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April 29, 2005
revisiting...
Thomas Scheff on Michael Billig:
"In my view, Billig's use of discourse analysis has the potential of transforming an entire field of endeavor. Although Billig modestly claims only to clarify Freud's theory of repression, the book lays the groundwork for a complete re-statement of psychoanalytic theory as a whole. By focusing on the details of dialogue, Billig's work portends a psychoanalytic theory and method that is virtually new."
Posted by Steph at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 28, 2005
Skopos
The Stoics distinguished between the skopos (intentions) and telos (results) of an action.
More recently, it seems this distinction has been conflated.
Posted by Steph at 09:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
talk about ambition!
This guy went for the big one with his thesis: What Hath Bakhtin Wrought?
Toward a Unified Theory of
Literature and Composition.
Posted by Steph at 02:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
on the discursive turn
Find this! Stuart Hall on Ethnicity and the Discursive Turn.
Here's another one: Taking the discursive turn: Critical studies in language, discrimination and schooling.
This social movement study,
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN BLACK ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSE, adopts an approach in which movement discourse is viewed as a networked field of concepts from which arguments are fashioned. This approach requires an examination of the socio-cognitive structure of a discourse, an analysis of its rhetoric, as well as its ideological foundations."
Here's a piece that attacks criticisms that discourse analysis has little to contribute to policy analysis: Geographical knowledge and policy: the positive contribution of discourse studies.
The Virtual Faculty is geared to psychology, but is as communication oriented as one could imagine.
Criticism of the postmodern in the guise of Rom Harre.
This sounds like me! At least from the title, Reflexivity and Narratives in Action Research: A Discursive Approach. :-)
Wouldn't it be wonderful if this piece on feminist theory actually helps me write my final paper for 691?
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"I feel like I'm looking at the inside of your brain"
Posted by Steph at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2005
Videochat Success!
Posted by Steph at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 25, 2005
last HURRAH!
Posted by Steph at 11:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
translucent opaqueness of difference
Interpreting is akin to translation. Translators work with written texts, and have time with which to consider structure, meaning, flow. Interpreters work in the moment, utlizing judgment, mediating relationships as much as any information transfer in the communicative process.
"Translation produces out of seeming 'incommensurabilitiess...neither an absence of relationship between dominant and dominating forms of knowledge nor equivalents that successfully mediate between differences, but precisely the opague relationship we call 'difference'" (Chakrabarty, 2000: 17).
Posted by Steph at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 24, 2005
dreaming
"I take gods and spirits to be existentially coeval with the human, and think from the assumption that the question of being human involves the question of being with gods and spirits" (Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2000:16).
I would call this an example of esoteric knowledge, to be contrasted with the exoteric kind.
Yes, I know I sound/look/appear as a lunatic. But I'm not the only one.
Posted by Steph at 11:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
incipient
Just read this word in the introduction to Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe. In the particular context it reads negatively, as though "necessary" and "incipient" are inherently contradictory (p. 15).
I'm thinking, though, that an aesthetic life lives on the edge of incipience. It anticipates what will appear, what could appear, if contingency allows. It arrives simultaneously with an appearing. This is how intersubjectivity operates - myself and an other(s) meet in temporality, in a particular place, producing a certain space of action.
Posted by Steph at 11:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
new pope loses no time
Actually, there's no specific statement from Pope Benedict XVI in this article, Vatican condemns Spain gay bill, but he clearly didn't want to take any time to think it over.
Sent via email from a friend.
Posted by Steph at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
a let down :-(
I went to the opening of The Interpreter tonight with my favorite odd couple...great acting but the story was, well, just a story.
There was hardly any interpreting: a few flawlessly delivered scenes from the booth, and one short small group meeting. Obviously the interpreter has to manage her emotions in the face-to-face setting, which she does (of course). Then hesitates only slightly before breaking confidentiality with UN Security.
It's a quick scene, but certainly raises every ethical red flag one can imagine. Is she beholden to her employer (the UN) or the interlocutors? Does (or should) she have national loyalties, or is an internationalist stance the only appropriate one, given the context? Sure, supposedly it's life and death. That's always the litmus test, right? Perhaps overtly political situations are demarcated by different boundaries than the social service, medical, and educational situations in which community interpreters face our ethical dilemmas?
It was interesting to watch this just before I head overseas to talk with interpreters for the European Parliament. Sans the suspense of an assassination attempt, there was a view of the milieu.
Posted by Steph at 01:12 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 23, 2005
Seven Types of Ambiguity
Well, the write-up in Newsweek (Dec 13, 2004) got me interested. I like the notion of examining things from a variety of perspectives. Not sure if I'm ready for seven variations on being obsessed with a former lover. At least not yet. *sigh*
Posted by Steph at 07:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hot topics: EU Plenary in May
The freedom of services directive (the famous Bolkenstein text) and the forthcoming referendum on the constitutional treaty in France. Neither is likely to make it to the floor of the House this month but should be a topic of debate in group meetings, press briefings and at the bars.
Check out the EP website to download the preliminary agenda.
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MOST
MOST is the electronic journal put out by UNESCO that Jackie wants me to check out. It does look good. :-)
Posted by Steph at 06:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
'What the hell is "civil society"?'
James passed on this piece by Neera Chandhoke while ago, thinking it might assist me with Marta's paper. I'm not so sure about that, but I think it will help w/ my project in Europe this summer. :-)
I should also keep my eyes on the website where this was originally posted: openDemocracy.net.
Posted by Steph at 05:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
am I behind?
I feel like I've missed a report or several.
Ana Elisa, Sam really wants to hear from all of you! Mangeca, what's up lately? Cheryl, Sam wanted you to know that both he and Bill are glad you're back (from your trip in March). Jennifer, no, Sam didn't wear his bunny ears for Easter this year. :-(
Sam is now connected to the Internet via my old laptop and Adelphia cable. He doesn't use the computer himself, only when someone is there to assist. If any of you want to try and contact him through an online chat service, that's the reason he's wired. He has a camera for visual chat and audio too. It's harder to understand him if I'm not looking at him, and he doesn't understand as well if the audio quality is a bit low. So whoever's helping him acts as a bit of a communication facilitator, repeating messages back and forth.
It worked really well on our first trial this past Friday morning - except my dial-up connection is too slow to send video. I'll try from the university sometime next week. Point - you need high-speed access for visual contact, but can do audio or typing if you have a chat capabilities. Let me know if you want to test it out.
Various people at Eden Park will be helping Sam with this - Penny and Karen from activities, and I'm optimistic a computer-guru friend of mine, James, will be able to spend an hour or two with Sam/week, so we'll have a guarantee of connection at least during those timeslots.
Folks, please keep trying the comment feature - but maybe it makes sense to copy and save your response in a word file first so you don't lose it. It really ought to work, but your comments won't show up right away like they used to...I have to let them in. That's the only way I could block the nasty spam.
Sam will now be able to come in and read the blog directly himself, if he wants! And even have someone else type in responses...let's see how these new frontiers develop!
Posted by Steph at 05:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
on whiteness
I think it was Peter Flynn from Paula's class last semester who had a book by David Roediger with him. Definitely stuff to check out:
Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past
Whiteness of a Different Color traces European immigration to the U.S., 1840's-1920's. When the "roots" of the legacies us white folks have inherited were deeply laid.
Posted by Steph at 04:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Everything is Illuminated
Has anyone read this, by Jonathan Safran Foer?
Hey - check out HotType!
Posted by Steph at 02:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
a Guggenheim!
Carolyn's very own Kimi Takesue has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Congratulations, Kimi!
Posted by Steph at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
beginning . . .
Thoughtful questioning is more important than construction of systems (Moran summarizing Heidegger 246)… can thoughtful questioning itself be structuring in a systemic way? Seeds are sown – production, address, negation, accessibility – a trajectory will unfold, its velocity overdetermined by dissent, assertion, resistance, negotiation. A group forms within the limits of language, guided by what ideology/ies? A Marxist view juxtaposes persons with historical movement; Marcuse claims Heidegger accounts for the bourgeois deconstruction of social life from within (Moran, 245). Are we transcendentally homeless?
“We are caught up in a structure of care…it is not a matter of indifference to us” (Moran, 241).
Heidegger’s project is not problem-solving, but descriptive of “falling” in (to?) the world. When, where, how can we catch our thrownness? At what moments does it matter, and when is the flow of existing trajectories generative in their own right?
Dasein, existentially, is care, and “names human being in so far as it is individualized as myself or someone else and in so far as questioning is its essential mode of relating to Being” (emphasis added, Moran 238, ref Being & Time, § 41).
Not only do the questions we ask cast certain patterns and presuppose certain boundaries on the discoverable, these questions will be shaped to some extent by our mood when inquiring, and are imbricated with the performative. We will co-enact and co-construct a kind of knowing; could it be a knowing-together?
“Heidegger,” according to Moran,and me, according to me (!), “is coming to see that the essential disclosure of things takes place through Dasein’s concernful dealing with things in the environment, that it takes place essentially in expression. Relating to things, disclosing them, always relates to our concerns in advance, our relation is primarily interpretative, or hermeneutical” (emphasis removed, 234).
Posted by Steph at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2005
A21 walkout and boycott
The labor walkout yesterday was amazingly successful! The Collegian's coverage focuses on the rally, which they say "Within an hour...reached a peak of nearly 1,000 people." Of course, this is only a fraction of the thousands who refused to attend classes in solidarity.
Many comm-grads and faculty were present, spoke, walked out of classes, picketed, and otherwise supported the effort.
The GEO walkout puts UMass labor activists and concerned workers in solidarity with similar efforts across the country.
The walkout was the second in a series of increasingly public protests. The first was a march on April 1 in which at least 600 graduate students and our supporters participated.
We're not acting alone, either! Why do we need such a high level of organized protest?
Posted by Steph at 07:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2005
Social activism
"Social" implies relationship, refers to communal activity and the boundaries between public and private, and presupposes structures of human Being.
Activism is defined as conscious action to achieve a desired result.
Social activism, then, is intentional activity that seeks to achieve change in modes of human organization.
Posted by Steph at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
mesearch or research?
Thanks, Nuria, for posting this to the air-l listserv!
---
Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33b01001.htm
From the issue dated April 22, 2005
The I in Sociology
By BARBARA KATZ ROTHMAN
My husband and I were sitting in the kitchen, the edited manuscript
of my first book in my hands, the galleys in his. I always read
aloud, he always proofreads -- that's our system. That was the first
time, though, and we didn't really have a system yet. It was just
the two of us, trying to figure out how to review galleys.
Daniel, our first child, was 8 years old. I can't quite remember
what he was doing, but I can picture him, leaning back against the
kitchen cabinet, engrossed in something, while I read. Suddenly his
head snapped up, he turned to me, and he demanded: "What?"
I'd just read a description of his birth, a graphic, personal
account of what it felt like to give birth to him. It was from the
preface of my book, a piece that would segue into an academic
discussion of the home-birth movement and the politics of midwifery,
the work that had been my dissertation. The book opened with my own
story, my own birth. But "my own birth" was Daniel's
birth; my birth story, his.
He had become a character in a book. As, by now, have my other two
children, my husband, other family members, friends, colleagues --
and, of course, I too am a character in my own books. Writers of
fiction are known for stealing bits of life and putting them in
their books. That practice also defines the increasingly popular
genre of memoir. But what does it mean for a sociologist? What does
it mean when I "use" my life and the people in it that way?
More and more sociologists are doing just that: mining our own
lives, our own experiences. Just as the anthropologists have moved
closer to home, losing some of their fascination with exotica and
exploring their own locales, sociologists have moved in closer as
well. But for us, it was never about sailing off to some island
somewhere -- we were always exploring close to home. Increasingly,
though, we've come closer and closer, turning our sociological eyes
on our own lives.
In that first book, I used the personal as a frame -- Daniel's birth
in the preface; Leah's birth, which also took place at home seven
years later, in the epilogue. I published the book in the early
1980s, and that was pushing the envelope about as far as I cared to:
I felt uncomfortable enough discussing intensely personal
experiences, let alone ones as physical as giving birth. So why did
I do it?
I was criticizing contemporary medical practice, and I must have
sounded like a total flake. Whenever I presented my work about home
birth, except at midwifery meetings, someone was sure to ask
me -- no, accuse me -- "But is it safe?" People seemed to think that
home birth was an indulgence for the mothers, but what about the
poor, helpless, abused babies, born without the benefit of a
labor-and-delivery suite?
The way to counter that was not, I came to realize, with endless
statistics demonstrating the safety and improved outcome of births
outside the hospital. This was just not about the numbers, not to be
answered with studies showing home birth to be safer. More effective
than data, I had myself. I was a graduate student when I had my
first baby, an assistant professor when the second was born. I was
married to a computer programmer, living in Flatbush. Could anybody
be more normal, more square? If I introduced myself to the reader --
placed myself in my home, with my family, in all my ordinariness,
decency, plain old niceness -- maybe the reader would accept me
enough to hear what I was saying.
What I was saying was, I thought, really fascinating sociologically,
which made it worthy of being a
dissertation. The work came about because I was at a particular
moment in my life and my work: Academically, I was finished with my
course work; personally, I wanted a home birth. As I explored my
options (really, really limited in Brooklyn in 1974), I found my
mind was working on two tracks. One was trying to solve the
immediate problem of finding someone to attend a home birth, getting
what I wanted for myself. The other was listening to my sociological
imagination, which kept saying, "That's fascinating." I knew there
was something important in what I was
going through that I needed to get back to in my scholarly work.
And so I did. When I had the baby, when I'd accomplished what I
wanted for myself, I went back and mined what I had found in the
world of birth. I was, of course, primed to find things: Years of
sociological training had made me ready to see the ways that
obstetrical knowledge, like all knowledge, is constructed, and the
powers served by that construction.
So I finished my dissertation, using very standard research
techniques. I analyzed the content of medical and alternative
literature; I conducted long interviews with medically trained
nurse-midwives who had begun to do home births. Between my first
book's preface and its epilogue, the word "I" appeared only to
represent the researcher ("I asked the midwives I interviewed ... ")
or the author ("In this chapter I will show ... "). I the mother, I
the woman, I the character in the book showed up only at the
beginning and end.
Now, more than 20 years later, I have just finished another book
inspired by my transition to motherhood: this time, on account of my
third child, Victoria. Victoria is mine by adoption, and it is a
kind of adoption that has a troubling -- and fascinating --history
in America. It's a "trans-racial" adoption: I'm white, as are my
husband and thus, definitionally, our first two kids; Victoria is
black.
I find that sentence very difficult to write. I need pages and pages
to discuss the meaning of terms like "race" and "transracial
adoption," and to explain why I prefer "white" and "black" in this
instance to "East European Jewish" and "African-American." I took
that amount of space to examine those language issues in my new
book, Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption (Beacon Press,
forthcoming).
I have written books in between, and probably more as a matter of
style than substance, my use of "I" has grown over the years. Still,
most of the time in my books, it is a fairly restrained,
controlled "I," used to announce my authorial presence, to provide a
helpful anecdote, to ease the reader along with a personal touch
when I present difficult, troubling, or perhaps threatening
material. That is how most of us in sociology have been using the
personal voice in our work.
But my latest book is different, not only because of the informal
language or the more-frequent use of "I." This is a far more
personal book, one that grew out of and is informed by my life, not
simply framed by, or sprinkled with, personal anecdotes. I weave
back and forth in my writing between my research and my feelings and
responses to that research.
Some sociologists call such work autoethnography, to distinguish it
from simple memoir. In memoir, the driving force is the story: You
want to tell your life. In autoethnography, your life is data.
Autoethnography is a methodology that makes particular sense when
you're living a fascinating life, when you're having interesting,
informative experiences.
But who isn't? To a sociologist -- particularly the kind of
sociologist I am trained to be, someone who does qualitative work,
trained to regard the ordinary world itself as fascinating -- data
are always and everywhere thick on the ground. Sometimes when I'm
talking to a student about events that are happening in her or his
life, like a relative's dying, or a traumatic move, I say, "Take
notes!" When the situation has been resolved, the student may find
something intellectually valuable in the experience, something on
which to do scholarly work, maybe even autoethnography.
And yet that's not quite what my book on race and adoption really
is. It's not an ethnography of my family's lives and experiences.
Partly that is precisely because of the question Daniel asked so
forcefully when he was 8: Who owns the data? The experience I had
giving birth was, I felt then and still feel now, very much my
story, which I own. But Victoria's story is not entirely mine. I had
the difficult -- and yes, intriguing, so here I am writing about it
-- problem of figuring out where the boundaries are. What parts of
the experience are my story, to which I am fully entitled, and what
parts are hers, for her to use if and how she chooses?
One thing I did was have her read the book before I gave it to the
publisher for editing, or at least read all of what she so
charmingly calls the "nonboring, nonsociological" parts. We went
through the manuscript together and stopped at every mention of her
name. Occasionally she changed a word, edited a phrase. But even
before that, I had given the manuscript to someone else who knows
and loves both of us, and asked her to read it through Victoria's
eyes, to show me where I was treading too close to the line, where
we needed to protect her life from my writerly grasp.
In the end, what I am doing in the book is pretty much what I do in
the classroom. It is not memoir, though I certainly do tell some
stories from my life. And it is not autoethnography -- not an
analysis of my life. The driving force is neither the story nor my
life as data. Instead, I have a number of concepts that I want to
get across to the reader. I search for examples in whatever is
available to me. That includes my life.
On the other hand, my life is also what gives me some of my ideas:
Concepts develop out of living; experience congeals into thought.
When I express the idea, I draw upon my life. I'm not searching my
life for interesting scenes and seeing how I can fit them into a
book, the way I would if I were doing a memoir. I'm wrestling with
ideas, which have often come to me in the course of living my
life. I use my writing to try to explain those ideas and introduce
them to other people.
Inevitably, then, in my new book I slide back and forth between
memoir and sociology, treading recklessly close to what my
colleague, Juan Battle, calls "mesearch" rather than research.
"What theory are you using?" one of my graduate students asked me at
a party when I described the book a while ago. She's doing a
dissertation, and she listed the theorists who seemed appropriate. I
stammered answers -- we were at a party, not an exam. I sipped my
wine. Hell, I thought, I'm not using theory here, I'm using
practice.
But practice is, for all of us, grounded in theory, in ideology, in
ways of thinking about the world. I'm a sociologist. I'm more a
sociologist than I am a Jew. It's my way of thinking, my stance in
the world. So when I saw how interesting so-called transracial
adoption was, just as when I saw how interesting home birth was, my
mind went off on two tracks: getting done what I needed to in my own
life, and taking sociological notice of things to set aside for
later use.
Perhaps inevitably the book has a lot about who I am, how I live my
life. As I have noted, we see more and more of that kind of work in
the social sciences these days. Some of my colleagues regret that
move to the personal, and some revel in it. Oddly enough, I am
unsure how to feel about it. I hate to read autobiography; I rarely
even read biography. The stories of
individual lives interest me less than the contexts in which they
are placed.
So I have to ask myself if I am spreading my emotions across the
page, my reactions to both the events of my life and to my research
inspired by those events, just because it has become more
fashionable to do so. Is the use of the personal voice what one
expects or needs these days, to reach readers outside academe -- a
way to be nonboring, nonsociological? Or am I making good,
intelligent use of myself, my life, and my experience, as a
resource? What I like to think I'm doing is being nonboring and
sociological.
But I've just been reading a paper by one of my graduate students,
Colin Jerolmack, about sociability and pigeons -- he hung out in
parks and watched the interactions between people and birds. It was
perfect sociology. And it made me jealous.
I know how to go out and gather data. I could do that again. But my
life, well, my life keeps getting in the way. Just let me finish
revising a book on birth and midwives, wrap up the one on
adoption, make some progress on the new work I'm thinking about
doing on home cooking -- just let me get past my own life for 10
minutes, and maybe I could think about something else.
Maybe I'll go hang out in the park and see what strikes me as
interesting.
Barbara Katz Rothman is a professor of sociology at the City
University of New York's Baruch College and Graduate Center. She is
the author, most recently, of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and
Adoption, forthcoming next month from Beacon Press.
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 51, Issue 33, Page B10
Posted by Steph at 03:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
double uh oh
Looks like I might get to experience the standing in line for hours hope they get to me before they close experience at the U.S. Embassy in Boston...
The site I looked at before (with a 2-day turn-around via phone) was for British citizens. ARGH!
Posted by Steph at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
building a mystery
Yes, this is a title track by Sarah Mclachlin. I"m not sure if the lyrics or tone is what we might want to project, but I had the mental association as I was thinking about "the footage" as a model for publicity.
Also, what is Future Search?
You come out at night
That's when the energy comes
And the dark side's light
And the vampires roam
You strut your rasta wear
And your suicide poem
And a cross from a faith that died
Before Jesus came
You're building a mystery
You live in a church
Where you sleep with voodoo dolls
And you won't give up the search
For the ghosts in the halls
You wear sandals in the snow
And a smile that won't wash away
Can you look out the window
Without your shadow getting in the way?
You're so beautiful
With an edge and charm
but so careful
When I'm in your arms
Cause you're working
Building a mystery
Holding on and holding it in
Yeah you're working
Building a mystery
And choosing so carefully
You woke up screaming aloud
A prayer from your secret god
You feed off our fears
And hold back your tears, oh
Give us a tantrum
And a know it all grin
Just when we need one
When the evening's thin
You're a beautiful
A beautiful fucked up man
You're setting up your
Razor wire shrine
Cause you're working
Building a mystery
Holding on and holding it in
Yeah you're working
Building a mystery
And choosing so carefully
Ooh you're working
Building a mystery
Holding on and holding it in
Yeah you're working
Building a mystery
And choosing so carefully
Yeah you're working
Building a mystery
Holding on and holding it in
Yeah you're working
Building a mystery
And choosing so carefully
You're building a mystery
Lyrics found at
Posted by Steph at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 20, 2005
to do 4
global-local nexus
psychic coherence
foot fetishizing (!) no no no. It's sneaky publicity!!!!
I really wanna send my "seriously" snapshot to reddirt....
labor extension people? when/how/who else do we bring in?
the DEPARTURE matters
the performative nature of questioning: "every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought" (Heidegger, Being and Time, in Moran, Intro to Phenomenology, p. 236.)
Donna! "When biography matters." Not only Heidegger, but Althusser, who murdered his wife.
A reprise of the "mentoring" project? Really, the "international and domestic relations climate" project.
Posted by Steph at 05:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Morley & Robbins
Nice section on the European identity crisis, historically premised upon negative forms of identification (vs Others) and unity (geographically and symbolically bounded).
Posted by Steph at 05:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 19, 2005
the poop machine
Anna is a cutie-pie!!!!!! Her ma and pa are looking pretty durn good too. That new parent glow. It is a glow - she's not a crier and they've even been getting some sleep! I got to hold that squirmy little being for awhile - she definitely knew I wasn't one of the biological parental units, such muscles in her neck already! Eight days old, a good strong grip, focus, sound-sight coordination....let's see, she's going to grow up trilingual and whatcha wanna bet all the love from those proud parents is gonna seep so deep into her bones she'll hardly ever have a sad day. :-)
Posted by Steph at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2005
technicalities
Well. Sam and I didn't talk too much today. We were busy fiddling with the internet connection and laptop. It's not quite functional yet, but hopefully by tomorrow morning Sam will be able to be online with his own email account and a CAMERA so that he and I (and anyone else who has "ichat" or equivalent?) can talk and see each other by live action video.
I'm not sure if he's really going to use the email feature or not. I'll keep you posted. I don't leave for a few more weeks, so there's time for us to work out any bugs. (That's the plan, anyway!) I'm hooking Sam up with his own computer guru to deal with things while I'm away.
There have been few comments recently, and that may be because the new system is screwed up? I meet with my own computer guru on Thursday morning, we'll check this out again. (I thought it had been fixed already - sigh.)
Anyway, Sam is in good spirits. He's a bit intimidated by all this computer stuff as he never, ever, used one in this computer-mediated communication kind-of-way. (I'm not sure they even had email while he was at The Experiment?) He's kinda old. :-)
I'm hoping to train a few of the staff at Eden Park, and the activity staff also know about this. So maybe you will all be able to have more direct contact with Sam if you wish. In the meantime, I hope you'll use the blog and keep trying to comment....one of these days it will work without a hitch!
Posted by Steph at 08:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
check this OUT!
Difficult Dialogues, a grant from the Ford Foundation.
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End of Air-l-aoir.org Digest, Vol 9, Issue 17
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April 17, 2005
democracy in Egypt?
David sends on this http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BF020769-742C-4053-A0C6-35F01B971241.htm">this news about Egyptian presidential candidate Nawal al-Saadawi.
al-Saadawi will be a candidate for the Egyptian presidency pending reforms to the The Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt.. The Constitution was previously reformed in 1980.
Posted by Steph at 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
departure counts as much as arrival
"I'm from that old-school feminist school that believes that so much of our personal is political, so the distinction seems arbitrary. Being political without being personal must be the exercise of privileged white men who can talk politics in the abstract without having to think about what it feels like to be called 'nigger' in the Castro, or 'faggot' at your black church." ~ Tim'm West, in bitch, issue no. 28. Interviewed by Matthue Roth.
reddirt is set up pretty cool. I like the photo of friends on March 30. :-) Happy-looking people. It threw me a bit when I clicked through to comment and was met with an ad to send my picture first. It was cute at first, but I expected an option to bypass. Not. No. Zip zadda. Security?
Was I unsafe? Did I really want to talk with these people? CONNECT with them? Would I be at risk?
Why did I hesitate? The part about "bypassing firewalls" got my attention. Why would someone want to get into my computer? What's there? What could they do with it? (What will they do with it, if they find me?) Is that a dare? NO! Really. I prefer to interact with nice people. You know, the happy kind. Sad is ok. Worried is fine. At least within limits. Sad that turns too readily to mad? Naw, not so much.
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April 16, 2005
temptation
I want to attend this so badly! Discourse Nexus 3.0
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Foucault Society
Steve, from the Habermas reading group, passes on this website, The Foucault Society and also mentioned "todd may's book [on] deleuze" . . .
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more on Schengen
What is a Schengen visa?
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report on Ward Churchill
Looks like he's gotten a reprieve, however the attack has morphed into new forms, so he's not out of danger. Here's the overview from the "Defend Dissent" website:
"As you know, the committee of investigation headed by University of Colorado Chancellor DiStefano in the Ward Churchill case reported on March 24, finding that statements he had made did not “exceed the boundaries of a public employee’s constitutionally protected speech,” but that further investigation should be made of charges of “research misconduct” and “fraudulent misrepresentation” which had been brought to the committee during the course of its investigation. These have been referred to a standing faculty committee for further investigation and decision."
Excerpted from email, Where We're At, Where We Need To Go, April 13, 2005 2:46:07 PM EDT.
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labor struggle
GEO is calling for a 'No Business as Usual' grad employee walk-out and student boycott on Thursday, April 21. Full details are at http://people.umass.edu/geo/a21.html. This is planned in conjunction with Take Back UMass, which has been fighting the administration's anti-diversity initiatives for the past few years.
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April 15, 2005
to do 3
Danny - , esp. "the footage".
all - DREAM! Who do we want to ATTEND - who are our friends, colleagues, peers from everywhere that we want to be able to afford to come?
2nd is the brainstorm of "big names"...
$$$$ - figure the budget based on the dream; go from there.
affordability for grads, non-students? Faculty pay more? All in our dept complimentary, of course. :-)
online - what Saskia Sassen spoke about today: positioning, locating a digitally interactive terrain inside the territoriality of the nation-state that inhabits and sets in motion volocities of possibility - "the work of making" (my emphasis).
Posted by Steph at 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
it will NOT be boring!
Oy. I just bailed on the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness conference. None of the presenters were bad, it's just that they conform to the structure of making academic presentations ABOUT the object of study, rather than doing/being the subjects of study. Highlight? Meeting VJ. :-)
I'll go to the liminal lecture by Carlos Tanner tonight - hopefully it will be better.
I went to the plenary at the World Systems Conference this morning, and it was dynamic as all get out! Saskia Sassen turned me on. :-) Immanual Wallerstein set an important tone for the conference with his keynote last night, but he's not the most dynamic speaker. He might be in Spanish, but his pacing in English was a bit tough.
Of course, I'm envisioning the COM dept's proposed/potential conference for next year...
Posted by Steph at 02:14 PM | Comments (2)
April 14, 2005
gender experiment
"You're dressed up! What's the event?"
"You're in a dress!"
"Do you have an interview with the Provost?"
"Who are you and what did you do with Steph?!"
"I don't think I've ever seen you in a skirt before."
"I like it."
"You're a woman now!"
"You look like you're making a statement."
"What's with the transformation?"
"You need to take somebody shopping with you."
"Looks nice!"
"You're wearing a skirt!"
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day 2
This anxiety is wicked - in the not fun sense. :-( I am trying to piece together outfits from what I already own and inexpensively purchased skirts from the Salvation Army. I'm afraid I look downright silly. sigh. No doubt I'll hear about it.
Posted by Steph at 08:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2005
solipsism and stochasticism
Is solipsism an attempt at control - to order the universe, refute or seek to deny the effects of stochasticism?
For instance, I know someone who occasionally describes themself as "insular", which may be true. It's one thing, though, to hold one's own counsel, and another to create a worldview and interpretation of events and others that excludes other viewpoints. I think this is what solipsism really means? This piece, Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds. I have to grapple with how this relates to and interacts with intersubjectivity. Or plural singularity, as we discussed in Briankle's class last night based on Jean-Luc Nancy's piece, "Banks, Edges, Limits (of singularity)".
I can't find any reference to this online, it comes from Angelaki, hournal of the theoretical humanities, vol 9, no 2 August 2004.
Note: do a web search on "singularity."
As for stochasticism....
For consideration:
New Religions, Science, and Secularization looks like it dabbles with esoteric knowledge?
Life After Newton: An Ecological Metaphysics
any relation to sacred geometry?
Far afield yet informative:
Running Regressions: Some Psychological Constraints
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Raz sports an EU hat
Now, if they had just waited a month I could have been there for this historic vote!
"Bulgaria, Romania gain EU entry
Both countries still need to reforms to ensure membership
STRASBOURG, France (AP) -- The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union in 2007, but said both countries still need to make reforms."
"Legislators voted 522-70 in favor of Bulgaria, with 69 abstentions, and 497-93 in favor of Romania, with 71 abstentions, in two separate ballots after a heated debate in which some members asked for a postponement of the vote, demanding the two Balkan countries be given more time to implement necessary reforms.
"No one can say Romania is ready to join the community," said Green party leader Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit. "Press freedoms, corruption and other issues need to be resolved."
posted at http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/13/eu.new.members.ap/index.html until May 13, 2005.
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April 12, 2005
do I need a Visa?
Uh oh. According to the travel documents site, yes. Belgium, France, and Germany are all Schengen states, and all told I will be there for more than three months. Do not panic. There is still time.
The German Embassy.
8. Additional information can be obtained from our homepage at www.german-embassy.org.uk, our Visa Information Service by telephone no. 09065-508 922 (1 £ per minute) or by contacting the Visa Section on 020-7824 1465 and 1466 from Monday to Thursday from 1.30 to 3.30pm and Friday from 1.30 to 3.00pm.
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April 11, 2005
Anna Boromisza-Habashi
Anna entered the world "this morning (Monday) at 9.30 am. Anna's birthweight is 7.3 pounds (3.3 kgs)."
Email from a proud papa.
WELCOME, ANNA!
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April 09, 2005
GEO gets serious
Can we effect change on the massive institution known as UMass? We're going to find out, April 21.
GRAD EMPLOYEE WALKOUT / STUDENT BOYCOTT -- APRIL 21, 2005
Why is a walkout necessary? Why is a boycott necessary?
GEO Contract: The university refuses to settle any contract that doesn't result in major cuts to real wages, healthcare, and childcare for graduate student employees at UMass -- employees who teach up to 50% of the classes on campus. Even our current contract with no gains is unacceptable -- only cuts will satisfy Lombardi. This is a direct attack on GEO and 14 years of contract gains. The administration feels they're done negotiating and they're trying to convince us to end negotiations. Without a fair contract we're calling for:
GEO WALKOUT, APRIL 21.
Lombardi's Plan: The Chancellor's response to the Diversity Commission's proposal rolls back student independence and democratic institutions that are the result of over 30 years of student struggle. The "Lombardi plan" will mean the end of the agencies now engaged in student advocacy and the end of independent student government. The last day for public comment on Lombardi's plan is April 22. Comment by supporting a student-led BOYCOTT of CLASSES, APRIL 21.
This act isn't a rejection of our faculty, whom we greatly respect. It's a rejection of an Administration who won't prioritize STUDENTS, TEACHERS & BOOKS. By going to class, we pretend that the assault on student and employee rights isn't happening, we continue to act normally and do what's expected of us. By not going to class, we resist and say we won't fulfill UMass's expectation until they start to fulfill our expectations for a fair labor contract, for student autonomy and for support for diversity.
By boycotting and walking out, we exercise the power we have to set the university back on track.
Organized by the Graduate Employee Organization, Take Back UMass and others in coalition.
Posted by Steph at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
blogger is down?
Uh oh. This could be a real problem. Hope it comes up soon. Here's the post I wanted to make in the "Stuck in a Rut" thread:
Here's what I'm thinking about this thread. We've got about 8 class sessions left, and I know you all are thinking about your final grade.
What I would like to do is limit the next round of presentations to one hour, so that I can have the last 15 minutes of each class period to go over whatever questions you raise about the material. In order to plan the most effective sequence of topics for those 15 minute sessions, I need to know ALL of what isn't clear to you.
Let's sort that out in here, ok? My vision is this:
You review the assigend reading materials and identify an area or two (or 17, whatever!) that you're not sure about it. DO NOT just name it, but give a stab at explaining what you think it means. I'd like to see you all respond to each other if you can - if someone poses a question that you can answer, do so! If someone provides an explanation that isn't quite "it" or seems "off" or raises another question for you - engage!
From what is generated in this way I'll best be able to identify the most crucial gaps for the class overall. This is what I can address in those 15 minutes sessions.
I believe this structure will best prepare you for the self-reflection papers.
Anyone is welcome to begin!
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more to do
James - Future Search?
Shemaya and Kathy.
Posted by Steph at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 08, 2005
ladybugs
Kirsten just checked in about the ladybugs around the house. It's a springtime New England thing, I think? It's happened in the houses I've lived in here - Halifax, Dummerston. Now at Carolyn's. She said they're following me. Don't I wish! Once I got 35 painted stone ladybugs for my birthday. I miss I miss. sigh
But it is an absolutely GORGEOUS day, and I'm on a roll. Grief (loss) is simply becoming a permanent part of my embodied existence. And - I have not become bitter. That is an achievement.
Posted by Steph at 10:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
bell hooks
The Pope's funeral was earlier today, and - as Ingrid noted - bell hooks didn't say word one about it.
I had thought she'd made an oblique reference to it by saying she wanted "to be in the chapel", but George agreed with Ingrid that hooks was referring to the presentation space. Obviously I soaked up NPR's repetitive coverage (as in, was permeated by it): how else could I have made such an inference?
But the conversation got me wondering why she didn't say anything about John Paul's mass, and curious how deliberate it was.
I will guess that she knew about it, even if she hasn't avidly followed events of the past week. She argued vs dualism today, but also cautioned about the revitalization of patriarchal thinking - which was replete in the parade of honorifics for this particular Pope. Does her omission signal something momentous?
Ingrid shared that she heard the phrase, Mother of God, at least twice during the Mass for John Paul II. Later, George & Min and I came back to it. I was sure the phrase couldn't refer to the Virgin Mary - but I was wrong!
Posted by Steph at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
to do
Donna - Heidegger - his exchange with ... that guy who confronted him (DRP).
S:D, L:D.
vision
phenomenology
esoteric knowledge
Posted by Steph at 04:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
David Chalmers
This is the analytic philosopher Bern was talking about who argues against materialism.
He even has his own weblog - lots of stuff relating to perception. Hunju!
Posted by Steph at 04:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
cipher of genesis
I've been trying to track info on Carlo Suares, but can't find any details about his background, training, etc. I am finding other interesting things!
Some physics from way beyond.
Info on Sufism.
The International Conference on Science and Consciousness
Worth investigating more, Esha. I like the sound of this name!
Hmmm...another thing I've been curious about is the source of Enoch's info on Pythagoras. I, being schooled in the traditional U.S. public way, never imagined any other source of education for him than his own society.
This site, The Hermetic Garden needs more time. I'm intrigued that it has French and Portuguese versions. :-)
Posted by Steph at 04:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2005
all the way?
Well. For all the angst I went through the dress was a bit of a let down. My students just took it as a performance, as in not real, or otherwise downplayed it. Or so the discussion went. Several people admitted to a bit of a jolt when they first saw me, a couple of students blurted something out immediately. :-) Nothing bad. :-)
We'll see what they say in the new thread on it, Teacher's Body II.
My compatriots in the COM dept were slightly more entertaining:
"The first thing I thought was, 'She doesn't even know what's in style!'"
"I almost didn't recognize you!"
"Looks nice!"
"Steph! Uh...nice, looks like spring!"
double take. "You look nice."
"That's crazy! I don't what to say about that!"
NICE? I'm trading ... what - a look that hooks people's attention to a completely unremarkable niceness? :-)
Reminds me of the conversation last night, when I was inquiring about professional styles of dress in Germany. I was immediately advised to ditch the haircut. (No surprise, sigh.) Actually - one student said a haircut would have been much more shocking than a change in attire. (I'm going to let it grow. Oy. It - I - will be shaggy beyond belief when I return!)
The price we pay for to conduct research in the field...
The let-down for me, was the students taking it so in stride (or giving the appearance of such?) that it seemed like little more than a costume. We did discuss gender identity a bit... that was pretty cool - the ones that spoke up seemed genuinely cool with it.
Anyway, I'm actually gonna do this dress thing this summer. I now have two experiences in which people that don't know me very well were unfazed by it. So if I can get over myself (!) it'll be a piece of cake. I'll have to get used to blending in - I think that might be a bit of an adjustment.
Posted by Steph at 04:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
convergence of reality streams
Started seeing Kate again.
Was exhausted, still, this morning after 9 hours of sleep. Chattered away like Hannah Mae on happy gas. :-) Processed my experience in Enoch's class Tuesday afternoon....need to journal about that! Feeling a bit s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d with everything I need to get done before leaving (in a month!), and also with the strain (?) of shifting among the various life currents I'm being swept along in/am in the flow of.
There's the small group class (awesome).
Stuff with the comm-grads (exciting? perhaps.)
The FP (rough, but I've been struck with newfound optimism. or delusion, as the case may prove to be!)
Writing projects - with James, with Shemaya, for Paula, for CIT, this summer (another grant app), not to mention two final papers (how will I pull them off?)...
Reading? Yeah, TONS of that.
Sam and video-conferencing.
Travel planning.
Sleep? :-/
Posted by Steph at 04:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
isight
Only saw Sam for a few minutes today - he was on his way to Walmart. Looked all chipper, too. :-)
I talked with both Penny and Karen about doing laptop stuff with Sam this summer as an official "activity". And asked Betty about finding out which nurses and aides use computers at home, so we can figure out who else might be able to help Sam get online.
Pat helped me out with the cameras. The one thing I didn't check was how easily they travel...mine is gonna get lugged around quite a bit!
Adelphia (the cable company) was a piece of cake. Installation April 18.
And I talked with James about "tutoring" - maybe 1 or 2 times a week for an hour or so... that way we have an outside Eden back-up plan for long-distance communication via the Internet.
Any of you with Instant Messenger capability should let me know - I'll have to see about getting Sam hooked up with an account. And, if any of you have cameras - the whole visual thing is gonna be possible soon!
Finally, note this brief entry which includes a quote sent by Jennifer and something my dad wrote...
Everyone - please post a comment! I need to confirm that the new system is working while I can still access my tech-guru easily!! Thanks. :-)
Posted by Steph at 04:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
getting serious!
Several very important things happened in the small group comm class on Tuesday.
Meg and Nikki argued vigorously with me (!) about various issues with the blog (one of the group "issues" identified by the class). Did someone say "stepping up?"
Drew reported for the group he was involved with, which had four miscellaneous issues to address. The first one was respect, or rather, a general lack of respect within the class. I wanted more specifics - what constitutes a "lack" of "respect" - how does one know that's what is going on? What are the clues?
Drew's group hadn't discussed it in that way, so he didn't have an example ready - until a few minutes later, after he'd presented the second issue and I and some members of the class had discussed it. He said we hadn't let him finish - that he might have gotten to the point we were debating but we had given him "opposition" (I think I am remembering that word correctly, because I questioned that, I said I wanted clarification, implying that "opposition" wasn't what I thought I was "giving"). Hello! Feedback, anyone?! I'd say this is an example of stepping up!
Drew progressed through the rest of his presentation (two more issues) without interruption from a single soul. :-) This was very good to experience (even though I was self-conscious of withholding my spontaneous response) because ever since the teams have bonded internally, there's been a lot of intergroup disrespect - in the sense of teammembers often being much more interes