I've added a couple of other sites to Kudzu Kongzi here, all in the spirit of solidarity as these sites are all written by friends and acquantances:
HTML Giant - "the internet literature blog magazine of the future" is an excellent source for your literary needs
Routine - "the coming internet theory" is written by Greg Ulmer and is based around Deleuze & Guattari's What Is Philosophy?
We-Space - "Assembling – Distraction – Unthereness – Interruption – Agon – Atonality" written by Patricia Reed, a classmate at the European Graduate School.
We both agree that the way we blog has changed since we started reading Sean Smith's excellent
sportsBabel - "disconnect in the sportocracy"
A Thousand Rhizomating Blossoms - "thoughts on theory, politics, life and the aporias and clefts in between" written by mi cumpañero, Nico Jenkins (also a classmate at the EGS)
I'm reading about addiction and neurobiology today because I'm preparing papers for the spring conference season. My first conference will be in a few weeks in Mérida, Mexico with the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.
Maybe I'll try some sort of live blogging from there.
Showing posts with label Greg Ulmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greg Ulmer. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Who Needs Time?
There is a great article written by John Cox over at Wired's Epicenter blog.
My wife's always teasing me because I've got this blog (plus another), I've got a myspace account (what a waste - almost as bad as monster.com), facebook, twitter, linkedin, academia.edu, and then a wordpress blog and fan page on Facebook for our reading group. What's the point of all this self-promotion? Right now, really very little actually. But, as this Epicenter article points-out, understanding how these platforms work and developing attention from the right people makes all the difference. These are ways of manipulating your relationship with the world virtually to effect changes in actuality.
What the article doesn't discuss, and maybe it isn't the place of that blog, is the kind of relationships that the people who voted for Brown. Who had the time to get to know him?
In some ways I wonder if this was an exciting opportunity for many people in Massachusetts but campaigning and public service isn't something that many want to do for sustained amounts of time? Maybe not - maybe the shame would be that so many people could become involved so rapidly and decisively and then not be allowed to continue to interface with the political process. That's been my overall experience with the Obama Administration's web portal.
Rather than a means to participate in democracy, the Internet continues to be hamstrung by those in a position to do so (RIAA, NSA, AT&T, et al.) I've been told that voting is mandatory in Australia and to make sure there is compliance, people can vote very easily with a proximity to polling place that would put the U.S. to shame. The U.S., miraculously, can develop technology that allows me to do all my banking virtually (there isn't even a bank branch in my state), I can bank nearly anywhere in the world. Yet some how we can't get a little voter card that would work like an ATM card? C'mon.
My wife's always teasing me because I've got this blog (plus another), I've got a myspace account (what a waste - almost as bad as monster.com), facebook, twitter, linkedin, academia.edu, and then a wordpress blog and fan page on Facebook for our reading group. What's the point of all this self-promotion? Right now, really very little actually. But, as this Epicenter article points-out, understanding how these platforms work and developing attention from the right people makes all the difference. These are ways of manipulating your relationship with the world virtually to effect changes in actuality.
What the article doesn't discuss, and maybe it isn't the place of that blog, is the kind of relationships that the people who voted for Brown. Who had the time to get to know him?
In some ways I wonder if this was an exciting opportunity for many people in Massachusetts but campaigning and public service isn't something that many want to do for sustained amounts of time? Maybe not - maybe the shame would be that so many people could become involved so rapidly and decisively and then not be allowed to continue to interface with the political process. That's been my overall experience with the Obama Administration's web portal.
Rather than a means to participate in democracy, the Internet continues to be hamstrung by those in a position to do so (RIAA, NSA, AT&T, et al.) I've been told that voting is mandatory in Australia and to make sure there is compliance, people can vote very easily with a proximity to polling place that would put the U.S. to shame. The U.S., miraculously, can develop technology that allows me to do all my banking virtually (there isn't even a bank branch in my state), I can bank nearly anywhere in the world. Yet some how we can't get a little voter card that would work like an ATM card? C'mon.
Friday, February 5, 2010
New Post at The Avant Guardian
I've written a little sumpin'-sum at that place of internet jocularity we like to call The Avant Guardian.
There seems to be an arc developing in these pieces: something about social relations and how they've been shifting.
I thank you for your generosity in reading.
Also, many, many thanks to Tom Maxwell for turning me on to the two new blogs I've added over in the side bar there:
The strawman image here on our left is an illustration from "Za Lahko Noč" Ančka Gošnik-Godec (1964) which I found on A Journey Around My Skull.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Mourning and Loneliness Readings
I'm somewhat cheating here, I wrote this back in October in preparation for the Poncey-Highlands Reading Group. But, it's probably new to you. And, I am working on something for The Avant Guardian check there this Saturday for my new piece.We are reading two texts that are grappling with how we understand ourselves and how this self that is developed relates to absence. In Freud's "Mourning Melancholia" is discussed the effects of unintentional separation from our love objects; with Melanie Klein's "On the Sense of Loneliness" is asked the question, can we ever overcome our sense of loneliness that is the result of our separation.
(Pictured: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, an example of monumentality)
I've further also suggested reading Nancy Burke's "InVisible Worlds: On Women and Solitude" as well as Judith Butler's "Melancholy Gender - Refused Identification." Burke's essay briefly outlines some developments in contemporary (as of 1997) feminist thinking on the parameters of what it means to have solitude and gender, discussing Chodorow's suggestion that women experience solitude in a manner fundamentally different from men. The essay we've read by Freud has played a crucial role in the development of Judith Butler's thinking. In her 1995 essay she attempts to elaborate her discussions of gender performativity as first discussed in her career-making book Gender Trouble. These suggested readings by Burke and Butler I've put forward so as to enhance our insight into the Klein and Freud essays. But there is an obvious question: why read about mourning, melancholia, or any senses of loneliness? What are the benefits of discussing these topics in a group that has, at least initially, intimated a desire to discuss politics and economics in light of current events unfolding?
Louis Theroux of the BBC recently made a documentary The Most Hated Family in America which seeks to elaborate what is the Westboro Baptist Church and why they are traveling the U.S. protesting the funerals of soldiers that are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan with signs that state "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for IEDs". If time permits we can view this documentary, as it's relatively short at 45 minutes. Suffice it to say, the members of Westboro Baptist have their rationalizations. According to the membership, it is Biblically-sound and necessary to do the work they do at these moments of public mourning.
In Freud's essay he develops a theory of mourning as well as makes speculations about a term he calls melancholia. The work of mourning, according to these theories, is to assist in the development of the ego character, which I take to be synonymous with a sense of self.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Gregory Ulmer Evening Lecture
Gregory Ulmer gave an excellent lecture entitled "ON A TOOT"
The talk, if memory serves, was inspired by a lengthy meditation on the term Der Zug and culminated in a Eureka! moment when looking at a wooden train whistle. This whistle then featured prominently in the talk.
"If memory serves" is an important statement - as I am "friends" with Ulmer (on Facebook, and I look forward to becoming more friendly as we get to know one another), I am a bit embarrassed about the notes I have here. If you think what I present here is only so-so, I assure you this is entirely a reflection on me as a student and in no way is a proper introduction to Ulmer's thinking.
For a better introduction, see Ulmer's own site, or perhaps Michael Jarrett's pages
Der Zug means a lot of things: drawing, pulling, move, draught animal, railroad train, passage, drift of clouds...section, yoke of oxen, lineament, disposition, draught of a drink, rifling of a gun barrel..., trait... (just google the term)
Electracy : electronic devices :: literacy : texts
This talk about der zug: the trait as blues train whistle
Derrida's deconstructionism caught on, but his On Grammatology didn't.
Today the situation is interesting: in Socrates' day he would ask his partners to define terms, that would be like us walking down into Saas-Fee and asking the locals to program our computers - it's just not in their skill set.
What was Aristotle's metaphysical insight? Entelechy. What was observed in the Real that suggested this?
Khôra - potential in the acorn, immanent in the material - the tree becomes what it already is says Aristotle
It's at the intersection of two semantic fields
Has philosophy been talking about anything other than what Aristotle was arguing with Plato? about khôra? Mary's womb was khôra, a place for the birth of God.
Whenever Heidegger says metaphysics, substitute literacy - this is what grammatology gives us.
Der Zug is an affect in music, the procession of tension and the progression of chords; Der Zug is the tension at the interlinking point between trains and its incumbent pulling
What are the political implications of Der Zug?
The talk, if memory serves, was inspired by a lengthy meditation on the term Der Zug and culminated in a Eureka! moment when looking at a wooden train whistle. This whistle then featured prominently in the talk.
"If memory serves" is an important statement - as I am "friends" with Ulmer (on Facebook, and I look forward to becoming more friendly as we get to know one another), I am a bit embarrassed about the notes I have here. If you think what I present here is only so-so, I assure you this is entirely a reflection on me as a student and in no way is a proper introduction to Ulmer's thinking.
For a better introduction, see Ulmer's own site, or perhaps Michael Jarrett's pages
Der Zug means a lot of things: drawing, pulling, move, draught animal, railroad train, passage, drift of clouds...section, yoke of oxen, lineament, disposition, draught of a drink, rifling of a gun barrel..., trait... (just google the term)
Electracy : electronic devices :: literacy : texts
This talk about der zug: the trait as blues train whistle
Derrida's deconstructionism caught on, but his On Grammatology didn't.
- Grammatology is a social machine attempting to overcome technological determinism.
- Grammatology as a philosophy of techik
- We should keep to Bashō's motto: do not follow the master's footsteps but seek what they sought
Today the situation is interesting: in Socrates' day he would ask his partners to define terms, that would be like us walking down into Saas-Fee and asking the locals to program our computers - it's just not in their skill set.
What was Aristotle's metaphysical insight? Entelechy. What was observed in the Real that suggested this?
Khôra - potential in the acorn, immanent in the material - the tree becomes what it already is says Aristotle
It's at the intersection of two semantic fields
Has philosophy been talking about anything other than what Aristotle was arguing with Plato? about khôra? Mary's womb was khôra, a place for the birth of God.
Whenever Heidegger says metaphysics, substitute literacy - this is what grammatology gives us.
Der Zug is an affect in music, the procession of tension and the progression of chords; Der Zug is the tension at the interlinking point between trains and its incumbent pulling
What are the political implications of Der Zug?
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