LOL theo

It's been a little crazy

around here and I am working end of the quarter grading as well as trying to get Seymour Hersh to campus (money, money, money, money) and negotiating with a proposal for a Human Rights and Media initiative here at UCI. As of July 1, I will be assuming the directorship of the Humanities Center. I push to finish my book on Academic populism. So blogging will be sparser than ever --

I take my battles to the corridors. Enjoy the weather! On the Orange Coast, it has been unusually cool! We have also decided that feminism is code for sexy. I was back at the MOCA show, "Wack!" at the Temporary Contemporary in downtown LA when I found myself alone with two very focused men in a room filled with images of Throbbing Gristle. They were definitely writing dissertations on the stuff -- if you know what I mean...

intolerable tolerance

Tolerance is the new slogan under which we are supposed to fight against intolerance, but these two terms are strangely enough not antonyms. In tolerance is the other idea of an alway already intolerable other that we have to learn to "tolerate" not accept or even more dangerously -- question. Tolerance only asks that we aspire to a greater level of repression, whereas I think the problems of racism and intolerance, or even of deep mutual antagonisms can only be addressed with a stronger statement: No tolerance for Intolerance!

There is a campus campaign for tolerance here and while I would like to endorse tolerance, I feel as if it doesn't even come close to getting at the heart of the matter -- which is dealing with the different passions of the student body and their different beliefs as a sphere of political contradiction and conflict that should a public airing!

belatedly, more on the trouble with diversity...

Unable to keep up with The Valve in terms of topicality, I refer you to its discussion of Walter Benn Michaels' recent book, The Trouble with Diversity or How We Learned to Love Inequality which I read on the grueling r/t from Orange County to Philadelphia where we particpated in this event at Slought with Samuel Weber and Eduardo Cadava.

The event inspiring because of Sam's thinking about "Netwar, Networks and Narrative" from his book Targets of Opportunity which is in its own way, a critique of affirmative action hiring policies called "target of opportunity" policies that "targeted" minority candidates and created jobs for them out of diversity initiative funds.

No one at Slought was impolitic enough to mention this, but it does seem that Weber like Benn Michaels is asking to look again at what diversity means in the wake of its institutionalization.

Benn Michaels makes the argument that class is not a culture, and that cultural differences have usurped class differences as the only ones recognizable to institutions eager to congratulate themselves on the integrity of the meritocratic qualities.

Weber's argument is epistemological and has to do with targeting as a mode of thinking both the future and the other.

While the event was highly worthy, domestic air travel in economy class is pure masochism and makes me want to purchase every gadget in the Sky Mall catalogue in order to make me forget that I have been taken hostage.

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!

Wiki of Academic Blogs

Check out this Wiki of academic blogs created by Harry at Crooked Timber. It gives you an idea of the warp and weave of who is blogging in academia. While I wouldn't go so far as to call it, as Brad Delong did, "An Invisible College" it is something like an invisible network of academics who are choosing to "publish" outside of the main channels of professional life. I was recently forced to listen to some off-handed disparagement of blogs and blogging from academics and it occurred to me that this is primarily a defensive position against the development of a new form of academic exchange. It really may change the shape of professionalization, but for now it remains a para-university to me...but a very, very interesting one.