoop. Basically, Gosling is exploring the ways in which the environments in which we live tell others about our personality (as measured by the five factor model). Although Gosling is mostly interested in finding statistically significant correlations between how a stranger rates, for example, the personality traits of a dorm room and how the actual occupant (and his or her friends) rates himself, I was interested in how much of this "information" we normally pick up unconsciously: having recently become an HGTV addict, it is clear how much we invest in organizing space to project a persona (or to absent one). In a sense, Snoop is Gosling's more grounded version of Blink---there's evidence to show a degree of accuracy in snap judgments; although there is no way to measure it, I suspect there is a mountain of information processed about other people's stuff that we aren't consciously aware of.

It's job hunting season, and friends are interviewing hither and yon. If I can count the times I said to someone, "trust your gut," I guarantee I'd have to use other people's fingers and toes.

Recently, I've had opportunities to share and discuss my most recent work with scholars and teachers in very different disciplines. As I was talking to students about Sam's presentation yesterday, I starting thinking about the similarities between the hostility folks have for the unconscious and the affective. I was giving a presentation last semester that touched on a Lacanian habit: one reason I am interested in the object of speech is because it is the meeting place of the signifier and affect, the reasoned and the irrational, and so on. Speech can speak the unconscious, and often without our consent. A couple of people objected: "how can one have an affect without the signifier?"

"Well, I define affect as the body in feeling, and I think we can have the body in feeling without its being meaningful."

"But, how can you know about this affect, then?"

"You signify it."

"So, you're saying that you can only have affect with the signifier."

"No," I said. "If you deliver affect to the signifer, then you've made it meaningful and it becomes a feeling."

"But [insert rant here]."

"Well, professor X, I think we'll have to agree to disagree."

And so we did, and do. Still, the mood or character of this scholars objection feels very similar to the protests against psychoanalysis. Both my position on affect and the unconscious hold tenaciously to the belief that there are things and experiences and events and moments outside of language that happen and exert an influence on my so-called languaged life. There is, in other words, an outside.

Thinking about this last night, I was reminded of Brian Massumi's powerful opening to Parables of the Virtual. After noting that "cultural scholarship" for the last twenty years is afraid of radical realism, he suggests variations of mediation, such as Althusser's interpellation model, staved off the realist phobia. But what of "the body?"

The body was seen to be centrally involved in these everyday practices of resistance. But this thoroughly mediated body could only be a 'discursive' body: one with its signifying gestures. Signifying gestures make sense. If properly 'performed,' they may also unmake sense by scrambling significations already in place. Make an unmake sense as they might, they don't sense. Sensation is utterly redundant to their description. Or worse, it is destructive to it, because it appeals to unmediated experience. Unmediated experience signals a danger that is worse, if anything can be, of naived realism, its polar opposite, naïve subjectivism.

Here is where a certain version of Deleuze and a preferred reading of Lacan seem to met: there are more things in experience, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your theory. Lacan attempts to set this truism into a certain ethical disposition---and we might say, in a sense, all posty thinkers do.

So I've just been thinking: is resistance to the work my colleagues and I would like to do a sort of drive to mastery for which the object is really interchangeable? Whether it be affect outside the signifier or the unconscious (worse, the symbolic outside the clutches of the comprehensible), is this dis-ease of a dispositional---and therefore, affective---character? Why is asserting that there are experiences which elude the machinations of meaning troublesome to so many scholars?

The stupidity of atheism is its faith in the absolute denial.

it's love-pop friday!

to nca or not nca? part three: affinities

Music: Legendary Pink Dots: Any Day Now (1987)

I have been busy attempting to complete a manuscript by tomorrow, however, I didn't want Rosechron to linger too long on the negative. I've been working-through whether I should attend my professional organization's big conference this year in San Francisco. Thus far the reasons not to go (explained here and here) are as follows:

• Outgoing president Bach's idiotic and offensive parting shot, and by extension, how she responded to the 2008 boycott
• Deceptive rhetoric from the current president regarding the early registration policy
• Not wanting to support the current leadership clique
• The possibility of having to cross a picket line because of a staff labor dispute
• Having two conferences and as many guest talks between now and this next conference (that is, anticipating exhaustion).

I can easily list more reasons for not attending, but these cover the big reasons.

Since I've last posted, however, Dana Cloud and I have discussed the labor situation, as well as a number of the new leadership at the National Office. Dana reports that as soon as she alerted the national office to the labor issues at the conference hotel, the new national director Nancy Kidd and first vice president Lynn Turner were immediately responsive, and are already in negotiations with the labor union. Apparently they are currently at an impasse, however, Dana reports that the tone of these new leaders is so radically different---and responsible---that she has changed her mind about attending and has resolved to continue working on change "within." I trust Dana and respect her judgment, so I confess she also has got me to think differently about San Francisco; I'm encouraged that perhaps the organization is learning from its mistakes from last year and the year before.

This leads me to the second argument in favor of going to the national conference, of course: radical change is not possible and that only by working within---by electing like-minds to offices of leadership---can we make the organization more accountable and take basic humanitarian stances on issues that matter to me and my colleagues. Giving up and leaving the organization, as Shaun and others have noted, is not an option, since maintaining a professional identity is important for job security and a footing in a university setting.

My friend and mentor James Darsey has been serving NCA in a leadership capacity for some time now. He has made a number of arguments to me and others encouraging more active participation. He has not convinced me it is time to fun for office, however (that, I think, is service best given when your institution will support your doing so, and mine will not; it's also the job of a full professor). No other professional organization, argues Darsey, has the heft to work for major professional in-roading (e.g., getting our field noticed by money-bag agencies, national media recognition, and so on). Or to revert to the language of Alasdair MacIntyre, NCA has the power to maintain and pursue external goods (prestige, funding, training) so that the goods internal to our practice (scholarship, teaching) can continue.

I can appreciate Darsey's argument. No practice can survive and cultivate its intrinsic goods without pursuing external support. I think the source of my worry, and that of others, is that in recent years there has been an imbalance in a trend toward increasing corporatization---and that is always driven by the pursuit of external goods. Former director Smitter's decision to remain silent and do nothing about bigotry and abuse in 2008 was not only cowardly, but also ultimately driven by a misguided PR strategy (in that sense, it was also not good business sense). Again, what I'm hearing from both Darsey and a former president is that the new director is very good and is helping restore balance. I hope so.

So, we can say the reasons to go thus far are that (1) the national leadership are responding to the labor dispute at the hotel directly; (2) the leadership as changed; (3) changing the organization requires that people continue to go and participate; and (4) NCA is a big organization with the brawn to get us professional goodies and recognition.

There are, of course, other reasons to go: to see my friends; to network and meet new scholars who may be doing stuff I'm interested in; the conference hook-up. Just joshing about the latter---who am I kidding, anyway? That is, there's a big social factor here, the appeal of finding, giving, and enjoying love, broadly construed.

None of the social reasons, nor the organizational and political ones, however, trumps what I think is the single most important reason to go: to support graduate students! My first doctoral advisee---who truly rocks and is going to impress!---will be on the job market next fall. I may have one or two others who also decide to test the waters. It just seems important to me to be at the conference for them in an emotional, drink-buying capacity.

Now, one might think any advisor should attend NCA to introduce his or her students to potential employers. I really think the field is so huge---and the conference is so massive---that this really has no bearing on job getting. My advisor did not go to NCA to shepherd me around, nor did I think I needed to be---and I got a job. I had thirteen interviews at NCA. Only one of those, Georgia State, actually ended up inviting me out for an on-site interview, and I promise you my short interview with the chair at NCA had no bearing on my invitation whatsoever (she didn't remember meeting me when I actually interviewed in Georgia).

Honestly, I think interviews at NCA are basic tests of craziness. Committees stare at you to make sure you're not a nut-job. They probably already have their ideal two or three candidates in mind, and just use NCA as an opportunity to confirm this ideal is closer to a possible reality, that's all. (Which reminds me, Barry's Spectra essay, "The Search Begins," is absolutely a must-read for grads.)

I think, in other words, most people who are interviewing folks for jobs at their institution are bombarded with so many people that they are much more likely to remember what's on paper, or what's in a file, than who they met at NCA. I know this is not always the case, and a number of programs take interviewing very seriously; still, I don't think even those folks would nix a file if you couldn't make an NCA interview.

No, the reason to go for one's students is just to be there for them if they need to talk, if they need a cigar, if they need, in general, someone to decompress with. Job marketing oneself is extremely stressful and hard.

So, these are the things weighing in my head. I hope to decide by tomorrow morning.

rest in peace, prof. leff

Music: Sade: Love Deluxe (1992)

Yesterday my colleagues and I learned that rhetorical theorist and critic Michael C. Leff succumbed to cancer. Once the shock abated (although it still lingers), the mood gave way to sadness. We believe he was 67.

Mike was one of those scholars who gave his life to the field and made it a better place for us to work. I learned last night that, true to his character, the night before he passed he was working the on details of an upcoming conference on the phone with colleagues---in the ICU!

Leff's scholarship is required reading for all courses in rhetorical studies. In addition to getting rhetorical scholars to rethink Cicero, he helped to pioneer a particular version of close textual reading drawn heavily from Gadamer (as opposed, say, to the New Critics). I daresay every rhetorician of my generation has had (or should have!) an intimate encounter with Leff's work and carries around a gem of his sensibility.

Unlike many of my friends and mentors, I was not close to Mike. I knew him professionally and informally; we had a few exchanges on mail and spoke at conferences. That said, I know many of you out there who similarly were not close to Mike, nevertheless, experience news of his death with a lump in the throat. What is it about this man that was able to get in us from afar, as an author, and as a leader?

Leff's passing is experienced as a loss for so many because of his stature in the filed, but I want to say more especially because of the intimacy or care of his intellectual work. There is something about the way Mike writes and approaches scholarship, something loving and gentle, which makes the reader fall in love a little. And with that ascent, however slight, you start to feel a relationship with the author---as if you know something intimate about him.

I'd need to think about this connection more, but it is more than, say, the parasocial relationship fans develop with stars (though there is something similar). Many of us walking around at conferences feel like we have some intimate knowledge about Mike's person having been seduced by his work; there's something about the scholarly imaginary that emplaces us in a certain proximity of feeling that makes his passing hurt.

For folks in my generation (30s-40s), Leff's death is also a first of sorts: he is one of the first among the generations that taught us to move on to the celestial university. With him, then, we are caused to reflect on a person who changed the way a field thinks, and how deeply that way abides. Mike had to persuade his cohort, and those before him, that textual critique was a merging of horizons. For my generation, his approach was a major (de)fault line--a tectonic plate, a boden, a ground.

Standing on the shoulders of giants.

it's synth-pop friday!

Japayork: Our Now from Brilliantly Different on Vimeo.

to nca or not to nca? part two: on crossing picketers

Music: iLiKETRAiNS: Elegies to Lessons Learnt (2007)

This week I've been publicly mulling over reasons for and against attending my professional organization's annual conference (for those of you who are not academics in my field, I suspect this week's blogging will be something to ignore). I am starting with reasons for avoiding the conference, and the first concerned the poor rhetorical choices of the current leadership. I suggested that Betsy Bach's parting column last December was a symptom of a larger, systemic problem at the national office: they think that the membership are rabble to be "managed." There is more to say here regarding the current leadership, which I will follow with the more pressing issue: labor disputes at the conference hotel.

My second issue with NCA leadership concerned the early registration policy. For a couple of years NCA has been requiring folks to register early---at first four months early, then two---to appear in the program. Their justification was that other academic professional organizations require early registration. The rationale---although at times denied---is to cut down on so-called deadbeat conference attendees: folks who come but don't pay the registration fee. There's a lot to say about this, but for brevity let me just say my problem with early registration is graduate students: they don't get paid much, and for most of them in communication programs around the country, the first paycheck arrives October 1. It's very difficult to pay a $100 when you are struggling to make ends meet for the three months of summer.

I submitted a post to our discipline's listserver, "CRTNET," that outlined my argument against the early-registration policy. It was posted in two days time, however, before my post this message was inserted as an attempt to inoculate readers against my criticism:

Dawn O. Braithwaite, NCA First Vice-President and 2009 Convention Planner and Betsy Wackernagel Bach, NCA President

We are writing to thank NCA members for a successful convention pre-registration period. We received a record-setting number of registrations last week, and the association received much positive feedback from members about the process. We sincerely appreciate your cooperation.

As many of you know, a great deal of thought went into developing this policy. As a reminder, below we have appended the Spectra article that we published describing the reasons for its implementation. When we implemented the policy in 2008, there was an August 6th deadline to pre-register. In response to concerns expressed by several NCA members, the National Office was able to extend the deadline this year from early August to September 17th to do our best to accommodate member needs.

The Executive Committee has scheduled an evaluation of the pre-registration process and policy. If you have any feedback that might help inform that evaluation, please send comments to the NCA Inbox at _______.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Spectra article:

New Registration Policy Announced in Chicago

A new registration policy was announced at the 2007 Chicago convention, and was debated at length at the Legislative Assembly. Beginning with the 2008 convention in San Diego, all designated presenters, panelists, chairs, and respondents must preregister for the conference by August 6, 2008 or be dropped from the both the printed and posted convention program. For multiple-authored papers, a minimum of one author, designated as the presenter, must preregister. Reasons for the policy change include:

---Quality of convention: Members are frustrated when they attend a panel and listed participants do not attend the convention. Respecting the time and financial commitment members make when they attend the convention, NCA is asking members who wish to be listed in the program to commit to attend and present.

---Ethics: Submitting a paper, panel or agreeing to serve as a chair or respondent in February signals that one has committed to attend the conference. With apologies to Johnnie Cochran, "When we submit, we commit!"

And on and on it goes. The problem with this inoculating message is that it is deceptive: it suggests that the policy was deliberated in the Legislative Assembly. It was not. It was a policy that was shoved through by the Executive Council; debate and protest in the Legislative Assembly was actually shut-down---and there was much protest. This is precisely why the policy was finally killed this year (at the end of its "probation" period).

So, coupled by Bach's insensitive parting shot in Spectra, the attempt deceive folks gives me no confidence in the current leadership. I actually had what I thought were productive and respectful conversations in private with the current and outgoing president about the problems with registration policy. When duplicity has been chosen over transparency, however, I just lose faith.

Finally, the third reason to avoid attending NCA this fall is this:

More information (as Bryan tipped!) is at this website. The conference hotel for NCA is one of the picketed hotels. I have not once crossed a picket line to enter a conference hotel---hell, I've never crossed one in my lifetime. Frankly, I don't want to do that this year either. It's possible the picketing could be over by the time the conference arrives, but there's no way to know for sure.

So, in sum, my reasons for not going to NCA this year are as follows. First, incompetent public relation strategies lead me to have no confidence in the current leadership. Second, the leadership chose to be deceptive about a policy. Attending the conference says I'm ok with the leadership---which I'm not. Third, attending the conference may entail crossing a picket line, which I am loath to do.

Other reasons, of course, include those Murphy has mentioned: I have an Obama conference next month; RSA in May; and a pedagogy conference in July. There may be a guest talk in September . . . . Shear exhaustion also plays a factor.

I'll be discussing reasons to attend the conference in the next post.

to nca or not to nca? part one: rhetorical idiocy

Music: The Cure: Mixed Up (1990)

My national professional organization, the National Communication Association (NCA), has never not been a site of controversy. This semester for my graduate seminar we are reading a number of "historical" essays from its main organ, the newsletter Spectra, and it's easy to see squabbling was something of a norm (as were provocative essays). My comments in this entry participate in this long tradition.

For the next week I am trying to decide whether or not I shall attend NCA's national conference in San Francisco, and this is because submitted papers and panel proposals are due at the end of next week. I would rather not agree to appear on something or agree to respond to something if I have decided not to go. I will detail the reasons for going in a future post (there are many!). For the moment, however, I'd like detail my first reason for not going: the incompetence of figurehead leadership, represented most recently by outgoing NCA president Betsy Bach's final "presidential column." A good friend and trusted brain is close to Bach, and I underscore, again, I have no reason to believe she is not a good person. But I am a good person, and people disagree with me and get upset with things I say all the time, and while I'm a sensitive guy, I'm ok with this as long as it's not about my person, but my rhetoric. This said, as a figurehead Bach has made poor rhetorical choices, and this is not a good thing for a position that is, fundamentally, rhetorical in character. Moreover, given her scholarship's professed concern with "othering" from a self-identified feminist perspective, her words and deeds run the risk of hypocrisy. Let me explain.

A number of us boycotted the 2008 convention and criticized NCA for failing to respond to concerns about the NCA hotel---concerns that were voiced significantly before the conference and which the national office decided to remain strategically silent about (until it was too late to do anything). The owner of the conference hotel, self-styled Papa Manchester, is a supporter of proposition 8 and donated a lot of money to ban same-sex marriage (and more importantly, the legal benefits marriage entails) in California. Moreover, the hotel was embroiled in a labor dispute with his staff. This double-whammy led many NCA members to hold their panels and meetings in a hotel across the street that was queer and labor friendly. Organizers of the alternative conference (all good friends and respected colleagues of mine) called it the "UNconvention" to point up the irony of the official NCA conference theme, "unCONVENTIONal."

So what does this have to do with Bach's column? We have to go back to the beginning of Bach's term.

Rather than write a column expressing her views and policy initiatives---as most presidents who have gone before her have done---Prof. Bach decided to give her space to those in the field who felt "marginalized." She titled it "voices from the margins," and she kicked it off with a column by the outspoken conservative Richard Vatz. I will pass over commentary on Vatz's opinions, except to say that he believes, for example, affirmative action is racist.

After the 2008 conference, a number of folks who participated in the UNconvention drafted a report/statement, with the idea it would be great for Bach's "Voices from the Margins" column. Here was a group of folks who felt marginalized for their beliefs in sexual and martial equality, and the column seemed the ideal venue. After an initial query, to which Bach responded enthusiastically (underscoring a 1000 word limit), Bach changed her tone when she discovered it was not a personal reflection: "the intent of the column is to hear voices from the margins," she said, "rather than a report of the unconvention [sic], as that is not what I am looking for in my presidential columns. I am looking for personal accounts from people who feel 'marginalized.'" In an earlier missive, Bach suggested that what she is "shooting for is diverse perspectives and what I’m calling ‘voices from the margins’ of NCA. The people who have committed so far include a GLBT scholar, an African American scholar, an adjunct faculty member, a disabled NCA member, and many others."

Let us pass over the Forrest Gump "box of chocolates" approach to marginalization, as well as the underlying "victim" position that seems required for a spectral voice (not all spooks are wounded---some are pissed!). Let's simply reflect a minute on the purpose of a column titled "Voices from the Margins."

Okay.

Now, let us silently think over the reasons why some NCA members would be boycotting a convention hotel because its owner abuses his staff and is a bigot.

Thinking . . . thinking . . . .

It is in this context that we must take-up, then, Prof. Bach's parting column in the December 2009 issue of Spectra. For her last column Bach spoke in her voice and did not offer space to the Other. This time she decided to voice her own feelings of victimage as a straight white woman attempting to steer an unruly ship-o-diversity. She used the column to criticize the UNconvention for making the conference experience in 2008 uncomfortable to others, taking a jab at my colleagues (and I assume me, even though I didn't attend, because of the parody Shaun and I created). Worse, she made the divide-and-conquer move: the UNconvention people were discriminating against the physically disabled!

Now, "cowardly" is usually a term that denotes "lacking courage," but it also means "carried out against a person who is unable to retaliate." Waiting until one's last column to attack a constituency of an organization's membership---precisely because they could not respond, is certainly cowardly. Such a gesture is also the epitome of hypocrisy: "the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform." To claim to be giving "voice" to those individuals whose views are marginalized while, nevertheless, marginalizing another constituency whose very purpose concerns public recognition seems hypocritical.

Finally, of course, we're talking about the president of a national, professional organization. I suppose, upon reflection, it is a presidential gesture to attempt to enact inclusion; I think former President George W. Bush assembled his cabinet this way, if I don't recall. But I think a professional organization's president requires a more nuanced approach.

What really bothered me about this column, however, was not its contradictory views. Anyone who believes issues of discrimination are solved by recourse to the logics of representation hasn't really thought about the issue; it's very vexed territory and very difficult to think through, so I give folks who do these kinds of things a lot of license---including myself. What's so bothersome is the fact that Bach waited a year, after the smoke had settled and after another convention had occurred (without major incident) to open a wound that was starting to heal. Why pick a fight on your way out? It's as if she was Larry taking two fingers to Curly's eye-sockets and saying, "ngyah ngyah!" The simple stupidity of such a gesture is enough to suggest someone is not in control of her rhetoric; this is not a good quality of a leader. It is great for community organizing, of course, but Bach is supposed to be the figurehead for my discipline, communication studies.

The day I learned of my tenure and promotion I decided to email Prof. Bach to express my deep disappointment with her column and, more importantly, the unprofessional gesture it represents. Why pick a fight when no one can respond? Why pick a fight when the issue has past? Why pick a fight when a previously divided convention was united once again? Her response was interesting, and since the email exchanges were tacitly coded as private, I'm not going to post everything she said. She noted that she did reject the column from the "unCONVENTION [sic] folks" because it did not provide commentary and was "largely comprised of links to websites." Further, " it was my opinion that y’all had your say in San Diego, and you were certainly entitled to hold your boycott." She concluded she would be happy to discuss things further, but "frankly don’t know what else to say at this point. It is my opinion, and I voiced it. I thank you for voicing your opinion."

Notably, the language of "entitlement" crops up here, as does the mistaken belief that "everyone is entitled to voice their opinion," even if it is misguided, wrong, evil, racist, and so forth. It would seem that if hiding behind the shield of this or that administrative position doesn't work, then free speech absolutism is the failsafe!

For me, the first reason to not go to NCA this fall is not Bach's column, but rather, what the column seems to be a symptom of: pettiness, an inability to be truly considerate, a tokenist approach to diversity, and complete rhetorical incompetence. I am glad the NCA leadership saw it fit to get rid of an executive director who was an even bigger problem. But I worry: first an executive director, and now a past president, have demonstrated a basic incompetence with public relations. Does my attending NCA continue to reward a leadership that has made a three year run at offending me and my colleagues?

There are exceptions: Art Bochner was an excellent president, despite the director. And I recognize some of you would respond that attending NCA is about seeing friends, regardless of what the national organization apparently says or stands-for. There are very important historical responses to the latter reasoning, of course.

Just thinking aloud here, and working-through. More reasons to attend, and not to attend, to come.

writer's blocking

Music: Public Image Ltd.: compact disc (1985)

Well, it's been one of those weeks in which writing is excruciating. To be an academic is to have writer's block. What's always frustrating for me is this: I am never wanting for something to say---it's just some days I have no desire to say it. For me, writer's block is often a response to the nagging question in the back of my head: who cares? isn't this obvious? why bother?

I'm to have a paper drafted about the rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright; I've already made the argument I'm presenting in this space, so I have it all outlined. I just cannot seem to pull it together today (or yesterday). I keep seeing things around the house that need to be picked up or cleaned.

So, I made a deal with myself: write the introduction and you can clean house, Josh. So, I wrote it. Now I'm going to, you know, go clean the house.

Dissin' the Black Vernacular, or, the Plight of Reverend Wright in Sound Clip Culture

Joshua Gunn
University of Texas at Austin

Almost a week before the release of John Heilemann and Mark Halperian's juicy political tell-all Game Change, senator Harry Reid's observations inside it were already making headlines.[1] Two days before the book landed Reid admitted to describing presidential hopeful Barak Obama's assets as twofold: his light skin and his lack of a "Negro dialect."[2] A number of prominent Republican leaders were quick to call for Reid's resignation, presumably because of a deep-seated and heretofore hidden racism. Yet Reid's presumed racism is perhaps better described as a soul-deep cultural bias in a political world of whiteness (methinks, in other words, Liz Cheney doth protest too much).[3] As linguist Geoff Nunberg argues, QUOTE: "you couldn't fault the actual content of [Reid's] remark: that an African American presidential candidate has a better chance of being elected if he doesn't look or sound 'too black.' That may be a deplorable reality, but it's not a controversial thing to say."[4]

It is definitely, nevertheless, a deplorable reality because "sounding black" produces victims in the mainstream political media. It is a deplorable reality because it doesn't have to be a reality in the first place. It is a deplorable reality because of the missed opportunities, especially in the most recent election cycle, to discuss the norms and history of the black vernacular rhetorical tradition on national television. My remarks today are about how Obama's campaign rhetoric regarding his former controversial pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, should not only be read as a political divorce from a controversial person-however necessary-but more disturbingly as a rejection of a uniquely African American rhetorical tradition. In other words, I will argue that Obama didn't just throw Rev. Wright "under the bus," as they say, but also knowingly and deceptively denied an understanding of black vernacular practice.

To this end I will first briefly rehearse the history of the controversy over Rev. Wright, culminating in Obama's stern separation on April 29th, 2008. Second, after describing Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s theory of black vernacular rhetoric, or "signifyin[g]," I reexamine Wright's fateful address at the National Press Club to underscore Wright's skillful navigation of an emerging, racist scene embodied by the moderator. Finally, I conclude by suggesting that a more nuanced understanding of Wright's rhetoric helps to restore a sense of complex personhood that is, increasingly, untenable in the contemporary regime of publicity.

Notes

[1] John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (New York: Harper, 2010).
[2] Philip Elliot, "Reid Apologizes for 'no Negro dialect' Comment" (9 Jan. 2010); available http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100109/ap_on_el_se/us_obama_reid accessed 30 Jan. 2010.
[3] George Stephanopoulos, "Georges Bottom Line" (10 Jan. 2010), abcnews.com; available http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2010/01/will-not-a-scintilla-of-racism-in-reid-race-remarks.html accessed 31 Jan. 2010.
[4] Geoff Nunberg, "A Sensitive Subject: Harry Reid's Language on Race." Fresh Air (National Public Radio; 21 Jan. 2010); available http://www.npr.org accessed 30 Jan. 2010.