an expansive view of the theory genius

is what I used to have...I used to think theory geniuses gave us more permission to think against routinization, but terrifyingly, theory genius itself has become a routine. One form of mentorship models theory genius to one's students, hoping that they will emulate one's singularity. I have become very skeptical of theory genius....routinization of theory genius actually leads to theory esoterica, which as we know is bad for thinking!

I still think of Derrida's lessons about archives, inscription, dynamism and borders with great admiration, but it's so hard to "apply" those concepts fruitfully without falling into imitation...I'm turned on by institutional history...which we could say, tries to put theory geniuses in their place!

Artisanal Parenting

or intuition proofing your life: it has come to my attention that many super privileged parents have devoted themselves to "artisanal parenting." Previously on the blog, I have complained about a system of "infant education" very fashionable among the well capitalized, anxious new parent set. Involved with this form of parenting is asking a preverbal infant if it is all right "if I pick you up." While it seems that these parents believe in infant choice or individual self-possession from the moment of birth, or least trust fund inception, they are actually transmitting the deepest form of anxiety possible - in the face of infant anxiety. I just heard Dr. James Grotstein speak yesterday: I wonder what this eminent Kleinian would say about this grown up fantasy about infant choice.

His thesis has to do with infantile anxiety as a condition of the transferential relationship - and talks about the immobilization of the infant in the crib as vital to understanding the analytical relationship. To pretend to give an infant a choice about being picked up when she/he is negotiating with paranoid/schizoid levels of anxiety seems a perverse at best, but is based upon a fantasy of the "perfect parent" whose respect for the child is infinite and infinitely oppressive. Compare this with the eminently pragmatic, but theoretically rigorous notion of the "good enough mother." Basically, what these rich, white parents are saying is, "the good enough mother is NOT good enough for junior" who will go on to assert his infantile needs as a form of "self-esteem" in a terrifying and perhaps even repellent manner.

Joan Didion on the Women's Movement

I'll let Didion's The White Album do the talking about the Stalin-Mao configuration of 1970s feminism that emphasized personal transformation and revelation of resentment as the MOST political event:

They [feminists] had invented a class; now they had only to make the class conscious. They seized as a political technique a kind of shared testimony at first called a 'rap session,' then called 'consciousness-raising,' and in any case a therapeutically oriented American reinterpretation, according to the British feminist Juliet Mitchell, of a Chinese revolutionary practice known as 'speaking bitterness.' They purged and regrouped and purged again, worried out one another's errors and deviations, the elitism here, the 'careerism' there. These puritans of the political spirit, they made of social injustice a moral issue -- one that could only be repaired by a thorough and public flogging of the enemy. The laughable practice of "speaking bitterness" that was recast from the practices of revolutionary China as a way of making the peasants understand their victimization at the hands of a class enemy was supposed to give women a new sense of agency - as the politically pure protagonists of a drama of self-discovery as collective redemption.

Didion's aphoristic criticism cuts to the core, but this is not to say that our work is done. The early deformations of the women's movement have to be understood historically and in the context of the successful institutionalization of "new social movements."

starting from the top???

Recently, a student asked me in a totally shocked manner, "You mean, I'll have to start at the bottom?"" of the film industry after getting an M.A. in Digital Arts. S/he wants to make movies -- let's see now, sequestered in an M.A. program s/he may have not noticed that there are literally millions of people worldwide who also want to break into the movie business.

The tough questions would be, "What makes you think you have a movie in you?" and "What is it that you love about movie making? The money or the process?" and then make decisions that cascade from the answers to the tough questions...

But what's so surprising about this piece of news, that one doesn't arrive at the corner office, but earns it, either through dastardly deeds or hard work or a combination of both? That the professional degree doesn't guarantee that you too will be able to make your digital dreams come true???

From now on, I've decided to spread misinformation about professional formation and tell everyone that everyone I know started at the TOP of our professions and worked our way to the bottom!

the decline of neoliberalism

as described by David Brooks is a sign that this conservative commentator can use his intelligence when his powerful overlords turn their backs temporarily. The demise of decline of neoliberalism is due in no small part -- and Brooks gets this right -- to the powerful progressive, liberal blogosphere, which has emerged as not only politcally, but intellectually critcla to those of us deeply shaken by the political scene since the election of 2000. The blogosphere has given me the confidence to assert a strong notion of contentious, historical universalism that is the pragmatic and theoretical grounding of a politics and ethics.

Baudrillard has passed away, rumors that Lacoue-Labarthe has passed as well

For a very biased, but funny account of Baudrillard's work read this . But why do right-wing commentators discredit themselves by hating on the French?

For a more balanced, but not as funny appraisal, read this . A generation of thinkers is disappearing. It is time to re-evaluate the radicalism that their thought once represented. Baudrillard's as well as Foucault's anti-liberalism appeared late in their careers less like critique than the dramatic diagnosis of forms mestasticized biopower (for Foucault) and hyperreality (for Baudrillard) that nullified history as much as the society of the spectacle itself.

Wack! at MOCA

opened this weekend. My friend has been working on this show for eight years. Connie Butler is an amazing art professional -- a serious person, a curator with an even hand and a lot integrity.

I salute her.

That said, this show made me remember why I felt oppressed by the feminism of the previous generation of women academics. Not all of them mind you....Linda Nochlin was a glorious exception, but I chose to work with a prominent feminist scholar whose work i admired -- until I realized that her intellectual frames of reference had been restricted by a principle and code of social networking -- I could only refer to friends who had passed the feminist litmus test. It all took on a Stalinist tinge, but the work in WACK! wasn't Stalinist so much as it was angry, messy, and exhibitionist. So much nakedness, so many bushes...it was as if the female artist tried to exorcise the demon of the nude by stripping herself down. Most of these women were in their twenties when they did this and the result is not so much a glorying in the body and its potentialty as much as it was an almost totemic display of it to ward off the power of other naked bodies and nudes.

I ran through the show quickly while I tried to herd a group of underage viewers into bush-free zones, but this show was incredibly educational -- there was so much work I had never ever seen! Go see the show. It's at the Geffen Contemporary.

favorite whines

have been on our mind recently...friends from New York have imported this joke...I do a lot of whine control in my everyday life and don't really have time to whine anymore although I used to, but all of this made me think about how a lot of the feminist/personal empowerment movement is about mobilizing the favorite whine into activism. Like, instead of saying, "he never takes me seriously..." whine, whine, whine, it suddenly became, "HE DOESN'T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY and this is a political issue." The problem with this political transformation of the whine is that it still assumes, a priori, that one deserves to be taken seriously as a matter of entitlement, rather than that being taken seriously must be earned. Now lest you all think that I have gone entirely the way of the stiff upper lip, think about the impossibility of the revolutionary whine!

By the way, we watched The Departed last night and what a mess of a movie. Heavy Handed, Excessive, Messy and Out of Control are understatements, but it opened in a promising manner, hearkening back to the anti-busing racism of Boston's 1960s with incredible soundtrack and documentary footage -- I thought it was going to be one of these incredible meditiations on class conflict, racism and violence, and then it turns into an inditement of one man, a "rat." No more black figures make it onscreen after we see a wee little lassie's face framed in a school bus while angry Irish Americans pelt her with eggs and insults. Scorcese has lost it...but best of all was his imaginary "professional woman" as police psychiatrist.

I think he needs to get out more.