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Our Official Blog : New Words for the Day
Posted by horatio on Monday, May 18, 2009 (03:12:46) (137 reads)
Well, it's always fun to take a few minutes after a long project and reflect on how it all turned out. Too bad I don't have time to do that 
So instead, I'll just offer a few tidbits from my work today. In short, trying to finish up a god-awful long ethnography project that is about 35 pages too long--it was supposed to be around 20!--egads, and my homemade pizza is cold and hard and the microwave keeps beeping at me to get my coffee out of it, so all I can do is say, here's the new words I added to my spell checker:
-unmutilated
-Marcuse
-... {yeah, my computer froze up trying to get past Eros and Civilization--I wonder if it is trying to tell me something ;)}
-zine/s
-radicality {this one was particularly amusing, since the sentence read "We recognize no pre-given limits to the radicality of our intentions." Apparently the built-in spell checker on the computer disagreed...}
-ethnographer's
-it wanted to add Kerrey's but I just decided to tell it to "Ignore All", it seemed rather fitting.
-recuperators (?) WTF is a recuperator anyway?
-countermoves
-accommodationist
-flyering
-assed, as in half-assed
-Unaguration
-consensed
-admin
-something's
-spatiotemporal {at least the computer tried on this one, it suggester atemporal...}
-Bakhtin
-insurrectionary
-unlife {it suggeted unlike - how unlike life unlife is - hahahaha, i digress}
-deconstructing {seriously!? How big of a statement on modernity is it that my computer knows reconstruction, but not deconstruction! Oh the irony.}
-it thinks Booya should be Yahoo?!
-anarcho {apparently it knows anarchy, but not anarcho?}
-primally
-unfreedom
-autodestruction {it thought this should be two words...}
-immediatists
-mediatists
-sublation {it went for the close sublimation, and an entirely different meaning!}
-supersession
-timeframe {again with the two word thing}
-disjoining {ditto}
-Ranciére
-biopolitical {which is truly ironic when one of the alternate options is nonpolitical}
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Our Official Blog : Mapping Resistance
Posted by horatio on Saturday, April 04, 2009 (04:41:01) (126 reads)
Mapping Resistance
Today has been a strangely productive day. I hope these questions are helpful for our inquiry into the nature of resistance. They are inspired from my current reading of Talal Asad's On Suicide Bombing (-love the cover image) and meditations on the construction of animal, nature and human... With that in mind, let me begin with two quotes, rather than a poem
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"If you're not afraid of it, it will hurt you," said animal behaviorist Dave Salmoni. "You can't get the wild out of a cat because he's in a cage."
The Lion House is where the mauling occurred... just after the public feeding with at least 50 patrons watching, Tatiana turned on Komejan [a zookeeper]. Chari and his son [zoogoers] were standing 8 to 10 feet away, focused on another tiger named Tony, when they heard a shriek. |
Does anyone else see the sick hidden irony in all of this? Tony the Tiger? The Lion House? public feedings? "Civilized" versus "savage"? or is it just me...
As I read the first few lines in ch. 2 this thought came to mind: How do you “show” a particular construction of a particular logic which then constitutes (makes "real") certain understandings of what "war" and "terrorism" mean (and look like) in relation to our additional constructed understandings* of what he calls the "question of legality" and "feelings and vulnerability and fear of social disorder"? {p39} After coming out of the end of ch. 1 I had this question of the "liberal democratic state" and its relationship to violence on the tip of my mind.
The thought, because I have apparently been thinking and looking at maps and mapping (both are true), came out in the form of a visual map idea. Could a group of 15 people map out our understandings, our “logic”, of what a construction like “resistance” looks like, either visually or linguistically (most likely written, but possibly sung or performed)? Could we draw out on a big white board with a marker our outline, our assumptions, our “logics” of resistance? Maybe. What about the liberal democratic state? Could we map that out? Don't we, like Walzer—also construct a particular discourse on what is “resistance” in our class and in our daily lives? Could we map those out? Would they be similar?
It really goes back to an earlier question that came up a couple of weeks ago in conversation. What is the basic “logic” and “common sense” that each person starts from in thinking about a construction like the “liberal democratic state” and the discourse that holds it up in US society? Is it inherently based on exploitation, domination and oppression of some people by others, or is it fundamentally democratic more or less to all people? Can we speak of an “us”? This goes back to the question of mapping. Who gets to do the mapping, and what gets mapped, as the hegemonic discourse and reality are important questions to consider. Ultimately, I think they go back to the larger and harder question, which is who exactly gets defined as the “we” that are resisting against “them”—Schmitt's “friend and enemy” distinction—or the civilized against the savages. A battle over civilization, isn't that what this is? A becoming that is not fully realized, that is always almost at the point of becoming, or emerging—a becoming that is in conflict with itself. What happens in a nation of grown-up schizoparanoids?**
For example, consider the following statement in light of our earlier discussion on "civilized" v "savage" [or I might argue human v nonhuman]:
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“Civilization refers to the central civilizational anxiety [paranoid anxiety], the fear of invasive malevolence. This is experienced as coming from the outside, but ultimately derives from the projection out of the death instinct. Civilization anxiety can be understood in terms of anxiety about imminent annihilation and derives from a sense of the destructive or death instinct of the self—[and by extension the state]. In this position before the secure internalisation of a good object to protect the ego—[think “the state”], the immature ego [“the state”] deals with its anxiety by splitting off bad feelings and projecting them out [hence the term “social outcasts” and torture centers located outside of the continental US]. However, this causes more civilization [paranoia]. Schizoid refers to the central defense mechanism: splitting, the vigilant separation of the good object from the bad object...a healthy development implies that the infant has to split its external world, its objects and itself into two categories: good (i.e., gratifying, loved, loving) and bad (i.e. frustrating, hated, persecutory). This splitting makes it possible to introject and identify with the good. In other words: splitting in this stage is useful because it protects the good from being destroyed by the bad. Later, when the ego [“the state”] has developed sufficiently, the bad can be integrated, and ambivalence and conflict can be tolerated.”**
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As odd as it all seems, it really is simple, which is perhaps the problem after all. Resistance is about hanging onto something as much as it is about getting something new. What do we want to gain, and what do we want to lose? And mapping that is a lot harder...
Earlier today my mother sent me a video link on the "American Government". While I wouldn't say I support the video's conclusion, but it is a provocative case for defending a Republic rather than a Democracy and speaks directly to the question of a "democratic liberal state."
With that I will end with a selectively fascinating tidbit that only a few people will likely appreciate, but is worthy nonetheless in my opinion.
| Quote:: |
On the East side of Coit Tower, down the Greenwich steps halfway to Sansome, a local artist has made a memorial statue to honor Tatiana the Tiger. I suggest walking from the bottom and up, and you'll see on the right hand side a cobblestone path lined with wood planks (not somebody's backyard!) that leads to an opening. At the top of the slope in the brush, you'll see a mosaic painted life size statue of the tiger underneath a small banana tree. The memorial marks the one year anniversary of the death of the tiger that everyone, except for these Yelpers, forgets to mourn.
RIP Tatiana!
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And after all, Tatiana deserves to have her side of the story told too, right! It's been like five minutes and my sides still hurt and I can't see straight, so I think you might want to watch this too. [warning...this video may cause spontaneous and contagious laughter from anyone in the vicinity. You have been warned!]
That of course left me wondering what can we do to get back to nature and start talking again about freedom. I think I agree with Jules Dervaes, we do need a homegrown revolution!
*[Tatiana might respond: "You need to look both at the construction of the relationship between these understandings, and the construction of each of those distinct and separate "knowledges", one might argue...]
**[inspired and adapted from wiki]
***For more from Asad check him out on the Huffington Post talking more about "Just War".
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Our Official Blog : Reflections from 1st ~ Inspirations from sycamore
Posted by horatio on Thursday, January 29, 2009 (18:19:24) (115 reads)
I find that it is not often that I have the time to do many of the things which, at least in my idealized world, I would be able to do. Writing is always high among those things which I "ought" to do more of, but which I usually "tend" to do less of, at least in the last year or so. It seems to me that when I do make the time, I find it highly productive and always cathartic. So, having a little time this morning, here are a few reflections, or musings as my aunt would call them, on the state of things here.
Part I: The Life of Squirrels
You know, it's really funny. I have spent pretty much all of my life in and around the woods and the furry woodland creatures which inhabit them. Yet it took me going to New York City or all places to really get to see some of the more interesting sides of animal domestic life.
In the past few weeks I have been paying special attention to the squirrels in the complex where I live, as almost every large tree has a nest somewhere in it, or if not, then in an adjacent tree. One morning about two weeks ago I was walking out and happened to look up and see a mother squirrel sitting in a hollow of the tree with what looked to be about 3 little babies nursing on her belly. What was particularaly interesting was watching here navigate moving around the tree, up and down around the hole, while also trying to make sure the babies did not fall off.
This required quite a lot of skill, or at least it seemed to me, as she would sometimes hang with one hand while she reached around with the other to get a different grip. While doing this she would strategically wrap her tail around her side as a sort of baby sling as she moved around. The whole scene lasted for less than a minute, but it was the first time I had seen a squirrel nursing in a tree while going about its daily routine. (As an interesting note, this would seem to be the wrong time of year to be nursing babies, as usually grey squirrels breed in Feb/Mar and June/July...?).
The second squirrel adventure was even more interesting to watch, and was also a first. Our kitchen window looks out from the 3rd floor into a courtyard area with several large sycamore and oak trees, two of which have squirrel nests in them at about the 2nd floor level. One day last week I was looking out as I had my morning coffee and happened to catch a young grey squirrel with a long, thin twig in his mouth. He was fairly far out on one of the branches and was working his way back towards the trunk and the nest below. And this is where I thought it was really interesting.
I've always been amazed at the squirrel's agility and grace in a tree, but this was a performance par excellence. You see, the problem was that the stick was just long enough, and had just enough of a Y and a few side shoots, to make it fairly awkward. So here is this little squirrel--who judging by the size was a juvenile from last spring--carrying this twig that is at least twice his size down this skinny little branch and getting stuck every 6-8" on another branch or twig in its way. Every so often it would would switch and grab the branch in its hands, move it around an obstacle, and then grab it back in its mouth again. It did this for about five minutes until it had finally gotten past the branches and into the drey (nest); which in this case was both a tree hollow and a nest in one (talk about fancy living).
Having accomplished that, the squirrel then tried to pull the stick into the hole of the tree hollow, but as the stick was too long, it was having quite a problem. After about a minute of pushing and pulling it appeared to give up and left the stick in the nest and went over to the adjoining tree to join a few others juvenile squirrels playing there. A minute or two later one of those squirrels came over and began to try and work the stick into the nest, but also had the same problems. But then it took the stick in its mouth, began to climb down and around the tree, and in the process fumbled with it, almost dropped it twice, and then finally on the third try dropped it altogether. It looked down, seemed as if it was going to go after it, and then scampered off into the previous tree it had been in.
All that work for nothing, I thought to myself. But perhaps that's how it is?
Incidentally, it also appears that squirrels have played quite a role in the history of my old state of Ohio, as well as my new home of NYC. Here's two snippets to highlight this from the Scholarly Squirrel:
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In the late 18th century, the squirrel population in Ohio ballooned to uncontrollable numbers. In 1791, squirrels invaded the territory around the town of Belpre after that year's acorn crop failed to sustain their appetites. After eating the Belpre settlers' entire corn crop, the squirrels (which are not especially known for their aquatic prowess) swam across the Ohio River en masse and began devouring West Virginia!
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| Quote:: |
| Squirrels have been blamed for causing at least one confirmed stock market crash and a Miss America Pageant disaster in the United States, as well as precipitating countless fires and power outages which have left entire cities without electricity for days. For example, New York City officials claim that squirrels cause at least one power outage every day. |
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Our Official Blog : Adding fuel to the fire
Posted by horatio on Tuesday, December 16, 2008 (00:12:45) (139 reads)
Well it looks like things are heating up on the New School student front. Too bad it just started at the end of the semester. Well, the faculty is pretty much in agreement they don't like Kerrey, and there is a growing body of students that seem to feel the same way. There will be a whole bunch happening this week on campus, student and faculty-wise, so it should be really interesting to see what happens.
Keep you ears and eyes peeled...
And you can sign the no-confidence in Bob Kerrey petition here...
Here's one or two recent articles on this whole mess:
Chronicle of Higher Ed.
NY Times on Kerrey no confidence vote
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Our Official Blog : New School Faculty Resolution - Vote of No Confidence
Posted by horatio on Friday, December 12, 2008 (04:49:57) (136 reads)
Summary of the results of the emergency meeting of New School senior faculty, held on December 10, 2008, from 2:00 – 4:00.
In order to discuss, and respond to, the current crisis at the University, the co-chairs of the Faculty Senate called an emergency meeting of the University’s senior faculty. Due to concerns of some faculty about employment security, the chairs invited only tenured and extended-employment faculty from all divisions. A few additional senior faculty chose to attend as well.
Seventy-seven faculty members were in attendance at the start of the meeting. As the meeting went on, some faculty had to leave to teach, so that by the end of the meeting there were fifty-nine senior faculty.
Thirty-five senior faculty members came from Parsons; twenty-four came from the New School for Social Research; six from Milano; five from Lang; and five from the New School for General Studies.
The senior faculty discussed and voted on a total of five motions, the first two by secret ballot, the last three by a show of hands.
Submitted by Jim Miller and David Howell, senior co-chairs of the Faculty Senate.
First motion
The senior faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Bob Kerrey.
Vote: 74 in favor, 2 against, 1 abstention
Second motion
The senior faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of James Murtha.
Vote: 67 in favor, 0 against, 1 abstention
Third motion
Statement of concerns
The Senior Faculty lacks confidence in President Bob Kerrey and Executive Vice President James Murtha.
We can no longer tolerate the constant turnover of provosts – five provosts since the appointment of President Kerrey in 2001.
This turnover has made it virtually impossible for the faculty to be properly involved in thoughtful and effective academic planning; for our staffs to provide proper and consistent academic services; and for the Deans and faculty to help the Provost develop University-wide employment systems that appoint, review and promote faculty in a timely and fair manner.
There is a widespread perception that the President has allowed the Executive Vice President to frustrate and sometimes sabotage many of the academic initiatives of the Provost, Deans and faculty, as a result of which there has been a substantial reduction in the effectiveness and efficiency of all those directly involved with academic affairs.
Besides such costs, we also fear that the reputation of The New School is at risk, as is our continuing ability to recruit and retain the best candidates for top academic positions, and our future ability to recruit and retain students.
We are appalled by the abrupt and unexplained dismissal of Provost Joe Westphal, who represented a welcome transition towards better academic leadership and a greater openness in shared governance with the Deans and faculty. We reject the appropriateness of President Kerrey unilaterally appointing himself the acting Chief Academic Officer of the University for an interim period that is likely to last months if not years. In both cases, there has been no reason given why there was no prior consultation with Deans, the Faculty Senate, or senior faculty.
These events appear to be part of a larger pattern, characterized by unilateral, impulsive, and sometimes secret decision-making, concentrating power in the hands of the President and Executive Vice President, without due deliberation or proper consultation with Deans and Faculty.
The founders of the New School hoped to foster democratic ideals of governance and open inquiry. It is ironic, and deeply troubling, that Bob Kerrey and James Murtha have governed the University in a way that subverts one of its constitutive ideals.
Vote: 65 in favor, 1 abstention.
Fourth motion
The senior faculty has full confidence in all the Deans.
Vote: 65 in favor, 0 against
Fifth resolution
Given the exceptional nature of the votes we have taken today, the senior faculty strongly recommend that the divisional Deans be allowed to meet with a sub-committee of the Board of Trustees and select faculty, in order to help develop a plan for the University as it moves forward.
Vote: 59 in favor, 0 against.
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Our Official Blog : November Novel - days i/ii
Posted by horatio on Sunday, November 02, 2008 (04:39:33) (175 reads)
As some of you may know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Here's the basic idea from Nano:
| Quote:: |
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down. |
So here's my lame starting attempt to play along this year...
i.
The thronging masses squirmed along 6th avenue like a centipede at a dance competition, bodies pulsing and gyrating to the rhythm of the street. Everywhere one looked there were people dressed in the most outrageous costumes imaginable. But then again, they weren't perhaps all that outrageous, considering the state of thing. But no matter your perspective, one was likely to find something visually interesting amidst the assembled horde.
It was fall in New York, halloween to be precise, and the evening was cool yet pleasant out. Everywhere one could hear the sound of people in full revelrie, wandering the streets in search of some as of yet unknown adventure which was, nonetheless, pulling them forward towards their destiny.
The several preceding days were cool, not really unusual for the end of October in this part of the country, but today had been warmer than expected. With such nice weather, and not a hint of rain in the air, it seemed like the entire city had come out to play.
The group of young people I was wandering the streets with were looking for trouble of some kind or another, nothing necessarily illegal or life threatening, but nonetheless adventurous. The parade of costumes seemed like as good a place as any to start, and it was to this destination that we were irresistibly drawn.
Our meter was measured yet dispersed, as is any group of fifteen or so odd people trying to navigate their way through New York this time of year...
ii.
to be continued...
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Our Official Blog : around the town
Posted by horatio on Thursday, October 23, 2008 (03:16:50) (124 reads)
Thought I would pass along a few interesting things in my mailbox today...
Crackdown on Women's NGOs in Nicaragua
WLP colleagues from the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM) in Nicaragua have called our attention to the government's raid and seizure of documents and computers from their offices on October 10th. The raid of MAM's offices as well as the Centre for Investigation and Communication (CINCO) offices are another step of President Daniel Ortega's government's campaign against civil society organizations, particularly feminists, who have been outspoken critics of his government.
The wider government crackdown includes harassment of several civil society organizations, journalists, and the international organization Oxfam GB, which supports the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The government has accused such groups of money laundering, misuse of funds, and subversion. The government has specifically targeted feminists who have been vocal in condemning Ortega's sexual misconduct as well as the 2007 comprehensive ban on abortion. Activists have been threatened and persecuted for defending women's rights, as have journalists who have been targeted for reporting on corruption within the government.
Read more at the Women's Learning Partnership.
From Wikipedia:
The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when its stock market fell close to 50 percent from its peak the previous year. Primary causes of the run included a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks, a loss of confidence among depositors, and the absence of a statutory lender of last resort. The crisis occurred after the failure of an attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company. When this bid failed, banks that had lent money to the cornering scheme suffered runs which later spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company—New York City's third-largest trust. The collapse of the Knickerbocker spread fear throughout the city's trusts as regional banks withdrew reserves from New York City banks. The panic would have deepened if not for the intervention of financier J.P. Morgan, who pledged large sums of his own money, and convinced other New York bankers to do the same, to shore up the banking system. By November the contagion had largely ended. The following year, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Read the rest of this article on Wikipedia.
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