the intemperate, the unconsidered, the undigested

My kiddo only naps in the car. Despite the fact that it's negative sumthin sumthin out there (wind chill adjusted), my wife and I take turns sitting in the driveway while she snores away. No fun. Except for the fact it's good pleasure reading time. No computer to take notes, etc etc. So today it was the newly arrived n+1 for me.

I'm going to write another post soon about a few individual articles, but first of all, I am wondering about how LS fits into their "Intellectual Situation" piece on "The Blog Reflex":

The accident waiting to happen to bloggers was most visible when they turned their attention to literature and ideas. The hope had been to democratize the intellectual sphere. Freedom of the press is for those who own one. But now all you needed was a laptop and some time on your hands. The idea was especially attractive in light of the consolidation of media holdings and the destruction of intellectual life in the '80s and '90s, when people began to work longer and harder for less, available public spaces and quiet cafes dried up, and argument in the academies gave way to 'respect'.

The blogs salved this ennui and created nourishing microcommunities. Yet criticism as an art didn't survive. People might have used their blogs to post the best they could think and say. The could have posted 5,000-word critiques of their favorite books and records. Some polymath might even have shown, on-line, how an acute and well-stocked sensibility responds to the streaming world in real time. But those things didn't happen, at least not often enough. In practice, blogs reveal how much we are unwitting stenographers of hip talk and marketing speak, and how secondhand and often ugly our unconscious impulses still are. The need for speed encourages, as a willed style, the intemperate, the unconsidered, the undigested. (Not for nothing is the word blog evocative of vomit.) "So hot right now," the bloggers say. Or: "Jumped the shark." The language is supposed to mimic the way people speak on the street or the college quad, the phatic emotive growl and purr of exhibitionistic consumer satisfaction - "The Divine Comedy is SOOO GOOOD!" - or displeasure - "I shit on Dante!" So man hands on information to man.

By the end of the second paragraph, it seems clearer that the writer's not talking about us and our circle, exactly... But what do others think? (n+1 affiliated lurkers, if you still come by, encouraged to come out of the woodwork etc...)

(UPDATE: After reading Scott Kaufman's new post on all this at the Valve, and having clicked through to his links to actual "litblogs," I now can totally see n+1's point... I guess I was thinking that we are a litblog. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case....)

Behold! Everything New is Old (again!)

Some of us in these parts have encountered a little blog fatigue. The same affliction is, well, afflicting some of those over at faucets and pipes. Are we tired and, if so, of what? Are people simply defending turf? Can we already predict what everyone will say?

These possibilities are particularly frightening in the blogosphere. After all, this (whatever "this" could possibly designate) is not a marriage. It's not like we are Ma and Pa after 40 years (or, I'm reminded about the joke about geezers on a porch mentioning numbers of jokes and laughing without having to tell the actual joke; the numerical referent is enough, to get those who know what it refers to laughing).

Continue reading “Behold! Everything New is Old (again!)”

Long Sunday in The American Book Review

Taking advantage of a little Sunday shyness then, (and shivers on my part, having just hiked/dog-chased a few dark and slippery miles of the Appalachian Trail in sleeting snow along the Tennessee, North Carolina border), also in untimely spirit of a simple sort, here is a bit of a printworld article on LS that appeared back in the July-August issue (#27.5) of the American Book Review (humble cost:  $4 and sendable to American Book Review, Illinois State University, Campus Box 4241, Normal, IL 61790-4241 – the issue includes a very good article by Pierre Joris on Rasula/American poetry, and an interesting exchange between Joseph Tabbi and R M Berry on narrative transcendence, Lyotard and Wittgenstein).   

Michael Joyce is the author of Othermindedness:  The Emergence of Network Culture among other, better-known things (though I recommend that one).  It is a very kind article (and typically gracious– as those who know Michael will attest). 

Blogs seem the most Calvinist of networked pursuits, a constancy of good works measured out not in coffee spoons but in relentless soupçons of comments and track-backs, cross-postings and intertwinings (or what Ted Nelson, the erstwhile John the Baptist of Hypertext, called intertwinglings)...

Long Sunday, of course, summons (and its home page subheads) Kafka's...phrase only matched in its melancholy evocation by my ex-wife Martha's characterization of August (she also a prof) as "a month-long Sunday night"...

Although, of les nostalgies des jours I'm partial to T.Bone Walker's, "They Call It Stormy Monday, but Tuesday's Just the Same," closely followed by John Berryman's "Dream Song 134," which goes


Sick at 6 & sick again at 9
was Henry's gloomy Monday morning oh.
Still he had to lecture

Continue reading “Long Sunday in The American Book Review”

Intern-ment

Naked Punch Magazine is looking better every quarter, I must say (they even have a very decent new blog!).  Warm welcomes all around.  From some of the front matter, here is a funny bit by Nadim Samman in the latest issue:

Nietzsche rightly points out that 'what makes people rebel against suffering is not suffering itself, but the senselessness of suffering'.  If suffering is given a 'sense', or justification, then it is easier to bear–and may even be sought out–provided that the justification is powerful enough.  Our mustachioed friend claimed that 'early man' invented gods to perform this function.  The gods acted as 'divine audience' or witnesses to the spectacle of mankind's torments, redeeming them through their regard.  What is the Curriculum Vitae if not a secular god, bearing witness to the misery of the Intern?...
I plead with you, recognize the will to power–the pseudo-employer's 'sense of function'–in the exhortations 'It'll be good for your career', 'It'll be good for your CV', and 'It'll be good experience'.  Remember that an exhortation is not the same as promise, or a contract.  Beware!  Such exhortations are calculated appeals to vanity.

...the Intern should be characterized as someone undergoing internment–detention.  By detention I mean separation from 'good' where you are.  In the realm of pseudo-employment 'good' is elsewhere; deferred.  Such is the ascetic–life-denying, career-denying–principle of work experience...

If you must suffer, let your 'good' elsewhere be something other than a list–mere sheets of paper.  Let your 'divine audience' reflect your deepest sense of function.

Continue reading “Intern-ment”

best unused titles for blogs

Ever think of or come across a great name for a blog that no one uses yet? I have. It is: The Mystic Writing Pad. Someone should really use that. Can anyone think of others?

Why

From Dialogic:  I would like to extend an invitation to bloggers to join in on a collective blogging section of our upcoming winter issue of Reconstruction. The issue is the “Theories/Practices of Blogging.” In addition to the special section of posts on blogging there will be about a dozen essays on blogging.

The deadline is October 27th.  Our intent in this section of the issue will be to collect a wide range of bloggers and link up to their statements in regards to why they blog (something many of us are asked) and any statement they have on the theories/practices of blogging. If you already have a post on this you can feel free to use it, or, if you are interested, you can submit a new one. We will link to each statement from the issue at our site, with the intent of creating a hyperlinked list of statements on blogging that can serve as an introduction to blogging (or an expansion of knowledge for those already blogging). If you are interested please contact me at mdbento AT gmail.com

On Classification

Sociologists, of course, have known for quite a long time that classification is not neutral (see Ange's post below - but also this and this) . In an effort to refocus the debate from accusations of cynicism, some selections from Emile Durkheim under the cut.

Continue reading “On Classification”

Academic distinction

While universities continue to be significant in the production of what-passes-for knowledge, theory, science and so on (for reasons that have to do with resources, libraries, payment of relatively high wages and therefore the allocation of time), it's nevertheless also the case that the internet - among other things - has posed significant problems for anyone wishing to protect the status of universities, and perhaps the universities' increasingly shaky monopoly on the authorisation and licensing of expertise, knowlege, etc.

So, while some feel nauseated, I'm actually a little amused, saddened and, from a distance, quite fascinated by the protectionist gesture of academicblogs.org. 

Continue reading “Academic distinction”

The Fame Motive - New York Times

My friend, Lee, sent me a link to an article in the NYT by Benedict Carey. I wonder if it adds anything to thinking about blogs and why people blog.

Link: The Fame Motive - New York Times.

People with an overriding desire to be widely known to strangers are different from those who primarily covet wealth and influence. Their fame-seeking behavior appears rooted in a desire for social acceptance, a longing for the existential reassurance promised by wide renown.  ...

“It’s like belief in the afterlife in medieval communities, where people couldn’t wait to die and go on to better life,” Dr. Brim said. “That’s how strong it is.”

Continue reading “The Fame Motive - New York Times”

AggAcad: Saving decentralization, fighting diffusion and common clutter, cat pictures and obscurity

I agree with Henry that Scott McLemee's latest column at Inside Higher Ed is well worth a look, and perhaps readers here–if they haven't done so yet–may have further comments or suggestions to make.  Scott makes a modest and sensitive proposal for an "aggregation hub" of "academic blogs," in part to link more visibly and usefully the publishing world with the more serious and focused (not to say ponderous) discussions or "symposia" taking place in blogland.  This seems to me as though it can only be a good thing, as Scott proposes it:

Over the past few columns, I’ve pointed to some opportunities and difficulties created by emerging forms of digital publishing. In particular, the item from last week – the one suggesting that university presses might benefit from working out a modus vivendi with academic bloggers — has generated interest and discussion. The space available online for the discussion of new books is, for all practical purposes, boundless. Meanwhile, the traditional forms of mass media place pay ever less attention to books. The avenues for making a new title known to the public get slimmer all the time. Literally slimmer, in some cases. Recently the San Francisco Chronicle cut its review section from eight pages to four, hardly an unusual development nowadays.

But will urging university presses to think more seriously about blogs (and other new media forms) really offer a solution? Or does it just compound the problem? Hearing from readers over the past week, I’ve started to wonder.

Many presses have very compact publicity departments – often enough, a single person. The work includes preparing each season’s catalog, sending out review copies, and working the display booth at conferences.

“So now,” the weary cry goes up, “we have to look at blogs too? Just how are we supposed to find the right one for a given book? There seem to be thousands of them. And that’s just counting the ones with pictures of the professors’ cats.”

Fair enough. Life is too short, and bloggers too numerous. And let’s not even get into podcasting or digital video....

The great strength of emergent media forms is also their great weakness. I mean, of course, the extreme decentralization that now characterizes “the broadband flatland.” It is now relatively easy to produce and distribute content. But it also proves a challenge to find one’s way around in a zone that is somehow expanding, crowded, and borderless, all at once.

With such difficulties in mind, then, I want to propose a kind of public-works project. The time has come to create a map. In fact, it is hard to imagine things can continue much longer without one.

At very least, we need a Web site giving users some idea what landmarks already exist in the digital space of academe. This would take time to create, of course. More than that, it would require a lot of good will.

But the benefits would be immediate — not just for university presses and academic bloggers, but for librarians, students, and researcher within academe and without.

 

As they say, read the whole thing, and the comments.

My own inititial three cents (speaking, of course, from the lowly fringe):  that ideally (to second Laura Carroll) this should strive to be a truly world-wide effort, conscious and proactively contentious of the escalating digital divide; that the blogroll at Political Theory Daily Review may be another useful starting point; and finally, albeit perhaps a bit whimsically, that until the walls of prejudice are torn down or tides begin to turn, there be either separate but equal representation (or uncomfortably assimilated groupings) of so-called "continental" and "analytic" philosophy websites.  This latter, I imagine, will take some hard collective lobbying and genuine cooperation, at least on the part of the underdogs (fortunately there are every day (and for every random blowhard) more signs of hope).  But that is a tired hobbyhorse, and needn't prove divisive.  Really.  More generally, with the dangers of merely recreating something already foreclosed either within or alongside the pedigrees of "higher learning" well in mind, I prefer like Scott to remain more optimistic, and open.  Anyway all comments, technical or otherwise, are more than welcome.

Newt vs. the Cyber Enemy

A friend of mine forwarded me the following interview with his holiness, sir Newton Gingrich.  It seems that he is trying to elevate the level of discussion in American politics, attempting to introduce "big ideas," and formulating a vision for "a better future that people believe is real."

But, of course, Newt being Newt, he has to take time to articulate the deficiencies of those wacky, zany democrats.  You see, they have been seized by the mania of left-wing, academic bloggers.

Continue reading “Newt vs. the Cyber Enemy”

Transference

How is it that blogs become sites of overinvestment? Rather than fora for discussion and disagreement, they all too quickly become stand ins for horrors, hopes, and disappointments of a sort clearly beyond their import. How easily we lapse into malign misreadings, or readings of another clearly in bad faith. How quickly we speed from disagreement to total disparagement.What sense can it possibly make to condense into specific exchanges on specific blogs the entirety of American first amendment jurisprudence, to speak of rights to own and to express and to own what one expresses? What is achieved by attacks masked as requests for clarification, attacks on others who offer themselves and their ideas, for nothing? Why do small exchanges come to stand for the entirety of the political situation of the world? For all of the history of philosophy? How is it that failure to agree comes to stand for the ultimate in complicity with evil? Surely we do not leap to such conclusions when we interact with others face to face, when we hear their voices.

Continue reading “Transference”

Koufax

Wampum.  Update:  Donald Rumsfeld, radical warmonger, or is that master of discharmingly nostalgic ceremonies, gives us "The Long War."  (Makes you wonder, when they'll let the average USian finally see this, doesn't it?)

A recommend

Simon Critchley is interviewed today by Mark Thwaite at the rather peerless ReadySteadyBook. An excerpt below the fold:

Continue reading “A recommend”

Another One Bites the Valve

• You're welcome over here, LB.  • They fuck you up, your mum and dad  • The best drink to have with Adorno (via).  • Picture the billionaires playing football.  • Worst. "Song." Ever.  • A Few Bad Apples (via).  • Chomsky gets his apology.

• Congratulations to Pierre Joris.  • Holy Maurice Blanchot!

• Long Sunday finds its niche.  • Image courtesy of here. • And Michael Benton has a new project.

• Walter Benn Michaels:

Continue reading “Another One Bites the Valve”

Response and exposure

Is there an ethics of blogs or a blogging/bloggers' ethics? It seems to me that blogs might help us think about responsiveness and perhaps even a duty of response.

An overly quick presentation juxtaposes two ethics: discourse ethics, that is, the giving of reasons and offering of justification before a community that includes all others, and, perhaps the ethics of the Other such that one is forever indebted to the the call of the Other; one must always respond, the demand of response is absolute.  Neither seems particularly useful in thinking about blogs--the former reduces exchanges to reasons, eliminating all sorts of play; the latter is too demanding, too much. We might say it turns thought over to trolls, eliminating the conditions in which thinking occurs.

In  Precarious Life, Judith Butler considers the ethical significance of exposure, of the fact of exposure that conditions all our lives. It sometimes seems to me that her account of exposure leans toward embodiment, but it may be that this leaning is more an element of my poor reading. At any rate, I wonder if this condition of being exposed might shed some light on blogging ethics.

Continue reading “Response and exposure”

Public? Yes, please!

What is a public?  Jodi Dean lucidly suggests that since calls for the 'public' are voiced, well, in a pre-existing public, such calls are mostly political interventions for a certain kind of public, i.e., one more amenable to one's own orientation.  We might say, then, that these calls for a public are disengenuous, not actually concerned with achieving a true public.  (One can obviously place in this context Republican calls for a less `liberal biased' PBS.)

What, then, is a true public?  Is it the pre-existing public that allows for various factions to fight within it for their particular definition of a public?  The set that exists before the battle to hegemonize its definition and practice?  Does a true public only pre-exist the hegemonizing of the set through the rise of the master-signifier?

Or can we say that, only with the right master-signifier, the right political order, the true public actually comes into being? 

A true public is one without pigeon-holing, where one doesn't automatically place oneself in five seconds of speech.  It's one where you don't know what I am going to say next.  It's where I am not merely offering pre-digested soundbites.  Most of the blogosphere then has nothing to do with this true public; partisan hackery is but more TV (which is precisely why the TV networks can so easily report on this sector of the blogosphere), as are the endless ruminations on what one fed one's cat today.

The true public goes beyond your surprise at my words, my positioning.  I must be surprised myself.  As in the decisive act that overwhelms you, that preempts one's understanding of one's own actions, here I must myself be surprised by what comes from my `pen'.  Only after the fact, upon the establishment of a new order, can I come to understand what I have done.

But then the question is: does the new order in fact get created here, in this part of the blogosphere?  What could that mean?  No, yes, maybe new orders are constantly being tested.  We're playing at being vanishing mediators.  But playing with an enormous sense of responsibility, for the Other.  So maybe, then, Long Sunday is both the `true public' before the hegemonization of the very term 'public', and the Just `public' after the right hegemonization. 

Having it both ways?  Ah, the life of a vanishing mediator...

Zizek writes, in a sort of parallel:

The "political" dimension is... doubly inscribed: it is a moment of the social Whole, one among its sub-systems, and the very terrain in which the fate of the Whole is decided - in which the new Pact is designed and concluded.  (For they know not what they do, 193)