after the hiatus: spectacle politics

Music: Sundummy: Might Voids Collide (2004)

Rosechron and the Juicebase were on a week-long hiatus due to some technical issues, where technical means financial confusion. Thanks to everyone who sent notes of concern and support. Everything is back online for at least another year at this location.

It's unfortunate that during my absence so much in the speech-related world happened: the President gave his state of the union, Speedy Gonzales gave the republican response, then Egyptians got their collective freedom of speech and assembly on, and then most importantly, Charlie Sheen went to the hospital for a hernia after a coke-infused porn star orgy (is that from snorting or pumping'?).

Oh! Where to begin (again)?

With Michele Bachmann, of course.

A relatively recent congressperson from Minnesota's 6th district, Bachmann has quickly learned about the close relation between celebrity and politics: circulation leads to attention; attention leads to clout; clout leads to influence. It remains to be seen how much publicity does actually give one access to and influence on policy (that is to say, we really do not know how much the Curtain of Oz really does influence the little man behind the curtain in today's political culture). On the public screen, however Bachmann has already amassed a number of greatest hits: she opposed increasing college Pell grants as a "gimmick"; she introduced the "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" to defend the almighty incandescent from ice-cream swirl bulbs; she declared global warming a "hoax"; she adopted Palin's weaponry metaphors for various policies (getting her into trouble); and was on board with decrying the "death panels" over the passage of health care reform. When there is a paranoid issue to get sermonic about, Bachmann is on it!

Bachmann has learned the art of what I've been calling spectacle politics. Yeah, it's a relatively simplistic label, but I think it captures the sort of thing we started to see in the 1980s and which has become a full-blown tactic: spectacle politics refers to the mindful manipulation of mass media publicity for short-term political gain. We have had political spectacle since the advent of the newspaper, circular, and penny dreadful, of course. What makes contemporary spectacle politics different is that it is understood wholly at the level of the signifier, relatively autonomous from something like "truth" or "empirical reality." In fact, no amount of empirical data can dislodge the effects of spectacle politics; it is a politics of the gesture, designed to illicit an affective response from a more-or-less already entrenched political subjectivity.

Wow! That sounds like a bunch of jargon, I know. But it's easy to see "spectacle politics" at work with the floodtide of examples since the 1980s. Perhaps the first instance of spectacle politics occurred in the 1984 presidential debate with Ronald Regan, in which the former president apparently used false statistics. The debate went well for Regan, since in the moment no one has time to "look up the data"---but later he was called on the carpet for misleading. Today we have various "fact check"-style columns and blogs that attend precisely to this kind of thing, however, that few are really concerned with the correct record is my point: "in the moment" is more important than being right.

Spectacle politics, then, is relatively unconcerned with truth; the practice announces, on the surface, that it is concerned with the truth, but the real slight-of-hand here is that it's about resonance. It does not matter, for example, that the federal government is not going to take your guns away; what matters is that I say so and your body responds, almost automatically, in fear and disgust---and then in solidarity. It does not matter that "death panels" do not exist in any form in the health care legislation that was passed last year; it does not matter that scientist after scientist has conceded that global warming is actually occurring; it does not matter that the founding fathers were slave-holders and fabricated a governmental structure that actually protects the interests of the wealthy and white. Nope. What matters, rather, is that something has been taken from you! And you want it back!. Spectacle politics leaves the details of whatever "it" is, or the agency of theft, for 'splanin' tomorrow. What is important about spectacle politics is an appeal to the extreme, the pointed, or the siliceous.

Of course, our president engaged in a little spectacle politics in his State of the Union address last Monday. "Winning the future" and "race to the top" were the topoi that were deployed to be uplifting, however, social Darwinism is always social Darwinism; such themes depart significantly with the central message of the left ("love your neighbor") in favor of free enterprise, neoliberal abstraction. Commentators were quick to pounce on the details: well, how exactly do we win the future or race to the top? Again, facts and details are inconsequential, since a fantasy vision was all that was put out there, and mobilizing affect was the goal.

The more laughable and inelegant political spectacle, of course, came from Michelle Bachmann, who apparently at the behest of the Tea Party (yeah, right, LOL), asked her also to respond to the president's speech---in addition to the official Republican response. Of course, the GOP leadership was livid. And with good reason:

The better brand of spectacle politics does not announce itself to be such; it obscures, in other words, it's in-the-moment politiking in long-term clothing. To put this in terms Francis Bacon would recognize, spectacle politics goes for the immediate passions at the expense of will, however, it appears to be a willed politics toward long-term ends. Most of us are very tired of Sarah Palin, and her response to the shooting in Arizona seem to have destroyed her aspirations for the presidency, however: Palin understands the rhetoric of spectacle politics. She "gets" it, however much she misfires from time-to-time. Bachmann is . . . well, she's a stupid version of Palin.

Bachmann makes few attempts to adopt the appropriate rhetorical guise; she adopts the Perot-era chart persuasion tactics (which are, I think, effective), but ends with sweeping stupidities. The most glaring, of course, is the reference to the Iwo Jima image:

Just the creation of this nation was a miracle. Who’s to say that we can’t see a miracle again? The perilous battle that was fought in the pacific, at Iwo Jima, was a battle against all odds, and yet the image of the young G.I.s in the incursion against the Japanese immortalizes their victory. These six young men raising the flag came to symbolize all of America coming together to beat back a totalitarian aggressor.

The image shown behind Bachmann has been embroiled in controversy, since many have argued it was staged---perhaps a nascent awareness of the role imagery plays in spectacle politics. I think its fair to say the photograph was not staged---and that's an important point. What Bachmann fails to mention is that Iwo Jima was a controversial battle, many argue that it was unnecessary and too costly, since the Japanese island was tactically worthless. In other words, Bachmann chose the signifier qua signifier for it's affective resonance.

"America! Fuck yeah!"

So: yeah, spectacle politics, you say. "No shit, Joshlocke!" you say. It may be obvious to readers here, but the scary part concerns the hundreds of thousands if not millions that fist-pumped Bachmann's "response." These people include, for example, my own parents. And whenever I try to explain the relationship between empirical truths and spectacle politics to them, they roll their eyes or suggest I am "patronizing." I'm mildly successful when I explain how Obama is doing it ("yeah!" they say), but when I say, for example, Palin or McConnell is doing the same thing . . . .

The challenge is how to explain this logic in a way that is not patronizing to those for whom it is most effective. And the problem at the core of this challenge, of course, is that we can't.

this whole program . . .

tiderpricks and lettle mirthquakes

Music: The Cure: Entreat (1989)

I am enjoying a Pedron anniversary series robusto, which a new acquaintance gave me as a surprise gift at another friend's birthday party last Friday night. It is mild, slightly peppery, and smokes cool.

I was going to write a blog post this weekend detailing my issues with Obama's eulogy from last week. My friend Christopher made some compelling points in favor of the speech yesterday at brunch. He said the genius of the speech was Obama's removal of the nation state as the foundation of his emotional appeal. That hadn't occurred to me, since one assumes (always already) the head of the country evokes the nation-state. I'll have to rethink my thoughts and feelings about the speech, now, but I still say the ending was kitsch (and for me, that is the grossest form of nationalism; cf. The Unbearable Lightness of Being). If anyone can talk "sense into me," it's my friend Christopher, whom I adore.

This morning I attended the first church service on a Sunday in over twenty years. Sitting in the pew I was overcome by memories from my youth, the type of ambivalent overcoming that puts a lump in one's throat. The only things I know about Universal Unitarians is this: (a) they read all sacred texts as metaphor and allegory, and are against literalist interpretations (e.g., fundamentalism); (b) they are "all denomination," welcoming even Atheists; and (c) all the stuff I read in a five page pamphlet given to "visitors." The latter included a lot elaboration about (a) and (b). I enjoyed the service, I enjoyed getting out, meeting new people and shaking a few new hands. Folks were friendly. Apparently the church I attended is overcoming a "crisis" of some kind and in search of a new minister. The sermon was about "letting go"---letting go of whatever it was this church recently endured. I gathered it was some sort of contentious church politics. And, not the best sermon for a visitor to attend. I was lost for most of it. I stayed after the service and tried to meet people, but congregants were so busy mingling with people they already knew I couldn't catch anyone's gaze. So I left. I may go back. I may not. But I am curious to know what happened to the church to inspire such a sermon.

I am surprised at how well behaved my dog is on road trips. At home Jesús can be such a terror, but in the car and in stranger's homes he's rather polite. During the car drive to Bryan and back, Jesús napped quietly in my lap, and didn't even stir during clutching and gear changes. Good dog.

Last night, at a wine party, I was amused by how amused 20-somethings got cutting off the tops of champagne bottles with a sharp knife. They were positively giddy by the rite. I doubt all the champagne was even drunk (though I'm sure there were many, er, drunks).

After church I went to get groceries. So did, apparently, everyone else that goes to church in north Aus-Vegas. On my iPhone I searched for a suitable recipe (I settled on Chicken Marsalla). They didn't have any pancetta, so I bought the most fatty looking prosciutto I could find (in the end, it worked just as well). As I was returning to my car, a tall-ish man with long, black curly hair approached me. He was walking toward the store, but he caught my eye. Just as we were passing, he lifted his right hand to reveal it was wearing a puppet head. I think it was a monkey. He said to me with his puppet, "Bonjour!" in a happy, cheerful tone, and then the man smiled really big. I laughed aloud at the sudden surprise in the Central Market parking lot. It was raining.

I kinda wish I knew him. I bet he drives an art-car, or one of those funky, hipster bicycles. He's keepin' Austin weird---and randomly cheerful.

I talked to my mother this afternoon, as I usually do on Sundays. My peeps are just emerging from a major snow/ice storm in Georgia. My mother said she went to the grocery store today, as it was the first time they could get out of the driveway in a few days. She said the cat and dog food aisles were bare, and that she had to feed her kitties "crap." I didn't inquire further, because I realized I forgot to buy cat food myself today. Whoops.

I asked after cat food from my neighbor, who was peeling potatoes. Her four-year-old daughter was running around the house in her underwear, until a Tom and Jerry cartoon caught her attention. My neighbor and her husband own a cabin in St. Thomas, where they have just returned after a two-week holiday. She was tan. She gifted me two cans of cat food and a bottle of Ponche Kuba, the latter for taking care of her cat during her travels. Ponche Kuba tastes like egg nogg, but without the nutmeg. It is an after dinner drink one can only get in the Caribbean.

Ponche Kuba reminds me of Billy Ocean. Well, not really, but typing the word "Caribbean" does. So, I think a video is appropriate. Here it is. Sony music has requested that I not embed the video. Sorry.

I had a phone conversation with a mentor and friend whom I mistakenly thought was angry with me for something I wrote. It turns out she was teasing me on Facebook, but that she did want to talk about scholarship. We talked about Lacan and poststructualism. Not deeply, because both of us are wearing our Sunday brains. But enough to clarify a misunderstanding and reassure each of our intellectual bonds. I felt a lot better after that conversation.

I drafted two letters of nomination. The letters still need work and polishing, but they'll be good to go by Tuesday.

I'm looking forward to traveling to New Orleans at the end of this week to celebrate a dear friend's monumental birthday.

I'm also looking forward to getting back into the classroom. Last year I realized I truly loved teaching, and for the most part, this realization is age-related. It's not that I didn't love teaching before, it's simply that I was ambivalent about it because of the problems that come with walking into a classroom saddled with my personality. As I've gotten older, students see me less as a "buddy" and more as a parental figure, which has made teaching so much easier for me. Every succeeding year it seems I have less personality conflicts, although the entitlement issues and petulant demands persist.

This morning's political shows, as well as 60 Minutes, were dedicated to discussing the Arizona shootings. Much attention was on the psyche of the shooter, and whether there were "warning" signs. There were "warning signs" aplenty. But nothing could be done about them, because the shooter never made a physical threat. This reminded me of my own experiences with students with obvious mental instabilities (all male, all with issues similar to the Arizona kid). In addition to myself, I know a number of teachers who have had to deal with "unstable" students and, in each case, the police could do nothing because there were no statements of physical threat. I do think we need to have laws in place that better enable law enforcement to do preemptive things with students that are unstable and create an uncomfortable environment. I don't know how to go about this without trampling on basic civil liberties.

I took my time making the Chicken Marsala for dinner tonight. It turned out delicious. I can also get three meals out of it. This will come in handy for the remainder of the week. This time I used white meat (dark meat, it turns out, is actually both more flavorful and more healthy), because the market had no boneless dark meat. I pounded the crap out the breasts with a meat hammer until they were about a half-inch think. This turned out to be an excellent decision.

I think the guy with the puppet in the parking lot made my day. I think I'll buy me a hand puppet too, and do the same thing randomly for someone in a parking lot this week.

suture: after the violence

Music: The Charlatans: Us and Us Only (1999)

This Saturday I was listening to the radio when it was announced that 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire---with semi-automatic Glock and an extended magazine of 30 bullets---into a crowd gathered in a Safeway grocery store parking lot. The group had assembled to talk to and meet democratic representative Gabrielle Giffords, who regularly held "meet and greet" style gatherings in public. The massacre left six people dead and thirteen wounded.

It appears Loughner is mentally unstable, and a quick study of the young man's Internet presence indexes psychosis: paranoia, aggression, and an inability to adhere to the basic rules of grammar (which, he notes, is deployed by the government as a means of mind control). It's difficult to deny the claim this man was not in his "right mind."

The more interesting claims circulating in the MSM this week, however, concern whether Loughner's violence was indicative of "the Right mind." Some have suggested, for example, that although he was deranged, rightist rhetoric may have "pushed him over the edge." Sarah Palin's infamous map featured rifle sight cross hairs over the districts of candidates she'd like to, er, take-out. The implication here is that weapon metaphors may have influenced Loughner to shoot. This reminds me of the famous Judas Priest case from the 1980s when the parents of suicidal teens charged the band with planting subliminal messages in their music ("do it!"). Of course, the difference is that there was no subliminal messages in the heavy metal tunes, whereas cross hairs are indicative of weaponry (as is Palin's motto, "don't retreat, reload").

Others on the right, such Prof. Richard Vatz, have responded that forging a link between extreme rhetoric and physical violence is "fallacious," and the charge is really only registering the frustration we feel because of the senselessness of the rampage.

Paul Krugman of The New York Times is probably responsible for catalyzing this national discussion because of his Monday column "Climate of Hate." He argues the shootings are a symptom of a larger, "eliminationist" rhetoric coming from the right. The line crossed is, apparently, ad hominem: whereas the dems are apt to criticize and idea or policy or argument, the "conservative Right" (particularly pundits) are much more likely to "make jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post." Response from folks like Palin has been swift; Palin argued yesterday in an Internet address that violent rhetoric has always been a part of our political landscape and that no one's perfect. She also insinuates the calls to "tone down" the tenor of political rhetoric are attempts to stifle free speech.

I find this public discussion fascinating, especially because it is one of those rare moments in which large audiences are asked to think about rhetoric and the nature of persuasive influence. The question that is being asked is this: Did the tone and character of our contemporary, mainstream political rhetoric have something to do with Loughner's violence? It's just an excellent question, and one that forces us to think critically about rhetoric as such.

The answer, of course, is both "yes" and "no."

On the side of the "no," of course, direct, causal claims are impossible to make. It is no longer a question that Loughner was mentally disturbed. And, as my colleague Dana Cloud has argued relentlessly in the past couple of years, calls for a more "civil" discourse are often sounded to drown-out dissent. In this respect Palin has a point---something White House spokesman Robert Gibbs conceded today a press conference.

On the side of "yes," however, we have to consider the ways in which reducing violence to a singular, individual's deranged mind participates in the rhetoric of monstrosity, the transformation of flawed human being into an agent of evil. This form of "projection," of course, absolves us of responsibility and causes to overlook larger, systemic ills. Did Palin cause Loughner to lose it? No. Is Palin's rhetoric part of a larger discourse that makes violence part of a master narrative? Yes.

Let me put this differently, with apologies Mick Jaggar: "I shouted out, / Who killed the kennedys? / When after all / It was you and me."

I was very impressed with Kathleen Hall Jamieson's recent appearance on the PBS News Hour. She was careful to suggest that there are likely, statistically, no more mentally unstable folks in the general population than, say, a century ago. What has changed, however, are media technologies---technologies that make it possible for folks of a like mental character to gather and swarm, and technologies that make it possible, increasingly, for an individual tailor media exposure to his or her tastes. In other words, we live in a time in which media exposure is selective.

To extend Jamieson's analysis here we can turn to Jodi Dean, whose recent book Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive captures something else (and, thankfully, in the stable form of "the book). Dean suggests that we live in a time of "communicative capitalism," which refers to, among other things, a society in which communication is exploited via the superegoic command, enjoy! Drawing from the Lacanian work of Slavoj Zizek, Dean argues we are living in a time of the "decline of symbolic efficiency" (yes, Rufo, can already anticipate your eyes rolling). The argument is complex, but is more easily grasped with common examples. The first one Dean uses is blog comments: sometimes its difficult to know when someone is being ironic or serious, playful or simply mean. The anchor or master signifier that "fixes" meaning is eroding or gone. Or, to quote a favorite Jane's Addiction song, "camera got them images/camera got them all/ Nothing's shocking/ Showed me everybody/ Naked and disfigured/ Nothing's shocking." Dean also refers to the decline of symbolic efficacy as "whatever culture" (I had an exgirlfriend who often said, "whatevs!" and it drove me up the wall). The decline can be described, alternately, as the fading of the Big Other or the decline of the Master; opinions proliferate, that's all there is, just one more profile, one more unstable joke, one more flame work. Whatever. Nothing's shocking.

I think Dean captures quite well the context in which these new calls for "civility" are taking place. The call is not for civility at all, but rather, for the Big Other to fix things, to anchor it down. "We want our suture!"

In film studies, suture theory has a long and complicated history. The idea of the suture refers to the way the spectator is bound to the story world of the film in ways that escape her conscious perception. Traditionally, the debate has boiled down to whether or not it is a singular shot sequence (e.g., from secondary to primary identification) or if "suture" refers to a broader range of techniques. I subscribe (following Silverman) to the latter understanding of suture.

I think, in the context of this week's violence, that the conception of the suture is apt. Like the point de caption in Zizek's conception of ideology, suturing in this context represents the reassignment of a master narrative that fixes meaning, however temporarily, when we encounter the Real (here, the realization that violence is a rupture, death awaits, and so on). Was Loughner's act of violence senseless or unspeakable? Well, of course not. We've all seen Palin's map. The narrative of political assassination is a common film plot---as it is in American political history (check out this map, for example). I think Jamieson's observations about the end of isolation, combined with Dean's take on the decline of symbolic efficacy, helps to explain how Loughner's act of violence, while of individual volition, was nevertheless systemically produced.

Which brings me, sadly, to Obama's eulogy from last night. Yesterday my friend and advisee Sean Tiffee defended his prospectus; he's writing about horror film as a form "working-through," and we talked a lot about master narratives and their failures after Nine-eleven. I started writing this blog some days ago, before I knew Obama was giving this speech. Then, last night, I found myself perplexed by the memorial service: people were hooting and hollering, as if at a pep rally. That improper audience tone gradually disappeared once Obama started speaking. The tone changed. What was a strangely celebratory mood became somber.

What was going on? Of course, it was the return of the Big Daddy who would, once again, sew it up. Obama referenced Christina-Taylor Green repeatedly, the nine-year-old shot by Loughner who was born on September 11th, 2001. Green became the condensation symbol for "healing," and Obama declared if there were rain puddles in heaven, she was dancing in them. Obama turned this latest rampage into the master narrative of Nine-eleven, that wound that is continuously sutured (still) as the dominant narrative of the national political will. This massacre had nothing to do with Nine-Eleven. But Obama made it so. Thereby, kitsch was used to suture and the systemic reasons behind the violence were covered over, once again . . . until, of course, the next eruption.

it's lpd friday!

I've been following the Legendary Pink Dots since I bought my first album of their's in 1992. This album marks their 30th anniversary (I picked it up today). I interviewed the band for college radio in 1994, and Edward was just the nicest person. We disagree on the issue of abortion (which is what we discussed vis-a-vis a track from Shadow Weaver, Volume One). They're still as singular and awe-inspiring as ever. And creepy. Still creepy. But pretty creepy. Oh, I dunno. Go buy their stuff and listen to it at 3:00 in the morning. You'll hear.

the academic fashion show

Music: Bats For Lashes: Two Suns (2009)

A moment of synchronicity: I have been reading Lynne Huffer's Mad for Foucault today, which has been rubbing me the wrong way (mostly for stylistic stupidity, not the actual research), and then I read my colleague and friend's blog about enduring graduate school, which led me to a blog about "100 Reasons Not to Go to Graduate School." The 40th reason listed for not going to graduate school is that "faddishness prevails," and the example is the work of Michel Foucault:

If you have any doubts about academic faddishness, consider the French intellectual Michel Foucault (1926-1984), whose name and ideas have proven wildly popular in academic circles. To see just how popular he is, try a little experiment. Google the name “Foucault.” Now Google the name “Aristotle.” This is an imperfect experiment, given that there is more than one Foucault, etc., but the results should surprise you. Is it even remotely possible to consider the influence of Foucault in the same league as that of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)? You can almost be forgiven for thinking so after a few years in graduate school.

Of course, the statement is exaggerated to make a play at humor, but having just read a book that forges a false binary between Foucault and my chosen faddish theorist, Jacques Lacan, the blog drew more than a chuckle from my bloated, holiday belly.

The truth is, of course, that those of us anchored in the theoretical humanities do tend to pick and choose this or that theorist to follow and read more deeply. This tendency is born of two things: academic tradition and what is pragmatically possible. The force of academic tradition is from philosophy: early in your graduate education you range widely until you happen upon a thinker that makes sense to you, for whatever reason, and then you dig your heels into it, him, or her. This mid-century academic habit, however, was unrelenting: you'd pick a philosophical anchor and never did you waver for your career (let me tell y'all sometime about my epistemology professor and Quine). Thankfully, while the inertia of this impulse is still with us in the academic humanities, like the institution of marriage itself, academics are no longer forced to make life-long ideological commitments to certain lines of thought. From what I can sense, the more pragmatic rationale tends to dominate the theoretical humanities today: you read a given theorist more deeply, not only because you identify with the thinking, but simply because you cannot read them all. This is to say, as a graduate student you don't glom onto a particular perspective or theorist because you are deeply convicted in their thinking and are prepared to follow that line of thought for your career, but rather because you simply can't read and digest everyone.

During my graduate study, after reading and trying to digest all the theorists I encountered, I felt most at home with Kenneth Burke and, by extension, Fredric Jameson. Those are the folks I read most often and deeply. I thought of myself as a Marxist. My dissertation reflects this orientation, as does my first book. After taking my first job, in a reading group I was introduced to Slavoj Zizek, and I became enamored with psychoanalysis, not because I thought it was "cool," but because it made me think and it seemed to resonate with my experience. As a graduate student I was always into Freud, don't get me wrong, I just didn't identify as a Freudian and didn't understand it. Today, however, I think my work is most associated with psychoanalysis, and it's quite interesting to see how my first book is "read" through that lens by reviewers (because there's very little psychoanalytic anything in it). More than one reviewer describes my largely Jameson-inspired read of occult rhetoric as "psychoanalytic," and that is telling. A-hem.

I think most of us in the theoretical humanities, early in our career, find a thinker that inspires us to think, and we're so exhilarated by that "oh, wow" factor that we cotton to their writing, and then before we know it, we're thinking along their tracks. My advisor, Robert Scott, always warned me about getting trapped by the "tracks" laid by others: "You are not a Burkean," he would say, "you are a Joshian." And while I knew what he meant, at the same time I recognized that there are levels of insight. Some people are more creative and insightful than others. Some people are more creative and insightful than me. As a scholar, do I need to be as creative and insightful as the theorists that inspire me?

Frankly, to be an academic there is only one tenable answer: No.

The charge of "academic faddishness" is premised on the notion that scholars must be individually brilliant, that all of us must somehow be gifted with unforeseen insights that spring from genius, like magic. The more realistic and honest and ethical academic disposition is that an interesting and insightful idea, no matter who advances it, should be acknowledged and pursued and developed.

I admit I am sometimes irked by colleagues that urge me to read this-or-that new theorist (currently it's Ranciere) because it's what's everyone's reading. A dear friend sometimes asks me, "what are you reading these days?" often probing for the next exciting thinker that she's yet to hear of. I admit I sometimes feel weird saying, "er, Freud." But if I track her correctly, the question is not so much born of fashion than it is active thinking: so-called "academic faddishness" is really about restless thinking, about thinking actively and anew, about a restlessness of settled assumptions. In other words, while I certainly identify with the need and comfort to settle on and know a certain terrain of thought, at the same time I recognize and value the ever-changing interest in the "next theorist" of our time.

Some call it "faddishness," while others might celebrate the roving interest in this or that thinker as "restless thought." I think it's a little of column A and B, and as much as I know it makes more work for me, at the moment I favor value column B. And so I order the Ranciere books . . . .

josh makes a pizza

Music: Nick Cave: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (2007)

it's disembodied head pop friday!

Super Melody - Champagne Glass from Super Melody on Vimeo.

best of pop 2010!

Music: Christian Death: Ashes (1985)

For the past five years I've been publishing a list of my favorite "pop" albums before the new year begins. I've limited myself to "pop" because it's my favorite genre, but also because I like just about everything "music" and I need constrain my adoration to make this annual ranking possible to write in a timely fashion.

The trouble with being a music-lover in the digital age is that there is simply too much to pick from; I listen to as much music as I can cram into my day (it's constantly on), but even then, I know I have missed out on a number of choice artists that I might love even more than those I recommend below. That's what the comments section is for, friends: every year y'all tell me to check out something that is awesome. I expect you to bring it!

Here are my top fifteen pop picks for 2010, in alphabetical order. I've tried to recommend bands or artists that are less familiar to the mainstream (for example, Cee-Lo's The Ladykiller is unquestionably among the best albums of the year, but I suspect y'all know that already). Here we go!

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs: Alright, I know my rule about not recommending bands that have already "made it" is broken by mentioning this album. But shit: it's that good. This is a band that is making music from experience, and from sentiments that I find myself implicated in, but in a way that is not courting the top-40 chart. Not one of these songs aspire to radio, but branch out on a narrative that attempts to capture our childhood experiences in the "development" in the middle of nowhere. It just nails it (especially the song about "waiting"; nothing captures suburbia better than the theme of waiting). Jangly guitars, fiddles, minor chords. This is a band that writes pop music that is catchy, but is not marketed. And that's probably why it's so marketed (it feels genuinely inspired, not produced for profit). There's just no denying the honest affect of the album. What I'm so very, very appreciative of is that this is an album. Arcade Fire have made an a record that doesn't make much sense as a series of "singles." You need to listen to the whole thing to get the statement. And the whole is dramatic and beautiful; they make the cul-de-sac a philosophical statement. Now that's something.

The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night: Although I'm listing my favorites alphabetically, this album is up there as the top or runner up album of the year. A husband and wife indie outfit from Montreal (Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas), the Besnard Lakes create epic-style pop reminiscent of Mogwai or Explosions in the Sky, but with lyrics that evoke film noir plots and spy novels. Lots of power-chords. Lots of swelling guitar wankery. And lots of Beach Boy harmonies. I've always had a penchant for long songs, songs that build and build and take their time to develop. This album is full of that sort of sonic construction, easing into melodies that drift and melt only to end in triumphant crescendos of powerful strumming and four-part harmonies. It's melancholic stadium rock with a story and a kind of cryptic introspection not typical of pop. It's a big, Phil Spector "wall of sound" kind of sound. With just two of 'em, I do I wonder how they pull this off live---and I hope I'm lucky enough one day to see and hear for myself!

Blonde Redhead: Penny Sparkle: This album has not reviewed terribly well (Pitchfork declared it boring "chillwave"), but I think that's because headphones were not handy. In this recent effort the twins have ditched the dissonant guitars and picked up a few syths and drum machines. The result is a soulful, meandering, Eno-esque romp through gentle melodies and hushed sentiments. Careful listens reveal layer upon layer of subtle details---synth-lines that buoy, base-lines that undulate, and vocals that float on top like ice. The contrast of warm and cool---created in harmonious tones and subtle beats---overlaid with hushed and high feminine vocals (whether sung by dude or dudette) creates a relaxing vibe. I confess that 23 was among my best of the decade (slut for My Bloody Valentine that I am), and this doesn't come close to that perfection. But it's a different direction for Blonde Redhead, it's their own R.E.M.'s Up. If you hated Up, you'll hate this---but I like R.E.M.'s ambient experiment very much, and I very much like Penny Sparkle for similar reasons. It's a soundtrack for lovemaking, not fucking. And that's just fine---divine---by me.

The Delays: Star Tiger Star Aerial: Australia's the Delays have a problem, and it's their 2004 debut album Faded Seaside Glamour. That album remains in my top 100 best pop albums of all time (a fiercely competitive list, I should add); it is about as close to pop perfection as albums get (the song "Closer to Heaven" touches the face of God). The Delays subsequent albums have been progressively bad, teetering into the saccharine and groveling toward commercial recognition. Star Tiger registers the band returning to what it does best: following inspiration, not the AUD or the airwaves. Less electronic than the last two albums, Star Tiger amplifies the "rock"---most pointedly in the drums and electric guitar---but still holds on to that dream-pop sound aided by well-placed synth-riffs. Greg Gilbert's voice is still the shining instrument, with a range that can only be compared to Frankie Valli: a gravel-y bottom and an angelic falsetto. Their sound is unquestionably singular, but fans of The La's and the Beach Boys will like this album; it's upbeat, harmonic, and soaring. It's the Delays' second best album to date, and one you shouldn't miss.

Drive-By Truckers: The Big To-Do: One of my biggest live music disappointments this year was seeing the DBT at Stubb's amphitheatre. They put on an amazing set---one that really took off in the second half (as they worked toward a Lenard Skynard-style jam-along). It was a great show, except for this: they only played three songs from The Big To-Do. I reckon they reckoned the album was too new to play too much from, but I went to the show thinking this was the album they would highlight (it was, after all, The Big To-Do album that they were promoting!). DBT have yet to make an album that sucked, and their genius of songcraft is unparalleled in the country-rock genre. They craft songs that tell a "story," but unlike most country songsmiths, the stories their songs tell are all true. The twangy highlight here is "The Wig He Made Her Wear," which relates the story of Matthew Winkler, a pastor who was killed by his wife after years-long (sexual) abuse. This is southern gothic music, to be sure: dark chords, melancholy lyrics (hell, there's a mellotron on "You Got Another," which sung by the bassist Shonna Tucker), and soaring builds of chords. This album rewards with repeated listens---the music is so expertly crafted and tight, and the lyrics are just so damn artful: it's as if Morrissey plopped into a country band, but didn't make shit up. I guess what I love about DBT is that the band captures so precisely my experience growing up in the deep south---a sound that makes sense, and lyrical acumen that is both smart and true to southern sensibility. Not all country music is cliché and stupid. DBT is ample proof.

Hurts: Happiness: Most folks this side of the Atlantic will have no idea who these guys are. I feel smug. And feeling smug is part of the enjoyment of the Hurts duo, since their image is that arrogant Duran Duran style: suits, tight hair, and . . . er . . . an opera singer as back-up (that is the one novelty of the act). This duo has flogged the airwaves in Europe (with some success) but yet to hit the US---and I suspect it's merely a matter of time, since the 80s-come back music has been with us for at least five years. The music is delightfully over-the-top, in the vein of Camouflage, but with a difference, of course. The 80s references are in year face, but the homage is honest, as are the lyrics. The showpiece is lead singer Theo Hutchcrat's pipes, which have a fairly good range from mid to high. He sings with an exaggerated breathiness and a pregnant restraint; when he lets the high notes fly, it's . . . well, it's operatic. This is unabashedly smart synth-pop that will feel very familiar to us 80s kids. But unlike a lot of synth-80s-revival bands of late---all whiteness and jangle---this album has a soulful underbelly with smooth, Sade-style sensibility (e.g., understated sax swoons on a track or two). Despite one schmaltzy "up with people" movie credits song that makes me throw-up in my mouth just a little ("Stay"), it's a marvelous album, and lays claim to the territory staked-out by La Roux in 2009.

Junip: Fields: Acoustic guitar strumming up against fuzz-drone electronics. This is stoner music, no question. But it's just done so well and sounds so effortless---like Cat Stevens making love to Steely Dan, but with lots more pot and a kooky mushroom or two. Woozy organ plays a large part in these tunes. Jose Gonzalez's voice is soft and sweet, reminiscent of Bill Withers after a happy-ending massage. The album has a strong, California feeling with ambling melodies and occasional harmonies; it's a "doo doo doot" kind of vibe. It's what you play in the a.m. to chill out and wind down, just before sleep. It's what you play after your third bong hit. Or, it's what you play to stay calm in Austin traffic (my tack).

LCD Soundsystem: This is Happening: The minimalist, repetitive Bowie-esque remix of Roxy Music moves me. It's all derivative, but still unique and a hell of a lot of fun. The difference between James Murphy and his influences, however, is humor: dude absolutely does not take himself seriously, which makes this album such a hoot. In "All I Want," a blatant rip-off of Bowie's "Heroes," he sings "Wait, for the day you come home from the lonely park/Look, for the girl who has put up with all your shit/You've never needed anyone for so long." Pretentious music this is not, which is why, I think, we give Murphy so much slack for wearing his influences on his nose. This is a compellingly good romp---and it's precisely because the artist is down-to-earth and laughs at himself that we let him get away with this. Oh, and it's good pop music, that too.

Monarchy: Monarchy: Gimme an electronic handclap for another Australian/British synth-pop duo, Monarchy. I discovered Monarchy last year when Travis posted about them on the his "big stereo" blog; I fell in love with the music video for their second single, "The Phoenix Alive". The album is consistently good, from the opening track that announces "Black is the Colour of My Heart" (you know, he knows she loves him but still) to brilliant closer "Travelling By Ambulance." The duo are probably better known for doing remixes (the Lady Gaga remix of "Dance in the Dark" probably got them more notoriety than anything), but I think that's about to change. Their dance-friendly debut will land in the states in January 2011, and I hope this smart pop gets the notice it justly deserves. The lead singer's voice is "high" and often flits up to falsetto, and just about all the songs are about love and its loss. Highlights for me include "Floating Cars," a slower ballad that plods along an electroclash/Gary Numan bassline as it aims for that home key: "Lost our patience we want floating cars/no grace for doves/Lost our patience we want floating cars/no god for us, no god for us." I don't know what it means exactly, but the song is real pretty. Finally, Monarchy gets bonus points for the most inventive use of Autotune on a couple of tracks (they use to for vibrato---a weird effect, but it works!). This one is tied with the Besnard Lakes for my top album of 2010. Very, very good.

The National: High Violet: I'm a sucker for falsetto done well, but I'm an even a bigger sucker for a booming baritone. The National get critical floggings for their anthemic pretensions, but these working class heroes actually make the anthem convincing, and not in the Coldplay douchebaggy sort of way. Mixing a bed of drone for more intricate guitar work set against some muddy percussion, the songs on High Violet reek of late night urban desolation. Happy music this is not, conjuring death-bed scenes in overwrought filmic dramas when Matt Berninger hits the high notes in the albums opener "Terrible Love" ("It takes an ocean not to break/It takes an ocean not to break"). Without question, the National make music that is your late-night, lovelorn drinking buddy. The highlight on the album is "Bloodbuzz Ohio," a rollicking ditty in which Berninger sings he stills owes money to the money he owes, and laments he'll never marry (Morrissey reference? Probably not, but if Morrissey lived in the states it would be in Ohio). The secret weapon of the National is a rumbling, thudding piano, played as much for percussive effect as melody. This is a powerful album, admittedly not as strong as 2007s Boxer, but still earnest and authentic enough to imagine it as a soundtrack to your contemplative moments driving away from a city in which you hope your problems will remain and not follow. In the rain.

Passion Pit: Manners: The Berklee College of Music spawned this electronic pop fourtet (or at least three of the four), who make intensely happy, screamy ditties about . . . well, I’m not sure. The lyrics are fancy word plays about, I dunno, clouds and stuff. The lead sings in a high-register, reminiscent of the "scream" range of heavy-metal hair band croonage. The band layers strummy, tingly guitars on top of wicked electronic beats and a real drum kit. When it gets real good, they enlist the backing vocals of the famous Public School 22 elementary chorus from Staten Island, New York. The stand out track here is the single "The Reeling," which begins with some inventive filter sweeps, drum kit, and then electronic vibes to a disco-dance beat. You're probably heard this song somewhere, if not on a radio than in a grocery store: "Look at me, oh look at me/Is this the way I've always been? oh no, oh no," with the PS22 lending a background vocal assist. If there's one criticism of this fine debut, it's that it's so goddamn happy---who dey kiddn'? Still, this is a mood-lifting bit of boogie-pop, snappy and sharp and heart-rate raising. Work out to it.

O. Children: O. Children: Fronted by a baritone, six-foot-eight bad boy, Tobi O'Kandi, the O. Children's debut album is intimidating at first listen: Joy Division meets Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds meets Grace Jones. Tobi's voice is very deep; it's "Old Man River" quality, I tell ya. This is a more radio friendly post-punk/goth-pop album with lots of rim-shot drumming, although I'm sure they avoided the "goth" label on purpose; this bleeds significantly beyond what folks would consider goth (e.g., the hand-claps on "Pray the Soul Away"). The bass is high up in the mix, often leading off tracks, the guitar is gothy at times and twangy-jangly at others (for And Also the Trees fans, you'll find kindred souls here). They sing about death and a woman named "Malo" (which should be a tip-off, yes? Don't date a lady named such unless you have bad teeth or wanna die). This is the sort of music you play only after dark, and preferably while riding a motorcycle. Or at least in a dark, smoky club. It's influences are obvious, but it's also very original and, well, brilliant. Johnny Cash and Bauhaus would be pleased.

Salem: King Night: As a teenager my musical nose always found it's way to the weirdest, most out-there sounds, which I would embrace. I remember walking into the Turtles (an old record store chain, like Sam Goody) in Snellville as a 14 year old and asking the clerk, "what's the weirdest music you have in the store?" I was handed Skinny Puppy's ViViSect VI, and initially the music just flat-out baffled me. After a week with it, though, I "got it" and fell in love. Older now, I'm no longer the weird-seeker I once was, but . . . I can only explain the thrill I got when I listened to Salem's King Night to my 14 year old music habits. This stuff is weird—delightfully weird. Dubbed "witch house," Salem electronically bend and morph synths in a muddy Robotussen overdose mess: part "chopped and screwed," part dub-step, part Boards of Canada, King Night offers up a moving, at times beautiful, experiment in genre busting. You can't mix this with anything. You can't compare it to anything. It is very interesting, and it does have melodies---ethereal ones, unless the song is more hip-hoppy (there are an equal dose of each). The closest comparison is probably to Crystal Castles, but this bests the latter's output significantly. Just amazingly weird, and worth your money. Creativity like this deserves reward and praise.

School of Seven Bells: Disconnect From Desire: I fell in love with SVIIB's debut album, first, for the Curve/Lush-like song "My Cabal" and that delicious ethereal drone and, second, for the beauty of twin vocalists Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. The second album was slow to grow on me, but once I "got it," I got it. Unlike the debut, which is more dreamy in lyric and timbre, Disconnect is a more aggressive, rocking/dancing album. The electronics are more pronounced, and the beats are more dance-heavy (lots of drum machine here). The songs are built around the close harmonies of the Deheza sisters, which are slow and often build to a crescendo after flirting together in long, drawn-out croons. Despite the more upbeat, dreamy sound of the songs, the lyrics point to the end of a relationship or a nasty break-up. What sounds and appears like a love song, upon closer scrutiny, is anything but. The lovely song "I L U," which builds on piano and a moaning texture reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, states: "I didn't realize/I'd lost so many nights/Just trying to lose the pain/And I was a fool to think/It would be easier to leave/Than to be left behind." The song sounds like it would be about abstract, ethereal observations about clouds and cupid, but clearly it's about telling a past lover "I loved you" and have moved on. Bummer for that person. Anyone who makes music this pretty deserves better, I agree.

Scissor Sisters: Night Work: After a rather boring, too-heavy-on-the-Elton-John-70s-catalog sophomore effort, the subtly queer Scissor Sisters are back with an all out, scroticular, electronic, dance-floor assault. In many ways, this is their Thriller---only two ballads (thankfully). My favorite track, "Invisible Light," features a monologue from Ian McKellen---the out and about counterpart to Jackson's Vincent Price. And while the album stands up on it's own merits, I have to say the video for "Invisible Light" is nothing short of genius, especially if you're a fan of Italian horror movies from the 70s. This is just awesome:

SCISSOR SITERS| Invisible light from MGdM | Marc Gómez del Moral on Vimeo.

Don't think this is an homage to bad Italian horror film? I defy you to watch The Visitor and tell me otherwise (I can loan it to you).

For the most part, Night Work is a dance-floor extravaganza, besting their first two albums for booty-shaking inspiration. And, unlike the first two albums, this one is gay on a stick. They out-gay any Erasure or Pet Shop Boys album you can name. They out-gay Jimmy Sommerville. The falsetto is toe-curlingly gay. The lyrics, unambiguously gay. They just explode gay more spectacularly than any pop outfit I can think of (even the Village Peeps). I think this album's gay-popping gayness is a major artistic achievement, but unless you've seen the Scissor Sisters live, this is going to be hard to explain. I saw the Sisters on their first tour in 2003 in New Orleans at the House of Blues; during the show, I felt like I was at an Erasure show on steroids: the finale featured a giant, flashing bank of the rainbow flag with Jake pumping his semi-hard, spandexed groin in the air as confetti rained on the crowd. There's nothing on the first two albums that comes close (pun intended) to hinting of the intense queerness of their live show. This album fixes that, but somehow in a way that does not veer into the sentimental cheesiness of majority of gay pop. This album is dirty and unapologetic. This is going to be the nu-disco album to top. Or bottom.

Yeasayer: Odd Blood: I bought this album by picking it up from an end-cap at Target. Such a move is the epitome of uncool---but hell, it was seven bucks! I learned of the band after the buzz they created here in Austin playing at both SXSW and ACL more than once, and they have been a darling of local radio for some years. It's electronic pop fronted by yodel-y singing. Yeasayer combine interesting percussive rhythms with slabs of electronic tweaks and doodles; they make music that you wanna clap to. The stand out track is the single "O.N.E.," which takes whoosh-whoosh percussion, rim-taps, and cowbell to new heights of electronic strangeness. What they do so well is combine fairly traditional lyrical melodies with inventive electronic experimentation and bass-driven rhythms. Reminds me, in a way, of "Fine Time" era New Order, but with superior vocals. The entire album is a gem of pop crispness, and I'm looking forward to hearing the next album of material. Yeasayer is the Cut Copy of 2010.

wither ideology?

Music: Kitchens of Distinction: Love is Hell (1989) Over on Crackbook I've discovered in recent weeks that if I update my status with the word "ideology," the ensuing discussion tends to court a crowd. I'm not sure what to make of the reaction other than the specter of ideology (critique) can get one---so I've moved the status discussion here.

What's going on? Well, Dana Cloud and I are working on our second collaborative project together. We've tackled "agency," now we're going back to that ol' saw horse of "ideology" (Dana teaches a regular seminar on ideology, and yours truly, the sister seminar on subjectivity). The last sustained discussion of ideology in rhetorical studies was over a decade ago in a special issue of the Western Journal of Communication guest edited by Phil Wander. Dana and I are going to survey the work on the "ideological turn" and come up with a provocation of some sort with which both of us can be happy. That a Marxist and Freudian can collaborate together is, frankly, a testament to Slavoj Zizek; his work has given both of us a way to see the world collaboratively, although we might disagree about some of the particulars.

Now, the problem of ideology critique is the tendency of the critic to occupy a privileged status, a problem Wander first addresses by claiming the concept of the totality. Adorno's solution (negative dialectics) is not elegant, but certainly rigorous. And Zizek's recent revival of ideology critique as a program figures ideology as the field of fantasy such that there is no access to an "outside," however much the Real still looms as a gaping of the edges. Where Althusser stops short ("last instance," y'all) Zizek goes all the way, incorporating desire and drive into the ideological matrix.

It remains to be seen (or, er, written) how Zizek's version of ideology critique can help us to revision it in rhetorical studies, except to say, perhaps, that it confronts a version of ideology critique that would locate "a cause imminent to its effects" a la mid-period Foucault (Shepardson's reading of Foucault with Lacan vis-à-vis the Real is pretty damn compelling). I've often argued an appeal to "the outside" in whatever guise (as truth, etc.) is politically necessary yet perhaps an ontological mistake. Zizek helps me to rethink the latter. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the question "wither ideology?" has yet to be answered. At one level, I think the lessons of Wander's ideological twisting and shouting have been learned and fully assumed. These days, one is hard-pressed to say rhetorical criticism is not a de-facto ideology critique at some level or remove. Even so, the terms "ideology critique" and "ideology criticism" are not mentioned much anymore, and at dinner a couple of years ago with Phil and Dana, we collectively wondered about that.

In general terms, I think "in-name" ideology critique has been eclipsed by what we might simply call the "immanentist turn"---an abandonment of various logics of transcendence in favor of the "down-in-it" school of emergence. Ideological critique, traditionally, has been associated with the movements of demystification and disenchantments (e.g., the Frankfurters). The trend in the theoretical humanities, however, has been toward more immanentist-materialist approaches that return to what Ricouer once termed a "hermeneutics of faith."

This was, in fact, the topic of my very first graduate seminar in 2003, couched in terms of transcendence and immanence. What seems to be at issue is a certain unfashionability, the dowdy stylings of the suspicious.

r.i.p. (on roller skates)

My primitive, infantile brain is jammed with this song and Teena Marie---whose music was formative for me at the roller rink. news of her passing here, although cause of death is still unknown. Very sad.

red, green, and blue

Music: Japancakes: Sleepy Strange (2008)

In year's past I've written about how the hype-machineries of consumer culture (that is, the mainstream news media, which have supplanted commercials and sentimental Hollywood holiday films as the guiding generation of guilt-trippers) amplify familial fantasy to such impossible perfections and sublime sentimentalities that even the most contented and easy-going of the family-minded must suffer a little Christmas PTS.

All that airport anticipation and excitement is difficult to reconcile with the reality of holiday homecomings: it's not like the movies or the commercials when you're "all grown up." Today was a nice and varied day that started with welcomed coffee and a visit to the nursing home, and ended with cooking and a fight with my mother about how I am "condescending" when I ask her to explain what she means when she says "Obama is a socialist!" I love my mama, I'm a mama's boy, to be sure, but if you question any claim like this---which is commonly heard in the Gunn homeland---you're a "brainwashed liberal."

Political hostilities aside, it's truly nice to be home, to see my folks, my extended family, to visit with a friend or two. This is the joy of the holiday. But that joy is also mingled with news of ill tidings and with a visit to the nursing home to see my beloved grandmother.

The nursing home is where people go to wait for death. Assisting living is a different story. The home---where everyone is put into wheelchairs whether they can walk or not---is not my kind of place. It smells like putrid flesh; something fetid in that Cloroxed corner this way comes. "Don't let Miss Mary grab you," I was warned by my mother as we walked to Grany's room. "She's got an iron grip and she won't let you go." This old woman with a gentle face, once she has you, apparently says only two things to you while she has you imprisoned: "I gotta pee" or "I caiynnnt."

Granny today wasn't "at herself." She was not there. She stares off into space. Always a bigger boned woman, she's now a slight 110---really, truly something of a shadow. She didn't know me this time. She's always recognized me in years past; not today. Empty eyes.

This is what holidays are often about for the folks celebrating it: hanging on to the living, mourning the dead or dying. And babies (festivus, you see). We sat with Granny in the cafeteria awaiting the coming meal (fish sticks!). The Spelman College Glee Club was on a huge LCD television singing holiday songs. It was nice, but one couldn't beat-back the thought that Granny really didn't hear much of anything, that we were wheeling her about in the hope she's "in there" somewhere registering our love.

When I see Granny---or walk into the home---it's often difficult not to be moved to cry. I've gotten much better over the years, but it's still hard to deal with---especially at Christmas, when so much work goes into reminding those who are alone that they are not alone.

Well, I'm rambling. Tonight Santa comes, this time as a son who has scored a few nice things for the folks. Another Santa came today, in the form of a mum in a housecoat, and delivered a lovely food processer a day early (so we could make pie crust).

We have fun. But at times we are sad together too. It seems to me a little of that sadness is what the holiday is about; maybe I am wrong and folks experience holiday very differently out there. But sadness comes with the territory for Christmas once one turns, I dunno, 16? It's a shame in our culture we are caused to pile guilt on top of our sadnesses, guilt because we are not allowed to feel sad on Christmas.

I'm about to cut out the light, right after I post this. I feel sad, but also happy. That's what holidays usually feel like, a little of column A, and a little of column A. Red, Green, and Blue.

the first rule of black swanis . . .

Music: A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Ashes Grammar (2009)

I returned from screening Black Swan not too long ago, and am working on shaking the icy sting of nihilism. Everyone's talking about this film here in Aus-Vegas, and more than a few urged me to go see it. I like Aronofky's work---well, most of it. I have not read a single review of this film, however, I did hear a review on NPR last week that expressed ambivalence. I didn't like this film, and if you have yet to see it, stop reading now: I'm going to spoil it.

Black Swan is the story of a late teen or early twenties ballet dancer who is cast as the lead in a remixed version of Swan Lake. The story was predictable from the get go (which is why the surprises at the end are really surprises): because the same dancer will play both the white and black swan characters, the ballerina must get in touch with her "dark side." She's innocent and, apparently, never had an orgasm, so the "inappropriate" director tells her to go home and masturbate. Of course, the dancer has an overprotective mother who lives vicariously through her daughter's ascent. Lots of mean girl bitchiness thrown in. Mirrors. And, you know, when there's a mirror you can bet psychosis drops in to say, "Uh-uh, Mother-m-mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn't quite herself today."

My reaction was boredom for the first hour, if not a little bit of motion sickness from the camera work. I don't have a problem with slow pacing, but this is pretty boring. When things started to get interesting, the film was punctuated by excruciating shots of Portman pulling out toe- and fingernails---a hackneyed torture porn gimmick at best. The hand-motif got a bit old (the comparison was to quills). I confess that I did not expect the gore, and while it was effective and I was shocked like everyone else, I didn't like it. It came off cheap by more than a few hairs. I came away from this film dazzled by Portman's performance, but unhappy with the world, and especially unhappy with Aronofsky's take on women.

So, what's my knee-jerk reading? Mother trouble, of course. With relatively little rearrangement, my and Tom's reading of Fight Club works here. This is the girly version of Fight Club in which we watch a woman, desperate for a paternal figure, descend into psychosis. For readers who are unfamiliar with the argument, it goes something like this: from a Lacanian vantage, the explanation for the psychosis is the lack of a third "term" or figure in childhood. From a semiotic perspective, the mother and child form a binary. The story goes that the child cannot really begin to understand itself unless it knows, somehow, that it is not staring into a mirror (mother). So, another parental figure triangulates relation and the kid goes: "oh, wait a minute. Who is this? This third figure is not me. And I am not mommy. I must be my own self." It's more complicated than this, of course, but that's the gist: the insertion of a "third term" or a "paternal metaphor" opens the dyad up to the social. And once the social is opened up, the child can begin to understand itself (as limited) and develop relations with folks other than mother.

For Lacan, a failure to have a good, strong severing with mom---for him, often the lack of a father figure or a strong father figure---can lead to psychosis. Not flip-out crazy all the time. Some folks can harbor/be animated by psychosis but never exhibit symptoms. Nevertheless, psychosis is a pretty intense form of narcissism because the problem is that "I can't get out of myself/mother"---like standing in a hall of mirrors. It's pretty bad for the kid, too, because it means he or she is pretty helpless to the tyranny of mama; with no second parent to intervene, the mother gets the child all to herself.

That Black Swan is staging psychosis is signaled almost in a ham-handed manner: mirrors, mirrors everywhere. Nina's lover turns out to be herself; faces morph when she looks into mirrors. Her overbearing mum sees herself in her daughter and vice-versa; Nina is under continual surveillance from psycho-mum. When presented with a father figure (played excellently by Vincent Cassel---he is truly odious), she finally has an opportunity to break the psychosis; instead, she splits and "fucks" him, much like the Narrator/Tyler does in Fight Club.

More signs of psychosis: Nina is basically a "cutter," but Aronofsky has her be a "scratcher"---again, the attempt to inscribe the paternal metaphor herself (it's the lye-burn scene in Fight Club).

The strange thing about the film is that Thomas (Cassel's character) sees what's going on and tries to stave off the psychosis. It becomes pretty clear in the film that she's going mad, and with the effects Aronofsky creates the sense of "haze"---beginning with the ecstasy scene and remaining until the end. At the premature denouement, Nina is angry that her mother phoned in to say that she was sick (mom wants Nina to end up a failed dancer like she was), and arrives at the theatre to discover someone was going to replace her. When she protests, Tom says: "the only thing standing in your way is yourself." Well, that let the cat out of the bag. Still 20 minutes to go and the clichéd ending comes, predictably, at the end of 20 minutes. Nina stabs herself with a shard of mirror only to slowly die by the end of the show.

Meh.

So, as clever as I think this feminine take on psychosis was, my problem is that---well, shit, it's that there's no redeeming social possibility here. Fight Club didn't have one either, really, but it did create a national discussion about the source of male violence and the crisis of paternity. This film, while repeating pretty much the same story, doesn't even gesture to an alternative. Nina's character has only one way out of psychosis: Tom. And she rejects him. And why? Well, the dude's a complete bastard and just wants to sleep with her and . . . gasp . . . repeat the cycle of . . . incest.

Mother trouble? or Father fucker?

That I didn't like the movie does not mean I do not think it is interesting or not an artistic achievement. Portman and Cassel have solid roles, and Mila Kunis is pretty amazing. This is the role that will help Kunis to escape That 70s Show. It's just every single character is icky: the mother is smothering; the dance company is comprised of a bunch of back-stabbing mean girls; the Kunis character is about as close as we get to someone humane, but even she drugs poor Nina; Tom is a perv and a sexist and possibly Nina's biological (as opposed to possible symbolic) father . . . . No one in the film is a pleasant person except for the male dancers, and the only memorable line one of them has is, to scold Nina, "what the fuck was that?"

I suppose the presumed social possibility is the message that women are pressed to be perfect---Ophelia syndrome. But there's this nagging lingering feeling that perhaps that's just running cover for misogyny. I could be wrong, and welcome other thoughts to the contrary.

teaching as customer service

Music: The Emeralds: Does It Look Like I'm Here (2010)

In a comment to a recent post about plagiarism, Cris said:

I wonder if students cheat in part because they see themselves as consumers of education. As consumers, their orientation towards education changes. Their aim is not necessarily knowledge and becoming an educated person, but getting a degree that will help them get a better job. If they’re more focused on getting the degree for economic gain, the pursuit of knowledge as a good end in itself becomes less important. Cutting corners by cheating becomes more acceptable. Not all students are like that, but too many are.

I responded that I thought she hit the nail on the head. Mirko Hall, no doubt in response to this conversation, sent me a citation to an article about "student consumerism." I read it (pdf here). Apparently what all of us are noticing now was sensed back in the late 1990s, and some enterprising sociologists set out to get empirical data. After surveying a rather large number of sociology majors, they concluded with what most of us who teach have known anecdotally for a decade: The consumer model is taking over higher education. Many students believe that because tuition is paid, they deserve an expected grade. This 2002 essay reports that students also expect to be entertained, and that evaluation measures like "the teacher showed an interest in student progress" only serves to cue a consumerist mentality.

Previously on RoseChron we've discussed the ever-more-pronounced sense of entitlement among students as having something to do with the dominant child-rearing philosophy in the 1990s: every kid gets a trophy. And that's certainly part of the issue. But what this 2002 report also underscores (albeit indirectly) is that academic institutions, in responding to the market, are a part of the problem: in their pursuit of goods external to the practice it houses, educational institutions compromise the goods internal to the practice (e.g., learning). Educators are encouraged to "sing and dance" and to grade more loosely. As someone who sings and dances a lot---and as one of the departments worst infaltors---I haven't really thought of my "teaching style" as a response, however unconsciously, to the encroaching customer service model. I pattern lectures like a television program, with periodic "commercial breaks" (like a goofy YouTube video), to keep my students' interest. I started doing this after seeing a persuasive presentation by Katherine Hayles on the emergent learning styles of young people (e.g., the straight forward lecture is not going to work). But now I'm starting to worry that "meeting students where they are at" may eventually be the drive-thru window.

Recently, my university administration has been thinking about adding scores of online courses to raise funds. The idea is that the university would like to grow, however, it's land-locked and we cannot accommodate any more students. The thought, apparently, is to allow students a number of online course options to increase tuition dollars. This is a good example of how the institutions housing the practice of education are part of the problem: the bottom line drives the initiative, not the mission. As a teacher, how am I supposed to combat a customer service mentality---"I deserve an A because I pay your salary!"---when, for example, half of my students are taking their courses online? How do I fight customer service thinking when every evaluation I give at the end of each course reads like a comment card from Wendy's? That I have a "chain of command for complaints" statement on my syllabus is telling: when a student is angry that I didn't let her take a quiz late, she doesn't come to me about it, she doesn't go to my chair. She goes straight to the dean! "I'm talking to your manager!"

We already know, in general, that online courses are not as effective as meat-space courses. I'm not saying there are not valuable courses taught online; I am saying that, in general, they are inferior to real space courses. One or two or even three online courses in a four-year degree seems to me to be ok, perhaps a valuable experience because of the variety and different ways of thinking online courses encourage. But if my university goes too far down the online road, I fear we'll have become McAus-Vegas U. Easy courses and good times! Worthless degree!

it is, sadly, rest in peace friday

on the boehner waterworks

Music: Big Star: Third/Sister Lovers (1975)

In a under-read but brilliantly prescient essay titled, "The Celebrity Politician" (a related but less extensive article is here), John Street argues that politics abandoned the "market model" introduced by Joseph Schumpeter decades ago. Traditional wisdom likened political campaigning to marketing, the candidate a "product" to be "sold" to consumers. Politics has always been a spectacle, but Street suggests the supplication of good reasons worked well with the older market model. In postmodernity, politics has shifted to a "celebrity model" in our times; what matters is circulation---getting noticed, being talked about, aligning catchword signifiers with image and affect. As I noted at a gathering earlier this week, Palin understands the model very well; arguably, the Obama campaign did too and exploited McCain's reliance on the tried-and-no-longer-true market model in the last election.

Further evidence of Street's prescience is third in line for the presidency, our new house speaker, John Boehner, who was featured this Sunday on 60 Minutes. It was a biograph (not biography, "biograph"---a short feature) designed to simply present an unbiased answer to "who is this guy?" Despite many critiques since the spot aired, I thought the program did a good job of giving the viewing audience a sense of this guy and what he is "all about." It humanized Boehner, and I very much appreciated that effort (unlike, say, the reality show for Palin; now that is definitely a promotional vehicle). In general, he's all about celebrity or spectacle politics, about which in a moment. What I didn't know about was the man's tendency for sentimentality: this dude can cry at the drop of certain hats. Not any hats. Certain hats. One of them is any mention of his wife's support. Another is visiting schools. Another is the concept of the "American Dream." For example, at his recent acceptance speech, when he advances his political vision, the sniffles come (about 7:40):

Leslie Stahl probed him about being an "emotional guy." When asked if he was trying not to "choke up" during the interview, his response was admirable: "No. What you see is what you get. I know who I am. I am comfortable in my own skin. And, everybody who knows me knows that I get emotional about certain things." As a person who is "sensitive"---I cry if I watch Finding Nemo or when Susanna and the Magical Orchestra puts out a new album (but I will try not to)---I can appreciate Boehner's embrace of his "emotionalism." There's a lot to say about what I've been describing as a new permissiveness for intimacy in politics today---much of it good. I'm kinda impressed that one of our most powerful politicians today cries publically, and is unapologetic about it. That much is cool. Boys do cry, and that's been a hard-won observation that is increasingly accepted. But---and you knew there was a butt here---like anything, new permissibilities entail new possibilities . . . for harm. Boehner represents, in a some weird way, an emerging biopolitical publicity, and that means with every progressivism comes a certain oppressive danger.

Boehner is a white male. Therein is the thumbnail for danger.

Generally, when speaking of biopolitcs Foucault described the various ways in which life itself was regulated---that the social functioned much like an organism, and to privilege the rational subject or deity as a puppet master was a rather cynical way to think about the totality (overlooking, for example, how the oppressive enables the progressive, how self-surveillance promotes healthy lifestyles, and so on). I'm partial to a Deleuzian reading of the biopolitical, so my tendency is to amplify the role of affect: biopolitics concerns the pastoral not simply in terms of the care of the flock, but the orchestration of affect---cinema of the body politic, so to speak. Biopolitical publicity concerns the orchestration of affect via spectacle for a candidate that means to shepherd, or for a policy that concerns the promotion of life in some way. Biopolitical publicity is not based on misdirection or deception; rather, it's based on earnest conviction, on feeling, on the gut.

Watching the Boehner interview I got to thinking about how he so neatly illustrated the concept interpellation: there is no question the man is earnest, that his tears are genuine, and that his belief in the "American Dream" is soul deep. There is no question because the body in convulsion is not a lie, even when an actor does it; feeling is feeling, even faked (I realize this too is an argument to be had, but let me take it as axiomatic for the moment). The problem with the right---with all political leanings---is not that folks are conspiratorial or deceitful or "lying to the American people." Hell, as more and more is written about the Bush administration and Bush, it's clear that deceit was not the real problem. Rather, the problem was in his gut--- that affective conviction underwrites decision; conviction first, rhetoric later. This is the work of ideology, a concept that we wrongly associate with "the idea." Ideology is about how it feels, an innermost, bodily orientation to "what feels right." Interpellation gives a meaning to the feeling.

Before Adam Smith was saddled with The Wealth of Nations fame, he was more known for being a proponent of "sentiment ethics": we are moved to moral action because we respond the visible and verbal (aural) pain or pleasure of others. Recent research on "mirror neurons" and cognition is starting to bear this out: our bodies respond to other bodies; if other bodies are in pain, our bodies respond---we take on the feelings of others. It makes sense, then, that Smith's vision of the civil society would be advanced so faithfully---the dude generally believed that our "sentiment of sympathy" would be the moral check on commerce. Of course, that didn't play out because of the complexities that psychoanalysis teaches us about affect: evil can feel good too. Doh! Curses! Nevertheless, my point is that Boehner comes in at precisely this juncture: the dude is emotional and I think he is earnest with those waterworks; the problem is that feelings can be wrong, and we can persuade folks to feel wrongly---or rather, that what they feel is Y instead of X.

We have a tendency as a people to believe that affect is genuine, beyond symbolic structuring. We have a tendency to believe that affect can cut through misguided thinking. Much of the scholarship of affect is guilty of this tendency (Massumi included); we are romanticizing creatures, after all. "If it feels right," then it must be right. "All you need is love?" Er, that's problematic too.

Boehner is, in the biopolitical sense, a Beatle. That's why he's so endearing to many. And this is where Street's insight into the "political celebrity" really takes off: if it's really not about good reasons, but affect and circulating the suck-to signifier, stirring feeling and then saying, "you're feeling X." Many of us raised evangelical Baptists or Pentecostals will find the structure familiar: after a rousing sermon that takes us to our "point of pain" and deepest sense of hurt, the preacher tells us that hurt we are feeling is actually a call from Christ to be saved. It's powerful stuff. Nevertheless, this way of thinking about the political appeal is the opposite to the hegemonic model in political science: rational choice, rent seeking, and so forth---that old market logic. The celebrity model replaces reason with the irrational, or at least, makes reason the province of meaning that is parasitic on the affective or the body-in-feeling. Now, I don't mean to suggest this is a one way street, that affect always precedes the signifier. Clearly rhetoric stimulates affect as well. I'm simply saying that politics works primarily at the level of feeling or that affect is primary.

Boehner's tearing up at every mention of the "American Dream" speaks to how deeply he has internalized that particular fantasy. I daresay all of us in the states have internalized it because it is the foundational fantasy of the primary educational system. We teach "the dream" at a very young age as a form of internal motivation. It's only when students get into college (or AP classes in high school) that we begin to question and critique this fantasy. Of course, at the college age we also have to battle the Evil Oprah Empire that resists the critique with exception proving the rule. Nevertheless, the "American Subject"---our basic identities as U.S. citizens---assume the notions of meritocracy and bootstrapping. Even Boehner acknowledges this, however unwittingly: when Stahl presses him to explain why he can no longer visit schools because he gets to emotional, he said: “making sure these kids have a shot at the American dream, like I did, is important.” The "American Dream" fantasy is soul-deep, indeed.

Here's why Boehner's biopolitical publicity is troublesome: as Dyer noted about "the star" decades ago, the idealized public figure embodies the fantasy of "making it," so that we can live vicariously through her, since we can never achieve it ourselves. Boehner has embodied this fantasy for all the reasons that are familiar (he's a white guy and has easier access, etc.); he cries at every mention of the "American Dream" because he has achieved it (or so he thinks). And calling for its defense is something of a no brainer, in both senses. This is ideological interpellation on a stick: by appealing to the American Dream, Boehner continues the status quo, impeding social change and, paradoxically, the "equal opportunity for all" he claims to champion.

The rub, of course, is that he believes he has done this by his own effort; the sentimental tears are tiny mirrors. He does not see that he lives in an environment structured such that he is more likely to embody "the dream" over and above others with the same skills and drive, but of different structural/social station---gender, race, sexual orientation, and so on. He suffers from an over-reliance on feelings as truth, as genuine, as the seat of authenticity. It's obviously narcissism. To assume one's personal story can be projected onto the Other---"personal responsibility" and all---is to fail to truly reckon with the different circumstances and plights of others. Boehner cries at the potential he sees in a school-child's "innocent" face, but it's his own story that he sees. And when one's own story and "feeling" is the touchstone of truth, well, anyone who is different is in trouble.

Boehner shall soon become one of the most powerful (and hated) politicians in the West. He seems to misattribute personal lack for hope. He seems to mistake white guilt for empathy. God help us.

blood on the page

Music: O. Children: self-titled (2010)

I've spent this weekend reading and commenting on graduate student papers for the rhetorical criticism seminar. I'll spend the next two weeks or so doing the same (I average one or two papers a day---yes, I'm slow). By and large, what I've read so far is pretty damn good. We did a peer review exercise, so the papers have been through a number of rounds of revision; there's no mystery why they are better than the norm.

As I've been grading, I've been reflecting lately on my gradual move toward bluntness as a grader/commenter. When I started grading graduate work, I was careful to build in a lot of praise for what is done well. I still do this, but I find myself grading harder and harder. I'm tending, especially, to the micro-stuff: commas and errant punctuation, splices and spelling, unclear referents, and documentation style. I am, in a phrase, sweating the small stuff.

Why am I an increasingly hard grader? Well, I have a number of answers for this, but the most important one is that I don't like letter grades, and I'd rather give a student an "A+" and then tell them where the paper needs work. It's like saying, "yo, this rocks, but you could work on _______." I definitely get this from my advisor, who would sometimes mark seminar papers with a "Z" or a "W" just to remind us that the almighty "A" is a stupid pursuit for a scholar. Curiosity is the coin of the realm, and it's not something you can measure with a numeric or letter (ok, yes, the money metaphor is mixed, but chocolate can also be a coin). So, my thinking is this: if a grad student did her best, she gets an "A." Let's not have people worry about grades as a graduate student; they got in, they've jumped through enough hoops already. Let's focus, I reason, on the writing. If they got into our program, they're the cream of the crop. They're all smart. They're all good. What we gotta work on is packaging. Of course, I have given grades that are not good, and almost always because a graduate student took advantage of my "everyone get's As if they do their best" policy. I had a terrible student at LSU who never came to class and turned in plagiarized papers from her undergraduate classes; somehow she interpreted my "do your best work" policy for "setting the bar pretty low" (her words). But that is an exception, and I digress.

I'm grading harder, I'm realizing, for a number of reasons. The first is my "upbringing." I basically had two academic parents: my advisor, and my mentor. Well, both were mentors and advisors. It's complicated. Suffice it to say my advisor was patient, very rarely criticized, often encouraged curiosity and rewarded it with praise. My mentor (well, the professor I assisted for years and the chair of my dissertation committee) was very different---and she was also a fellow advisee of my advisor! She marks up papers in red-pen. Those who have received her critiques have affectionately termed this "blood on the page." Her comments were blunt (can I get a shout-out for the "egad!???"), but never demoralizing. I'd say between the two it was akin to "good cop/bad cop," except there was no bad cop. It was, well, good cop/blunt cop.

I am realizing that "good cop" sustained me and kept me going, but "blunt cop" taught me the ropes. Both were essential to becoming a scholar, and as a team they served me well. For any grad students reading, let me underscore this is the key to a good education: you assemble a "team," not pick an advisor. Your advisor is your principal administrator, but your committee or team is really who teaches you. Trust me here.

Anyhoo, I realized some years ago I may be too much "good cop" and not enough "blunt cop," so I'm trying do both. I don't know if I'm succeeding. But, yes, I’m trying to achieve the Baby-Bear's porridge status of commenting on graduate papers: how do I encourage, yet prepare?

And this brings me to the other reasons I am an increasingly harder grader. Although not every student passing through the program is destined for a research career, training them to do so is my charge. That is, training students to do research is in my job description. It's also the case that students who wish to pursue teaching careers need to publish; having a publication or two when going on the job market will land someone that teaching job because even teaching-focused colleges and universities value a publication here and there.

I've done this gig long enough to know that research jobs and teaching jobs have their advantages and disadvantages. A research focused career and a teaching focused career are equally noble and valid. Valuing one over the other is silly; they’re both good, and I hope our students are getting that message. It's apples and oranges, as they say. But---and this is a "but" that is hard to enforce---publication is the key to both. At LSU and UT, I've had students who had no desire for a research job---but I've been preaching it's still necessary to publish something.

And because that's my philosophy, I've started to come down a bit harder on "the details." I deliberately grade more lightly with the MA students than I do the Ph.D. students, but still, only by a hair. As a graduate instructor, I see my mission as twofold: (1) to foster curiosity and let it lead us to thinking aloud; and (2) to professionalize (and in that order). My latter mission means that I need to grade in a way that gets students thinking about publication. And because of that, I am increasingly grading in ways that anticipate what a blind reviewer might say on a seminar paper.

Here is the crisis of graduate education: most folks in graduate school were the "smart kids" in college. I was that "smart kid," too. What happened to me is that my creativity and ideas were so different from the norm that my professors gave me good grades for the ideas and creativity; they let the compositional gaffs slide. When I got to graduate school, I suddenly had to confront "details"---citation, documentation, grammar. My feet were never held to the fire on the details---the commas, the quotation marks. Admittedly, even in graduate school my feet were pretty cool---few professors took me to task for mechanics. It was only when I started trying to publish that "the small stuff" became an issue. My work was routinely rejected for grammar problems, for not citing sources correctly. That is to say, much of my education in writing was done in peer review.

That's not how it should have been. Nor do I fault my professors in graduate school for not teaching me---they were the products of a much better secondary educational system. I was not. My high school history class was taught by a high school coach who showed us Gone with the Wind to teach the Civil War. I remember that my best education in grammar was in the seventh grade by a teacher who wore leg braces from polio; thank gosh for that class. But I never got that kind of attention since.

The thing about peer review is that a reviewer will reject your work for bad writing or style, irrelevant of the brilliance of your argument. So in these last many years I've been commenting on graduate papers, with a keen attention to documentation styles, punctuation, and grammar.

Commenting on graduate papers today, I got to feeling guilty for being so nit-picky. But then again, I figure that being "nit-picky" at "home" is better than suffering nit-picky rejections from a stranger. Blood on the page is necessary to help folks prepare for a career in the academy---teaching or research. Blood on the page is not sadism, it's preparation. I keep telling myself that, at least. I hope my students understand this: one's grammar is not equivalent to one's argument. I critique argument too, but lately, I've been focused on the mechanics when I grade.

All of our graduate students are smart, and have smart things to say. Increasingly, packaging saying smart stuff has been the issue I've focused on as a graduate instructor.

it's synth-pop friday!

joshcast: more crush

Why don't you just turn it off, will you? I think I'm going to burst. Damn you. Track listing:

1. damhnait doyle: “i want you to want me”
2. besnard lakes: “this thing”
3. ester drang: “no one could ever take your face”
4. brian eno: “emerald and stone”
5. susanna and the magical orchestra: “lay all your love on me”
6. bon iver: “skinny love”
7. the engineers: “thrasher”
8. school of seven bells: “the wait”
9. a.c. acoustics: “crush”
10. the cure: “maybe someday”
11. blonde redhead: “love or prison”
12. mazzy star: “blue light”
13. camper van: “one of these days”
14. brothers & sisters: “i don’t rely”
15. grizzly bear: “ready”
16. the big pink: “crystal visions”
17. the national: “terrible love”

The print-out CD cover is here.

An mp3 of the mix is here.

As always, this is for preview purposes only. If you like an artist, you should buy one of their albums. In particular, if you don't fall in love with the Delays, something is seriously wrong with you (and I won't pine after you anymore; sorry).

This is the second volume of a many-volumed series. First mix is here.