Because some whippersnappers can't let an old blog die quietly, I'll just make a formal announcement:
I've moved over to Iqra'i ("Sliding down the banisters of the ivory tower") for the time being. I'll start actually posting there one of these days, but for the time being you can catch insight from more intelligent traditionalist feminists.
I apologize for depleting the ranks of the Yale Political Union blogroll, but I'm sure you'll appreciate the improved product at the group blog.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Yale Daily News column, 2/7/08: I see your analytical strategizing and raise you an irrational movementarian exuberance.
(Useful background: Greasy-spoon breakfast joint gets more attention after it shuts down (blame the landlord!); students help New Haven to heart Barack Obama.)
(Useful background: Greasy-spoon breakfast joint gets more attention after it shuts down (blame the landlord!); students help New Haven to heart Barack Obama.)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Yale Daily News column, 1/24/08: Corporatist policies, embodiment as a distinction between free speech and harassment, and the moral failings of the contemporary university.
(Useful background: the Zeta Psi dustup; people complain about the use of the court system; my favorite, if unhelpful, response thus far.)
(Useful background: the Zeta Psi dustup; people complain about the use of the court system; my favorite, if unhelpful, response thus far.)
PoMoMetaBlog--Jan. 28
"If you're not postmodern, you're not paying attention."
I've been unduly pleased with this since coming up with it earlier this month, but evidence from around the Internet suggests that I'm not too far off:
IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD...
SUFFERING IS ENTERTAINMENT IS SUFFERING! I know nostalgia literally means "a pain in the past," but the decision to remedy it by offering two-hour interactive KGB interrogations--with beatings, mind you--might be a bit too literalistic about the bodily metaphor.
EVERYONE USES HYPERBOLE! AmSpecBlog, rapidly becoming my new favorite institutional blog on the right, gets a little bit shameless: McCain's refusal to look for conservative judges like Samuel Alito would be to every conservative in the country "the political equivalent of subjecting us to waterboarding." On the flip side, at least they've realized that waterboarding might not be a good thing? (Of course, the counterpart to this is the much-linked NOW press release declaring the Kennedy endorsement of Obama to be the "ultimate betrayal" of women. Then again, identity politics isn't postmodern, though maybe female hysteria used for political ends is...)
EVEN THE WHISPERED ADVICE OF COMPANIONS IS CENTRALLY SPONSORED! But I fail to share Poulos' abject terror because the art is often absolutely lovely, and the content is bland enough to be toothless. (With the exceptions of the "don't fuck your flatmate" and "don't always use Helvetica" pieces, both of which are actually quite useful as advice.)
"AMERICAN IDOL" STARS BECOME BIDEN DEMOCRATS! More seriously, the mix of mainstream, backwater, and savvy presented in this profile of Clay Aiken is striking--and says a lot about the complete meaninglessness of the term "counterculture." NOTE: My linking to this piece isn't an endorsement of any of its constituent parts ("Idol," Spamalot, or mostly-unchallenging profiles of genre-shifting stars).
I've been unduly pleased with this since coming up with it earlier this month, but evidence from around the Internet suggests that I'm not too far off:
IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD...
SUFFERING IS ENTERTAINMENT IS SUFFERING! I know nostalgia literally means "a pain in the past," but the decision to remedy it by offering two-hour interactive KGB interrogations--with beatings, mind you--might be a bit too literalistic about the bodily metaphor.
EVERYONE USES HYPERBOLE! AmSpecBlog, rapidly becoming my new favorite institutional blog on the right, gets a little bit shameless: McCain's refusal to look for conservative judges like Samuel Alito would be to every conservative in the country "the political equivalent of subjecting us to waterboarding." On the flip side, at least they've realized that waterboarding might not be a good thing? (Of course, the counterpart to this is the much-linked NOW press release declaring the Kennedy endorsement of Obama to be the "ultimate betrayal" of women. Then again, identity politics isn't postmodern, though maybe female hysteria used for political ends is...)
EVEN THE WHISPERED ADVICE OF COMPANIONS IS CENTRALLY SPONSORED! But I fail to share Poulos' abject terror because the art is often absolutely lovely, and the content is bland enough to be toothless. (With the exceptions of the "don't fuck your flatmate" and "don't always use Helvetica" pieces, both of which are actually quite useful as advice.)
"AMERICAN IDOL" STARS BECOME BIDEN DEMOCRATS! More seriously, the mix of mainstream, backwater, and savvy presented in this profile of Clay Aiken is striking--and says a lot about the complete meaninglessness of the term "counterculture." NOTE: My linking to this piece isn't an endorsement of any of its constituent parts ("Idol," Spamalot, or mostly-unchallenging profiles of genre-shifting stars).
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
"We'll hold a big tent revival in Manchester..."
The narrative that I'm still waiting to see out of the primaries: no, really, Americans just want a president who talks like a preacher.
It's a logical continuation of the Third (or Fourth, or Fifth) Great Awakening that the press seems to discover whenever it needs a cover story or an exit poll, and forget the rest of the time. It's not just a matter of burgeoning religiosity in America--it's a matter of Americans relating to each other, socially, in spiritual terms. Obama and Huckabee are "inspirational," and while a lot of it may have to do with their messages (if you go in for the whole "content" thing) it seems to me that the church-sprung oratory couldn't hurt either.
Which is really what bugs me about the fact (or at least increasingly conventional wisdom) that Hillary's ability to break down and cry won her New Hampshire. Anyone who's studied camp meetings knows that it works like this: you're alternately inspired and threatened by the preachers, until finally, ecstatically, crying with relief, you collapse liberated into the hands of the Lord. Hillary was responding to a charge Obama (and John Edwards) had made! The force of that charge to her system is what liberated her true self and her emotions! She's a textbook convert!
Not that there's anything wrong with converts--they often make the best preachers, from St. Augustine to Peter Cartwright--but not all converts can take it upon themselves to preach. Conversion isn't contagious in the way that inspiration is. If anything, Obama's victory to turn the heart of his rival should be enough to win him the nomination--or at least another year on the tent-revival circuit.
It's a logical continuation of the Third (or Fourth, or Fifth) Great Awakening that the press seems to discover whenever it needs a cover story or an exit poll, and forget the rest of the time. It's not just a matter of burgeoning religiosity in America--it's a matter of Americans relating to each other, socially, in spiritual terms. Obama and Huckabee are "inspirational," and while a lot of it may have to do with their messages (if you go in for the whole "content" thing) it seems to me that the church-sprung oratory couldn't hurt either.
Which is really what bugs me about the fact (or at least increasingly conventional wisdom) that Hillary's ability to break down and cry won her New Hampshire. Anyone who's studied camp meetings knows that it works like this: you're alternately inspired and threatened by the preachers, until finally, ecstatically, crying with relief, you collapse liberated into the hands of the Lord. Hillary was responding to a charge Obama (and John Edwards) had made! The force of that charge to her system is what liberated her true self and her emotions! She's a textbook convert!
Not that there's anything wrong with converts--they often make the best preachers, from St. Augustine to Peter Cartwright--but not all converts can take it upon themselves to preach. Conversion isn't contagious in the way that inspiration is. If anything, Obama's victory to turn the heart of his rival should be enough to win him the nomination--or at least another year on the tent-revival circuit.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Yale Daily News column, 12/6/2007: death, social class and metamorphosis.
(Helpful background: unsafe practices regarding pieces of scenery cause School of Drama student to get killed during load-in; the story generates 41 eulogies in the comments section; meanwhile, most of campus is talking about op-ed piece written by Eton alum decrying classism in pricing at the library cafe.)
I wish I were kidding about that last one, but I'm not. I find it unfortunate that only a few online commenters had the courage to ask whether the author actually knew anyone for whom this was an issue, or if he were sympathizing with the plight of purely speculative individuals.
***
Sorry that posting has been infrequent at best; most of my energy is going into term papers. If I'm lucky, they'll yield passages worth posting. Otherwise, I'll see you in a week or so.
(Helpful background: unsafe practices regarding pieces of scenery cause School of Drama student to get killed during load-in; the story generates 41 eulogies in the comments section; meanwhile, most of campus is talking about op-ed piece written by Eton alum decrying classism in pricing at the library cafe.)
I wish I were kidding about that last one, but I'm not. I find it unfortunate that only a few online commenters had the courage to ask whether the author actually knew anyone for whom this was an issue, or if he were sympathizing with the plight of purely speculative individuals.
***
Sorry that posting has been infrequent at best; most of my energy is going into term papers. If I'm lucky, they'll yield passages worth posting. Otherwise, I'll see you in a week or so.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
I'm still waiting for the nationwide Cigarette Aesthetics Blog, though.
Helen, as usual, has the right idea.
Not with the smoking per se, of course--though I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there's a wide spectrum of cigarette activity between abstinence and addiction that we ignore the more we automatically label smoking "a disgusting habit," and to our aesthetic peril.
But with the discipline of the conceit: limiting the scope of each post to that which can be encompassed by the smoke from a single cigarette.
Without such discipline, of course, blogging is every bit as debilitating an addiction as smoking. Believe me--I grew up in a generation (and social circle) where most of my friends had LiveJournals, and when we were ushered into a room around a microphone and asked to spill our guts about them for the newspaper the only thing that seemed odd to me was that there were other people around. I'm not saying the Internet made me confessional. But the medium of the blog normalizes a confessional behavior that is both infinitely performative (anyone could stumble upon the URL!) and solitary (there's no one to look in the eyes). And everything, everything, everything becomes potential post fodder.
Because on the Internet, every thought must be inscribed to be transmitted. Permanence is a byproduct of the medium. And when there's very little distinction between the action required to type out an IM and the action required to type out a blog post, publication becomes the obvious answer.
So it's not just that my generation is going to have problems with this "face-to-face-communication" you speak of. It's that we don't have an internal mechanism to distinguish between "thought worth sharing" and "thought not worth sharing." We assume that the virtual marketplace of ideas is robust enough that the cream will rise to the top of the Google search page, and beyond that we let our fingers do all the thinking.
Not with the smoking per se, of course--though I'm becoming increasingly convinced that there's a wide spectrum of cigarette activity between abstinence and addiction that we ignore the more we automatically label smoking "a disgusting habit," and to our aesthetic peril.
But with the discipline of the conceit: limiting the scope of each post to that which can be encompassed by the smoke from a single cigarette.
Without such discipline, of course, blogging is every bit as debilitating an addiction as smoking. Believe me--I grew up in a generation (and social circle) where most of my friends had LiveJournals, and when we were ushered into a room around a microphone and asked to spill our guts about them for the newspaper the only thing that seemed odd to me was that there were other people around. I'm not saying the Internet made me confessional. But the medium of the blog normalizes a confessional behavior that is both infinitely performative (anyone could stumble upon the URL!) and solitary (there's no one to look in the eyes). And everything, everything, everything becomes potential post fodder.
Because on the Internet, every thought must be inscribed to be transmitted. Permanence is a byproduct of the medium. And when there's very little distinction between the action required to type out an IM and the action required to type out a blog post, publication becomes the obvious answer.
So it's not just that my generation is going to have problems with this "face-to-face-communication" you speak of. It's that we don't have an internal mechanism to distinguish between "thought worth sharing" and "thought not worth sharing." We assume that the virtual marketplace of ideas is robust enough that the cream will rise to the top of the Google search page, and beyond that we let our fingers do all the thinking.
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