Lure of the List

The Chronicle: 5/26/2006: The Lure of the List: In this article, Lindsay Waters writes when confronted with list of top theorists published by Critical Inquiry "...my heart sank when I saw that the premier egghead journal of the land, Critical Inquiry, published an essay last winter that purported to rank the greatest literary theorists in its pages (and, by implication, the world). Why, at a time when we distrust megacorporations and any word from high, when we know it only makes sense to suspect the fix is in with any such lists unless they are produced by a klutz like Posner or a clown like Letterman would the leading specialized journal in the humanities toss very likely bogus social-science tools into its hitherto beautifully humming engine?"

Richard Burt sent this to a group of us, setting off an interesting discussion all by itself. Waters' narrative of CI's rise and fall into middlebrowdom is certainly in need of some revision, but Roger Whitson wrote that this is merely another symptom of the creeping logic of the academic culture industry's mimesis of culture industry.

Waters writes at the end, "The learned duplicate unthinkingly the worst behavior of society as a whole, celebrating the celebrities, not even pausing to think about the fruit wasting on the vine, whose cultivation might have benefited us all."

If Waters is deploring the lack of diversity in thinking, I agree with him wholeheartedly, but star system thinking is not an individual phenomenon, it is an institutional one, and all the "mistrust" of megacorporations (like Harvard at whose Press Waters is employed) will not generate meaningful critique of the rationalization of aura and charisma. So if Waters was saying that he thought Critical Inquiry types were too smart for "top ten" lists, then we all need to think again about how this kitschification of thinking, the generalization of "ready made" judgments of value have become ubiquitous.

Unfortunately, you need a password to reach the chronicle article. If you can't get the whole thing, I'll be happy to send it to you if you send me an email.

Confessing to Disbelief, but not to Satanism --

shouldn't be necessary, but it seems with a near universal consensus that we all must believe IN something -- best generalized by the twelve step program's "Power Greater than Myself" (which these days could include figures as diverse as Donald Rumsfeld, Ben Bernanke, Buddha, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Jesus, my Dean, my mother etc.), I must admit to being a radical skeptic! But I feel after outing myself as an atheist (in absence of the Inquisition, I am happy that I risk little danger to life and limb -- for now), I do feel the necessity (at least with the older generation of believers) to insist that I believe in something like a respect for the Other, an ethical relation to life itself or some other sort of disclaimer attached to atheism that amounts to something like -- I am not a follower of Satan, -- nor am I unduly afraid of him.

By this time, the disclaimer has amounted to a kind of belief, and I have to backtrack and to insist on this -- that I actually am violently opposed to ANY system of belief that holds life, its joys and suffering in contempt. At which point, I am perhaps in a satanic position, at least of unmitigated negativity....

My brain is eesploding: DeLay Defense Fund finds support from Stephen Colbert!

Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber links to Tom DeLay's defense fund website featuring a videoclip of Stephen Colbert's interview with muckraking documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald whose latest film The Big Buy documents DeLay's illegal activities in Texas.

They are using a parody of a conservative talk show host Stephen Colbert, whose controversial performance at the White House Correspondant's dinner drew ire from Democrats in order to defend DeLay. It's dangerous not to know how to identify irony and here is a case in point for taking a literature class or two on your way to a life of political corruption. You might be able to recognize satire when you see it!

The New Political Theology

emerges as a voice of dissent....but its anti-Nietzschean stance, or its attemp to fold back Nietzsche into Hegel worries me, because it does reverberate with the language of piety. I'm all for criticizing the ways in wihch the "multitude" has emerged as a militant subject of poltiical creativity and militancy...but Alberto Moreiras talk today on the philosophical work of anti-Pauline philosopher Vitiello suggests that the return of religion is going to be around for a long. long time.

Help!!!! with Terry Eagleton

I was reading Eagleton's Ideology of the Aesthetic with great pleasure, but I was deeply disturbed by something and am wondering if any of you have read any reviews or criticism of a glaring mistake in the introduction following a discussion of Paul de Man's work on Aesthetic Ideology:

Eagleton writes,

"In this sense Antonio Gramsci was right, when , in a remarkable flash of prescience, he wrote in his Prison Notebooks that 'It could be asserted that Freud is the last of the Ideologues, and that de Man is also an 'ideologue.'" (Eagleton, p. 10).

Gramsci has been attributed many powers, and I quite skeptical about him, but Eagleton must believe that Gramsci was able to see into the future since he died in 1937 and Paul de Man published his first and ignominious articles of wartime journalism in 1939. Gramsci most likely was referring to Hendrik de Man, Paul de Man's uncle, if indeed the citation of the Gramsci is correct at all." Eagleton references the Geoffrey Novell-Smith translation of selections from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks published in English in 1977.

No one as far as I can tell mentions this in any reviews of Eagleton's book. I have read three so far. I love this book, and I think one could fault copyediting as much as anything else, but still -- can no one have mentioned this ridiculous error?!

Eagleton may in fact be right about both Freud and de Man, and he condemns them for being anti-emancipatory in the most fundamental of ways. I would beg to differ slightly and say that they practice a kind of askesis with regard to social change. However, the egregiousness of Eagleton's mistake seems to undermine the seriousness of his critique.

Any enlightenment regarding this would be much appreciated.

Woolly Mammoth Friday

During the Cold War, the freedom and authenticity of private life was supposed to be protected by democratic states as opposed to totalitarian ones. Today, the front of the war against terror has moved increasingly closer to boundaries once cherished as sacred, at least in the official doctrine of the 1950s.

And why is it Woolly Mammoth Friday? Because I said so, that's why. The drawing is courtesy of Leo.

History: the Feel Good Experience

This LA Times Op/Ed denounces the California state board requirement that history textbooks should offer positive images of religious, racial and ethnic groups while demonstrating absolute parity in portraying males and females as "active" "creative" agents of history.

Everyone has to come out looking like a winner!

This is such a ridiculous idea of history that it makes me want to home school Leo. What students will learn from this feel good sanitized version of history is that history as a discipline is full of BS.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Basics, not luxuries, blamed for high debt

From the Washingtonpost.com/MSNBC.com we have this report that American consumers are up to their ears in debt because real wages have been flat since 2001 and the cost of housing, food and cars has risen 11.2%.

Although this report is careful not to blame your averaged debt-addled American for his or her spendthrift ways -- which is actually what the debt/credit culture would like us to buy into -- especially all those Money Magazine advice columns letting you know how much you could save if you just didn't splurge on $3.50 lattes everyday.

The Study was commissioned by the Center for American Progress, but I have yet to find it online. Student debt since 1992 has increased 127%. I would like to see a study about how this influences students' ideas about post-secondary education.

Debt demands greater study -- at every level -- economicallly, philosophically, politically and ethically. Kudos to those who are taking this on.

in the 7th circle of hell

in a story about interior decorating for the tv show "big brother," the guardian manages to precisely invert the two closely correlated axes this blog likes to rant about - home improvement and self-improvement - to convey exactly why the suburban perversion is so telegenic.

Survivaball!

Halliburton has come up with a one person gated community in case of environmental disaster: the Survivaball. Survivaballs allow managers to continue to maximize profits during floods, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes and other disasters caused by global warming.

More Fish Schticks

The Valve - A Literary Organ includes a post in anticipation of Fish's talk on Wednesday here at Irvine. The excerpted omnibus review by Fish that begins by pleading for an end to all omnibus reviews is totally amusing. It almost makes me wish that I were in a Miltonist, just to be able to appreciate better how Fish skewers his opponents on the shish kebab of his highly italicized prose.

But let me quote from Fish's recent lecture and respond to it, because one good shtick deserves another.

Vintage Stanley:

"If you do not want to see as your epitaph, 'She produced the BEST reading of King Lear evah," then you should not be in this profession!"

To which I would respond, I would want to see as my epitaph, "She produced the BEST reading of Dangerous Liaisons , but it made no difference whatsoevah! So she gave it up, and did something else, which also made no difference whatsoevah!"

But Fish's epitaph may read, "He tried to put a ban on the posing of profound questions in academic settings, but it made no difference whatsoevah!"

There is only one deflator allowed in his world, and that is Fish! A decidedly refreshing but infuriating presence.

Some thoughts on Stanley Fish...

He is a very funny man, and his idea that theories have no effect whatsoevah!!! is deflationary I suppose in a good -- Jackie Gleason -- and rigorously Freudian way -- didn't Freud write that deflation is the heart of Jewish humor? Maybe not, but I just totally disagree with him about everything he said, even though I found his Socratic performance here at Irvine yesterday completely entertaining...

Take this off the cuff remark -- "There are exactly 1 and a half people on the earth who care about my preferences and that is NOT including my wife."

I was dying to ask him how he can refuse to differentiate between aesthetic objects and non-aesthetic ones, visual objects and arias and melodies. I thought I might bring up the problem for example of the tchotchke....but I am sure he would just make fun of me if I mentioned something as pedestrianly Marxian as the commodity or reification as the dominant form of mediation, but then I would have lapsed into MY New Yawk accent and I would have exposed myself as a wannabe borscht belt comedienne.

blogging venuti

"Two approaches are used in translating names for the huge Chinese market: to translate a name purely for phonetic effect, using pre-existing characters bereft of their original meanings; or to translate for both phonetic likeness and effective employment of the meanings of the Chinese characters. Examples of the former include: Motorola (moutuo-luo-la) and Exxon (Ai-ke-sen), whose translations are a sequence of characters that sound like the original name but do not have a sensible meaning in Chinese, and are thus read only as a sound. Examples of the latter include: Coca-Cola (ke-kou-ke-le, 'tasty and happy') and Colgate (gao-lu-jie, 'very clear and clean'), whose translations carry a selected meaning in Chinese, as well as sounding an approximation of the English original."



Laurence Venuti is talking at UCI right now about "Translation, Simulacra, Resistance: Translating against the Global Political Economy," and one of his references is a business school branding study that seeks to lay out strategies for effective translation of corporate brands. I cite once more from the above: "Past missteps in local naming for foreign markets have been disastrous and costly" - and the branding study goes on to suggest that "sound plus meaning" makes for a better brand... Huh - well, duh.



But it is not so easy to discern how a translator, or those who pay attention to the global effects of translation and the concomitant assumptions about meaning or communication, are able to carve out a space of resistance. Venuti suggests, looking at a Tom Clancy novel in Spanish, an Italian translation of the NYC rough guide, etc. that at least translators can "smuggle in" irony and shading.

The No Thank You Zone

After thinking about the thank you note controversies, and the deeply institutionalized forms of thankfulness that we are all forced to bow down to if we are not to risk public and private censure, may I suggest the declaration of "No Thank You Zones" or areas and relations in one's life where one does not expect thank you's since the sense of solidarity (I mean this in the most political sense) obtains over and above the sense of obligation?

The No Thank You Zone would not cover my relationship to five year-old Leo, for instance, who, with his healthy sense of egocentrism has to learn how to acknowledge the labor of others....

If I were Zizek, I'd write a book about this: Home Decor, the New Moral Order

Yeah, yeah, there is a book here for some one else to write: recently, some one expressed shock and outrage that my home and office have such a just moved in feeling to them. The unsettled provisional look is not one I have chosen. It chose me.

Well, it's because we have been just moving in for about five years straight now, we have no decorating budget, and being the children of immigrants and refugees who always thought they were going home (Mainland China and Austria respectively), we have gotten in the habit of picking up found furniture and buying the cheap stuff.

This has been going on for half a lifetime and I am still thinking, "When I grow up, I'll get real furniture."

But I still can't afford real furniture. We live the life of the mind, and yet that kind of decor puritanism bothers me too, so when I do get some dough, maybe I'll blow it on some thing fabulous, but what that would be, I don't even know...

Creative Corporate Identities

From recent spam that addresses "Higher Yearning" as a corporation in need of an identity

When it comes to corporate identity Creativity is vastly important. Leaving a lasting impression sets you apart from your competitors. Creativity from the very beginninq - from logo and stationery desiqn - heIps to break throuqh in the marketing fields .It is the way to be individual and unigue and at the same time meet your customers' expectations ,beinq catchy without beinq odd. This is our credo.

You know, I want to be odd instead of catchy, so f*** you and your debased notion of creativity.

And what the hell does "unigue" mean?

Architecture of density

Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density tries to "show" how people are living in China and Hong Kong in high rises -- The density of the buildings is both almost impossible to capture in an image -- thanks for Dai Pengyun for the link.

Today They March, Tomorrow They Vote

Images from the LA Times of yesterday's anti-Immigration Reform protests in California. I wish I could have gone, but I'll have to let my fingers do the walking on the keyboard. UC Irvine was unnaturally quiet. Well, at least the construction sites were quiet. See the first comment below -- there was a march and police presence on campus. My bad, for not knowing.)

Workers took the day off to participate in the marches in Santa Ana and on campus, but otherwise there was little evidence on the street of the powerful popular protest movement (I stand corrected again -- see below) that mobilized a million marchers in Los Angeles proper and countless more in the smaller cities and counties. Vegetables rotted in the downtown wholesale markets as workers took to the streets.

Thank You Stephen Colbert, for speaking "truthiness" to power

Let's give thanks to Stephen Colbert for letting us in on the fact that there is a "Fact Free Zone."

He compares himself to W. -- a simple man, with simple ideas, who thinks and acts from his gut. I was cringing while watching this -- because I realized that I am not as brave as Colbert, even though I think I am pretty cheeky. My Chinese good girl training would have paralyzed me with guilt if not something worse if I were given a chance to speak 'truthiness' to power -- it was something I remember being told every day of my life about saving face for paternal authorities regardless of whether they deserved any kind of merit or respect and the order wasn't given in such abstract terms -- thank goodness Colbert was free from such conditioning!