UCI and the Derrida Estate

Breaking News.....it is rumoured that the University of California Irvine has threatened to bring suit against the Derrida family for not turning over the rest of Derrida's archives to the Critical Theory Archive where Derrida had agreed to leave his papers. It may be that the family is having second thoughts about leaving the papers to UC Irvine, which is, after all, half a world away. IMEC , the French archive that houses the Foucault and Barthes papers may appear to be a more appropriate depository.

News of the possible suit has circulated among faculty here, but has not been publicly reported -- yet!

Radicalize the Middle Class!

This post at Daily Kos makes it clear that it is possible to craft a truly nonpartisan political consensus on the issue of radical economic injustice of the past twenty years. Economic equality, economic justice should in fact become the refrain of a new Progressive Platform. Of course economic justice has been denounced by demagogues of the right as "socialism."

Unfortunately for them, the economic policies of the past twenty years have sqeezed the middle class so hard that the consensus against governmental intervention has been broken by the broken government of the Clinton-Bush eras.

When I was in college and graduate school, the relative comfort of the middle class made them complacent: radicalization seemed barely possible. This economic complacency produced abberations on the left that led to an identity politics polarized splitting off the new social movements into fragmented demands for recognition, peace, an end to violence -- making political struggle a question of metaphysics. I have blogged before about the "take back the night."

Take back the government may be the new slogan of a new generation of proletarianized middle class families who have seen their paychecks looted by a new generation of free market oligarchs and plutocrats.

betalevel fun

at the reading in LA

boomer theory and tenure

The Chronicle has a remarkably candid article on the state of the academic job market. The advice of its pseudonymous author -- don't get a Ph.D. in the humanities. The overstocked academic fish tank keeps everyone scared and running or at least swimming quickly, trying out new balletic moves so as not be abandoned to death by student loan asphyxiation. But I teach graduate students and I am not supposed to endorse this kind of negativity and pessimism! So chin up!

I blame the boomers for this state of affairs. The New York Times published a ridiculous piece this Sunday I am not going even to link to because it is so bad. It makes the case that Obama vs. Hilary might be Gen X vs. Boomers and then goes on to dismiss this categorization as "branding."

In the spirit of branding though, I would just like to say that Boomers in academia like the rest of Boomers feel a messianic anti-historical power to their thinking that disdains American history above all and believes in nothing but the power of their own experiences and their own thoughts to redeem the alleged mediocrity of the times. Zizek is a perfect Boomer theorist. Even though he is not an American, he manifests a radical a-historicism that American theoryheads love.

Boomers have been known to say things like this, "Psychoanalysis should not be taught in the university." "Rock and Roll saved our lives." "Lacan was the most important thinker of the twentieth century."

You can't argue with Boomers because they are so numerous, they are always right. And they never notice that the times have changed and that they are not the Messiah they are part of the problem....Successful academic boomers are almost always divas, and have not reproduced. They have contempt for family life, as they believe in their own radical mobility, geographical and social. You can be a boomer academic and be younger than boomers -- you just have to believe that that you are terribly important and that you are on the side of the good in the culture wars (either right or left).

I should have probably published this under a pseudonym, but then again, boomers don't read my blog and I have tenure, so what am I afraid of? Boomers!!!

food blogging

I have just discovered the LA Food Blog where I can read about places I can't go. There are a couple of reasons my pleasure remains vicarious: 1. Money (although the blog covers plenty of cheap eats) 2. Distance (Irvine is just far away from LA and the traffic just bad enough to make one feel daunted by venturing on the 5 or 405 for a simple meal. 3. Family Lifestyle (Leo is very patient and tolerant with us, but we've weaned ourselves from restaurants more or less after we released that they were a kid's idea of hell for a long time -- loud, restricted movement, sometimes dirty floors, surly waitstaff or disapproving clientele.


Meanwhile, I have been thinking of penning a letter to the Irvine Company cluing them in on the fact that if they really want to attract young, creative, bo bo types to this area, they might think of letting in something more than franchises into their endlessly bland strip malls. But maybe they don't want bo bo's with their gay tolerant free wheeling ways to invade this part of the OC. Maybe they prefer the conservative work force with their limited palates.

Surging Skepticism...

Bush was at in again, trying to scare us into believing that if we oppose his lame strategies, Weapons Of Mass destruction will fall into the wrong hands. In the interview with Jim Lehrer, he seems to have imbibed so much of his own Kool-Aid that he repeats himself without any awareness that the "surge" or "new strategy" would merely return troop levels to 2005 -- which I suppose was a better year in Iraq than 2006.

And of course, we have read and heard that Bush is reading Alistair Horne's book on the French attempts to supress the FLN (National Liberation Front) in Algeria. Torture as a counterinsurgency method once revealed to the French public led to a national crisis of political legitimacy at home the effects of which are still felt to day. As the film, The Battle of Algiers demonstrates, the French won the battle, but lost the war: in the long run. De Gaulle's center right government was reviled for using Nazi era techniques on the insurgents. The Algerians were shown as absolutely indefatigable in their determination to resist the French military presence in their country and gain independence. If the French had stayed -- if they had tolerated 20,000 French military casualties, a million Algerian casualties and "stayed the course," would Algeria be better off today?

reading in LA Sat 1/20

Come to this reading in LA along with a group of writers who contributed to the Encyclopedia Project vol. 1 (A - E). Click below for more information.
   

iResist

the iphone...and the ihandcuffs that it disguises: The New York Times gets it right on its reporting on the creeping growth and iresistibility of the Apple Monopoly on downloaded music and digital life. Subtle changes in the way it configures iLife for instance makes it much harder to fileshare photographs and Keynote/Powerpoint format files. The article above is mostly concerned with music sharing and iTunes literal reading of the music industry's copyright laws -- which works very well to its advantage. With Apple's recent monopolistic behavior, Microsoft aint looking so bad!

Learning to Read

Leo is learning to read...

My own Iraq policy:

after much hair pulling and consultation with the experts, I favor withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. My own policy consultants tell me that US troops are third wheels in a full scale civil war.

Even though my policy statement is clear, I feel that since we bear the burden of responsibility for getting the Iraqi civilians into this mess, everyone who voted Republican in the last two elections will be taxed an additional 10% of his/her income, the proceeds of which will go into a Rebuild Iraq Trust to be used after the dust settles AND an alternative energy research fund (proceeds to be divided 50-50) to be managed by 1) Juan Cole and 2) Al Gore respectively.

Anyone who comes up with a better plan than this one can send it to me and I will choose the best plan. Winner will receive a free Iphone, runners up a ten pack of Orbit Bubblemint Gum.

See ?? I can come up with convincing new Iraq strategies as well.

iRefuse to worship the new iPhone

The Messiah has arrived for gadget slaves.

I may not be an ingrate after all since I am truly grateful that I feel no desire whatsoever to give Steve Jobs a standing "O" because he has announced that Apple is introducing the iPhone today!

wordless and powerless

are the best ways to describe how reports out of Iraq leave me...I escape into work or other equally distracting activities in order not to think about the situation. I try to focus on what I can control as reports of escalating violence and sectarian division reach the English language media.

When a more clear cut answer as to the problem was in reach -- protesting the war at all...expressing our dissent with regard to the ignominious Democrats who voted to approve this war, I felt more motivated to comment on the idiocy of the rationalizations, the outright deception and lies spread like a s#@# mist over the airwaves...but now what is to be done? How do we go one, knowing that this country is responsible for the misery and chaos that threatens to spill over and destabilized an entire region?

Is cynical resignation the only response? This is after a day when I already feel defeated at work by various forms of non-thinking that pass for righteousness...I have got no answers. I don't be believe in paroxysms of indulging in paroxysms of guilt, I feel as if I should spend every minute I am not housebound with my family because the streets are Irvine are policed by militia celebrating, grateful, selfish, hedonistic, but even that goes wrong most of the time and I end up making dinner and bitching about the unwashed dishes.

it's all about YOU -- NOT!!!

This post already comments on Time Magazine's shameless pandering to -- to -- YOU -- in an abject act of pseudo-personalization -- that is naming the "person of the year" -- YOU, or else, nameless Internet User.

Yes, even though they tell us, it's all about you, you know it is all about the "THEM" -- those manufacturers of opinion who are now worried about eyeballs and readership...but lest we wax too Culture Industry sweeping in our criticism of this new elevation of "YOU" -- all we have to do is look at the instrumental populism that has pervaded left and right wing culture since the 1970s.

Instead of real economic justice or economic populism, we have cultural pandering to the discontented majority. Don't take this false currency for real stuff...demand real justice, not condescending flattery.