Donna Haraway, LOLTheorist:
For me the defining moment came at the very end, with everybody trying to get in front of the camera and Tom Brokaw annoyed because the candidates were blocking the teleprompter:
Having taught rhetoric and debate for many years, I have very low expectations of what they call "debate" in a presidential election. Brokaw kept scolding both Obama and McCain for not staying within time limits, but it just reminded me he could've scolded them for so many other reasons. Not really answering a lot of the questions, for one. Repeating the same old talking points. All in all, I wasn't very impressed with Brokaw as moderator for the non-debate.
Footage from 1939 announcing the advent of television:
The clip is about television at a particular moment. The narrator notes that the technology was developed ten years previous, and what is newsworthy is the advent of broadcast networks that can now offer regular programming. Yet the newness of the medium is underscored by the choice of an "orchestral program" as the sample segment. While a purpose of this segment is to demonstrate the difference between medium shots and long shots, generally the people in the orchestra looked kinda blurry and the segment was probably better for listening than watching. While television had exciting possibilities, radio still had a hold on people's imaginations and televisual conventions were yet to be developed.
In other words, this was a myth-making moment for television. In his book The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power and Cyberspace, Vincent Mosco describes the myth and hype that we find in discourse about emerging media and technologies; those myths are at work in this video, in contemporary discussions about digital technology, and served to romanticize radio. Although the narrator characterizes television as a "modern miracle," I think it's worth noting that the technology itself is not the miracle and the power of this miracle does not lie in mystery. The narrator turns to an explanation of the mechanics of television (developed by and demonstrated in the RCA laboratories). The video continues with a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a television broadcast, which involves the coordinated efforts of people behind the camera and a engineers and a director working in a specially equipped studio. In the case of television, what was newsworthy was the advent of a new industry, driven by ingenuity and hard work, that made possible regular television broadcasts. The marvel was not only television itself, but the relationship between science, progress and industry.
Although we tend to greet new technologies with the same kind of myth and hype, the specific elements of the stories change. Television is no longer miraculous and the I think it's no longer possible to tell the same kinds of stories about newer technologies and media. Consider all the hype surrounding the iPod (and more recently, the iPhone). I have yet to see the iPod linked to narratives about science, progress and industry, but I do see the iPod as a fetish object connected to youth and consumer culture. (I'm not immune, either--I've been sighing over the new iPod touch, trying to come up for a really good reason to buy it and chuck my perfectly good iPod, which is now "classic.") What the implications are I haven't worked out yet, but I think a starting point might be to re-read Thomas Franks' Conquest of Cool.
I found the video in PonderAbout.
Now this is what you create for a new medium: cartoon cats explain "defending globalization"! (Actually this is pretty good):
]]>Donna Haraway, LOLTheorist:
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It's not just about knowing what's good--plotting an itinerary is very important. The genius of Jason's itinerary is to make the first stop at the deep-fried candy bar stand. Eating a deep-fried candy bar while still hungry is very different than eating a deep-fried candy bar after you've already eaten cheese curds and some of those tiny doughnuts. (Note: there will be no Pronto Pups in this story as everyone in our little group is vegetarian.) The deep-fried candy bar kicks off a balanced eating experience, at least according to State Fair logic. Sweet alternates with salty, so a stop at the French Fry place could be next, or perhaps sweet and salty are judiciously combined, as some of us like to get a root beer to go with the french fries. The next-to-last stop is always at the place where they sell buckets of chocolate cookies, where we grab a bucket and go directly to the free milk stand. One year we were running late and with cookies in tow got to the milk stand to find it closed. You bet we didn't make that mistake the next year.
I'm already a little worried about this year's State Fair, as Jason and Amanda are moving to Madison in August. They better come back to Minnesota at the end of the month. I don't care if it's more convenient for them to go to the Wisconsin State Fair--it's just not the same. I've heard some serious debates about which State Fair is better, which is inevitable since people from each state move back and forth a lot. I can't really say. I grew up in Wisconsin and went to the Fair every year, of course, but it's been a while since I've been back. I like to think that each has its own charm.
Now, midway into writing this blog entry I discovered that in fact it's never too early to report on the latest in food-on-a-stick. As it turns out, about a week ago the Pioneer Press published a report on what new foods-on-a-stick we can expect this year. In fact, a closer reading of the New York Times piece suggests its reporter relied on the Pioneer Press article. (The New York Times article attributes the Pioneer Press but not the specific article in question.) The Pioneer Press article of course has much more depth. From the New York Times I learned that Minnesotans attending the fair this year can enjoy the latest innovation, sloppy-joes-on-a-stick. But the Pioneer Press informs us that we can also look forward to corned-beef-and-cabbage-on-a-stick and some other items that are not served on a stick but newsworthy nevertheless. For example we have the Uffda Brat, a Norwegian sausage wrapped in potato lefse. I also notice that the Pioneer Press reporter went to the trouble of interviewing people, while the New York Times reporter seems to have relied on reports from other papers. I suppose it's not surprising that the local reporter would take more care with a local story, but I am beginning to feel that all those people who have made the New York Times article the third most popular story in the Week in Review section are missing out on the better story. It's a shame, really.
The big news on advances in food-on-a-stick didn't come from Minnesota last year; it came from Texas, where Abel Gonzales, Jr. perfected deep-fried Coke. What sets deep-fried Coke apart from the rest is that Gonzales didn't just find something else he could dip in batter and fry up. Instead, he devised something he could call "deep-fried Coke," which turned out to be soda mixed with batter, fried, drizzled with fountain syrup and topped with cinnamon sugar, whipped cream and a cherry. Deep-fried Coke was an award-winnning snack that was two years in the making and involves a little bit of science and a little bit of food deconstruction.
Reading about deep-fried Coke reminded me of one of my current interests, la nueva cocina, which is typified by the restaurant El Bulli and the chef Ferran Adrià . He is probably best known for his culinary foams, which can have flavors of espresso or mushroom or beet. Adrià says the point isn't the scientific innovation, but to surprise and delight the diner with unexpected flavors, textures and contrasts. In other words, it's about the "deconstruction" of food, for example pa amb tomaquet "deconstruido," which transforms the traditional Catalan snack of rustic bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil into pastry balls that are injected with tomato water and olive oil through a syringe.
I'll probably never eat at El Bulli. The restaurant is a couple of hours north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava, and isn't easy to get into because it's shut half the year while the chefs experiment and devise new dishes. And trying much of la nueva cocina at home would be near impossible. For one thing, I can't imagine having the necessary equipment needed to cook with nitrogen and to make the foams and their essences. I also found that the cookbooks are prohibitively expensive at about $200 each.
I did spot a couple of nueva cocina recipes in a cookbook I bought recently, The New Spanish Table. I might try making the Chupa Chups Julio Verne, "lollipops" made from fruit covered in meringue, which are named after Jules Verne because they look kind of sci-fi. (These Chupa Chups might be considered very distant relatives of the deep-fried grapes, canteloupe and pineapple that will be served at the Fair this year.) Wouldn't it be great, though, if we could find more deconstructed food like deep-fried Coke at the State Fair? They may be on the right track with the deep-fried sloppy joes, and maybe with the deep-fried hot dish, which probably need some "molecular gastronomy" to make them happen and depending, could be considered "deconstructed." But how great would it be to plot out a fair itinerary where at every new stop we could eat food that isn't novel only in a technical sense, but was created to surprise and delight?
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On Friday Kellie and I went to the Weisman Art Museum to look at rental art for our office. The images currently hanging in the suite have been there for a while, and our shiny new St. Paul office has motivated everyone over on the other side to spiff our place up a little bit. We narrowed down to a few choices and then browsed the gift shop. While browsing I spotted a perfect going-into-summer purchase: a corn-buttering device. Since it's a museum gift shop the corn-buttering device was not only functional, but fun. I purchased two sets of "Butter Boy and Butter Girl," one for me and one for my friend Amanda, who loves corn on the cob and anything else you care to throw on a grill. (Within reason--she doesn't eat former animals, either.) How could I resist? They are made for buttering corn, are made of bright green and yellow plastic and came in a bright yellow box with a little carrying handle.
Once back at the office I looked more closely at the impulse purchase and was more troubled than usual by its representations of gender. Of course the figures alone--the boy and girl side-by-side, the girl with a bow on top of her head--are heteronormative enough. But in case it wasn't obvious there is a little story on the back of the box to really reinforce the point.
BB and BG "met cute" at the State Fair:
She was there with her father the Kernel, and was the most beautiful gal I'd ever seen. Now, I may be a bit husky but I cobbled together the courage to talk to her. She sure made me smile from ear to ear with her corny jokes. Ever since then we've been as close as a couple of niblets.
Ay ay ay: first under Father's protection, then passed on to the boyfriend (and Dad sounds super-masculine because he's a military "Kernel.")
There's more:
Oh, we have our differences. She loves butter and I secretly love margarine. She likes to salt her corn and I like pepper. She votes Dairy-crat and I vote Republi-corn. Who knows? Soon I may pop the question!
Naturally they are moving towards marriage (the proper narrative closure), though honestly I don't understand what she sees in him. He likes margarine? Ick! I may be biased because I grew up in Wisconsin, where margarine was actually illegal for a while--if you wanted margarine you had to cross state lines and buy it in Illinois. That was way before my time but when I lived in Madison there were still restrictions. You could buy margarine, but unlike butter could not buy it by the stick. I think that rule was meant to promote butter sales. It's still illegal to serve margarine in Wisconsin restaurants and prisons. And no, I am not making this up. Starting in the late 19th century, dairy farmers and producers lobbied to pass laws making it more difficult to sell margarine. Margarine supporters lobbied back and finally were successful in passing the 1996 Margarine Equity Act in Congress. Not that I support their efforts--I always buy butter.
Back to the story: I have a very difficult time accepting "Dairy-crat" and "Republi-corn" as just another cute difference you learn to live with. I vote Dem holding my nose, but as far as I'm concerned it's all hands on deck when it comes to dealing with the Republican party in its current form. Also of note: the Web site is www.thebutterboy.com, as if he's the default device or something.
Anyway, once I saw the extent to which this particular product reinforces gender norms and generally was just yucky, I thought it was time to take action. So I talked to Amanda and suggested a swap--one of us would keep two Butter Boys and the other two Butter Girls. But maybe that isn't going far enough. Maybe we need more drastic action in the form of a BB/G Liberation Organization, patterned after the B.L.O. (Barbie Liberation Organization).
In 1992 Mattel introduced "Teen Talk Barbie," who said incredibly ditzy things like "Let's go shopping!" and "Math is hard." The B.L.O. sprung into action with its "shop-giving" program. They purchased 300 Teen Talk Barbies and 300 Talking G.I. Joes. Back at the laboratory they performed corrective surgery, swapping the voice chips of the two dolls. Now it was G.I. Joe who wanted to go shopping, while Barbie said things like "Dead men tell no lies." The B.L.O. returned the altered dolls to store shelves everywhere just in time for Christmas. On Christmas morning the dolls were given to some very surprised little boys and girls by their very surprised parents.
Butter Boy and Butter Girl are just plastic with no voice chips, so a full-out shop-giving program is not possible. Any alterations would be external and would be noticed right away. But surely something must be done. Is it enough to swap them out and create same-sex couples, or are there more radical options available?
More on the Barbie Liberation Organization:
Hacking Barbie with the Barbie Liberation Organization
B.L.O video news release (I couldn't find actual video)
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Lynn Randolph, Annunciation of the Second Coming, oil on canvas, 1995.
]]> When I first noticed Scenes from Hell in the May 21st issue of The Nation, at first I couldn't quite place it. The name Lynn Randolph was very familiar, as was the style of the image, but it took me a few minutes. That shows just how out of it I am, because of course Randolph's paintings are an integral part of Donna Haraway's work. As she says about Randolph, Haraway's writing has "infiltrate(d) the fibers of my flesh and spirit," though perhaps at this particular point in my life the symbiosis of Haraway's writing and my thoughts have reached a stage that it's not so much about vivid impressions, but that the writing has insinuated itself into me, leaving little ghostly traces everywhere. (Or so I'd like to think.)Anyway, for many years Haraway has incorporated Randolph's paintings into her books and articles not merely as illustrations, but as part of her arguments about technoscience and culture. As Haraway explains, their collaboration began when Randolph created the painting Cyborg in response to Haraway's 1985 essay "Manifesto for Cyborgs." I must have at least ten copies of that essay in my library because it is reprinted everywhere, particularly in anthologies on feminism and cultural studies of science. I assume the essay still is widely read, though I hope that means it leads to reading Haraway's other work, in which she reworks themes from her cyborg manifesto through other metaphoric boundary figures such as chimpanzees, vampires and dogs. The essay is available online as well and if you follow the link you can also see the Randolph painting.
As Haraway says in Millennial Myths: Paintings by Lynn Randolph, she appreciates Randolph's works for their "metaphoric realism" and observes that "I have found ourselves joined in a common project that is at once analytic, spiritual, metaphoric and narrative" (24). Randolph's works are apocalyptic in nature, focus on "hope and suffering," and often feature angels who "protect, announce and incite" (26). For me Scenes from Hell called to mind Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which I've been lucky enough to see at the Prado in Madrid. (The best image I could find on the Web is here. Click on the smaller image and a new window will pop up with the larger one that shows the work in more detail, though nowhere near the actual scale.) Given Randolph's interest in cyborgs and other boundary creatures, maybe it's inappropriate to connect her work to Bosch's work, which follows the traditional narrative of the Fall of Man, ending, of course, in damnation. In that case, in thinking about the connection to Bosch, in part it's about the impact of vivid images, but also about the contrast between Heaven and Hell. In Scenes from Hell there certainly is suffering, but maybe not hope and there are no angels who "protect, announce and incite."
So what do we have in Scenes from Hell? The devils are Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez and Donald Rumsfeld, either observing or actively inflicting suffering over scenes of Guantanamo, Katrina and wounded veterans. Devil Karl Rove, playing a horn, heralds these scenes of great suffering. But the devils' victims--prisoners, veterans, the people of New Orleans--are not at the center of the image. The most prominent figure is George Bush, riding a hyena with blood dripping from its fangs, goaded by a devil figure that is not Cheney or Gonzalez or Rumsfeld or even Rove. There is a gushing wound in his chest. Bush is not exactly innocent, but he isn't the Decider, either. I don't believe in redemption, especially for this crew, but what about the angels? Will they ever make an appearance?
My friend Laura Sells has created a Donna Haraway page that includes bibliographies, "fun facts" and more information on Lynn Randolph.
]]>Q. Should owners prepare their own food for pets or feed them table scraps?
A. There's evidence that dogs can be fed table scraps and do quite well, provided they're healthy table scraps -- meat, dairy, vegetables, fruit. The problem is a lot of humans don't eat that way.
This whole incident reminds me yet again how strange it is to have pets, especially in this particular cultural context. I adore my two cats and do everything I can to keep them happy and healthy, but whenever I go to a place like Pet Smart it's too weird to see all those brands of food on the shelves. Think about all the money spent on research and marketing, the result of which is food for every condition you can think of: young cats, aging cats, chubby cats, hairball control, and then there are the prescription foods that are good for cats with diabetes or kidney problems. And as it turns out--or so that NYT interview implies--a lot of it really is niche marketing because the content of all those different foods is pretty much the same. See? Pets are treated just like people.
And so they are when it comes to medical care as well. The cat who was with me through graduate school and a couple of years beyond became diabetic in his last years, and at one point developed fluid on his lungs as well. Those conditions resulted in referrals to veterinary specialists (not to mention astronomical vet bills. The obstinate beastie had many medical emergencies while I was a grad student, but as soon as I got my first real job it was all pretty much under control.) Even as I was fretting over the poor little guy, I enjoyed watching those specialists in action as they puzzled over a diagnosis for a patient who couldn't talk, and in all honesty was a very bad patient. I must admit I did get a kick out of watching my cat in various modes of resistance while at the vet--fight the power! Anyway, I was blown away by the smarts and dedication of the veterinarians--the cardiologist, the internist and the GP who referred my cat to them. And I was grateful that I could take care of my cat's medical needs.
I do feel a lot of ambivalence, though, about the fact that my cats have access to better medical care than a lot of people. Or least that's how I thought for a long time. Then I read Mike Davis' Planet of Slums. The book is about a lot of things that I won't get into here--I'll just say that it's an excellent book and everyone should read it. In any case, one thing I realized after reading this book is that my cats--and other people's pets--are better off than a good portion of the Earth's population because they have access to a litterbox and clean water.
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clipped from www.nytimes.com
The item that caught my attention was about Chiquita Brands International (formerly known as the United Fruit Company). According to the item, Chiquita was "fined $25 million to settle charges that it illegally paid a right-wing militia to protect its banana plantations in Colombia." "Behind the News" didn't provide the most satisfactory explanation:
"Much of the countryside is beyond government control, and it is not unusual for foreign companies operating there to buy protection from shady groups."
Is the reader supposed to accept this explanation because it's common knowledge that part of the world is violent? Would it have been all right if Chiquita bought protection, but not from "drug-dealing terrorists"? But what kind of "shady groups" would pose a threat to a fruit plantation? Competitors? Unions, perhaps?
The Chiquita Web site is rife with irony and historical revisionism.
]]>But in today's Sunday paper I found not just one, but two, articles that were rich in their analysis and very nicely written:
Katie Hafner's "History, Digitized and Abridged," on the complexities of digitizing collections of historical records, such as the National Steinbeck Center's collection of papers and memorabilia from the life and work of John Steinbeck. The article points the many gaps in currently available digitized collections, the complexities of finding funding and other resources to digitize what we have, and the effects of copyright. Hafner points out that we've gotten to a point where we expect virtually everything to be available in digital form, but this is far from the case, and historians (both amateur and professional) may forget about important artifacts that are only available through a visit to a library or museum. (Maybe Ms. Cooper could take a field trip to NYU's Tamiment Library, where she can peruse the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. )
An in the Arts section, Larry Rohter writes about Gilberto Gil's second career as the Brazilian minister of culture: "Gilberto Gil Hears the Future: Some Rights Reserved." Gil is going to speak about music and intellectual property at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference this Wednesday. Apparently one of Gil's first acts as culture minister was to create an alliance between Brazil and the Creative Commons project. From this article I learned about Gil's career, music as a cultural force in Brazil, and alternatives to current intellectual property laws and practices.
Articles like these make my subscription worthwhile.
]]>I scored big points this Christmas when I gave Tom a subscription to LibraryThing, a social book cataloging Web site. For $25 you can get a lifetime membership that allows you to catalog an unlimited number of books. For another $15 you can purchase a CueCat, a little cat-shaped scanner that reads barcodes and pulls the information in from Amazon.com and other databases. With Librarything you can look at other people's catalogs, leave them comments, join groups, create tags for your entries, write book reviews and generally geek out with other bookworms. Even if you stay in your own catalog you can have hours of fun looking at your author cloud or perusing your collection in book cover view (the database pulls those in). The site generates statistics for your catalog--you can find out which other users share your books, and how many, either in raw or weighted terms. My favorite feature is "You and None Other" which shows other users who share exactly one book with you.
Tom spent the days after Christmas scanning in his books (about 1400 of them) and had so much fun he scanned in all of mine (about 560). It took a few late nights, but he finished before the new year. One day we logged in and found the same new user on the share list for each of our catalogs. The username looked familiar, and when we went to look at the catalog, we figured out that it belonged to a friend who now is in graduate school in California. We could actually see his catalog grow in real time as he added books. We later found out that a mutual friend of ours e-mailed him about LibraryThing, and he was so excited he didn't bother to reply--he rushed over to the site, bought his membership and started creating his catalog right there on the spot.
Shortly after my catalog was complete I read Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library," in which he talks about the pleasures of collecting. The pleasures of collecting books are very different from the pleasures of reading them, and the collector is a species apart from other people who buy books. A beach vacation might not have much attraction for the book collector, who is happiest going from bookstore to bookstore in a new city. Acquiring new books for a collection can require some sleuthing; sometimes there is disappointment, sometimes the surprise of a great find. As the title "Unpacking My Library" suggests, the essay begins at a particular moment when Benjamin's books are scattered about, not yet sitting neatly on their shelves. Benjamin explains that the book collector moves between chaos and disorder, and that "every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories." As you unpack your books you remember, but not simply the contents of the book. You might also remember the moment you acquired it, or the time during which you read it. And of course there is the pleasure of rediscovery, coming across a book you forgot you even owned.
Benjamin also says that when he was young he was quite strict about which books would be included in his library. Until he understood the significance of collecting books, he would only include in his library books that he actually had read. I thought about this while reviewing my own LibraryThing catalog--I wondered if it was fair to include books that I owned but never got around to reading, or if it would be all right to include books I had read but no longer owned. And while Tom played thingamabrarian (that's an actual term) I found that I had to keep an eye on him. Right after he finished scanning in all of my books I discovered that he had been a little selective--a few of my science fiction books were missing. He's not a science fiction fan and apparently didn't want to be associated with one, either. Apparently, in the age of MySpace, your book collection helps create a persona that all the world can judge.
I recently bought a small bookcase because as you might imagine, we really needed the storage space. (I love books but hate it when they take over every horizontal surface.) We decided to move our art books there. Now, the art books section in our house is unusual because it represents one of the few places where we have combined our book collections. Long ago we merged our CD collections, and even share iTunes, but each of our book collections are shelved in separate spaces and we have lots of duplicates (108, to be exact).
Reshelving the art books made me remember...I remembered some books I hadn't looked at in years, and I also remembered the sight of Tom sitting there with stacks of books, scanning them in, first to his catalog and then moving on to mine. I started to wonder. So I went to Librarything and found out not only that art books were missing from my catalog, but had been scanned into his catalog. A book about Soviet propaganda porcelain that I picked up after seeing the exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, years before we even met! A book about American Colonial painting that I used as part of my research during my master's program! And it wasn't just art books--missing from my catalog, but in his, was Gunter Grass' novel The Flounder, a book I've been trying to get him to read for years without success. So apparently LibraryThing not only allows you to create an online persona, it can lead to acts of identity theft. And maybe couples counseling.
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I believe that my reaction to Kelley's talk was in part about contrast. On one hand, I think about those College Republicans going to the trouble of staging such an event and to brush off criticism because they're just being "politically incorrect." It's maddening--first the ugly provocation, but any reaction is characterized as overreaction. And I think I've spent a little too much time lately reading about similar incidents that don't only happen on college campuses, but maybe on the campaign trail or on Fox News. The other hand: sitting in an auditorium full of people who came to hear Kelley, a prominent historian, talk about what it means to visualize race, and hearing thoughtful questions from the audience. (Those Mac kids make an art of asking thoughtful questions.)
I also felt delight no doubt because I felt hope, thanks to Kelley's emphasis on the ways in which people organize in response to racism, for example in his discussion about media representations of Hurricane Katrina and the people of New Orleans. According to Kelley, even the best-intentioned media representations of black people in New Orleans made them out to be victims who would be incapable of doing anything constructive to rebuild the city or generally to better their own condition.
It's an old story, as it turns out; during Reconstruction after the Civil War slaves were also cast as passive and incapable of creating solutions on their own. One of my favorite essays, Dubois' Of the Dawn of Freedom comes to mind.
While most media showed people being rescued, or drowning, or suffering, they did not show people organizing. Of course, the worst media representations blamed victims and criminalized them, but the "better" representations that showed passive victims have significant consequences as well. As Kelley pointed out, most of the government money that was budgeted for reconstruction of the city went to corporations, not the people of New Orleans. So where's the hope in all this? I felt hopeful because I heard about grassroots organizations that were formed to demand accountability and participation, not to mention jobs--the work would help reconstruct the city, at union wages that would ensure a better quality of life for everyone. And much of Kelley's keynote focused on the strategies people have utilized as they organized against racism. I know in the abstract that the media representations aren't true, that people aren't passive victims, but I always like to be reminded about the strategies people create and their creativity and courageousness.
And since I was on the Macalester campus, of course I was thinking about the "politically incorrect" party that happened back in January and recently worked its way into both local and national media. National media didn't cover it in much depth, but they did cover it widely; a version of the story that appeared in the Star Tribune bounced around to various media outlets, including MSNBC, various newspapers and blogs. I was particularly interested in this story because I taught at Macalester for a couple of years, and given what I know about the students I was surprised a party like that would happen there. But I am not particularly interested in knowing why this party happened, or what was in those students' heads; I am more interested in making sense of reactions as represented in media. Mine is a fairly standard approach in media and cultural studies--to critique media representations for the ways in which they make sense of race and racism, and participate in creating ideologies through which people create meaning.
Kelley concluded his talk with a self-described "rant," which of course wasn't a rant at all. (I was impressed, by the way, that after he participated in the first part of the conference, which involved a trip to the Science Museum of Minnesota's exhibit on race, he decided to scrap his prepared talk and write a new one.) One of the points he made was this: "Racism is not ignorance, but knowledge, knowledge produced by systems that perpetuate white supremacy."
At that point Kelley didn't mention the "politically incorrect" party, but I read this as a brilliant response to discussion that resulted from it (as represented in the media). For example, a student who attended the party was quoted in the Mac Weekly, the college's student newspaper, as saying “I think that if I had sensed any hostility to what I was wearing, or had anyone appeared offended, I would immediately have taken it off,� the student said. “There was a variety of equally offensive costumes, and given the variety, the response targeted to one costume in particular is unfair.� I could write a whole 'nother blog entry about the idea that politics of race (or gender) is about "harrassment" or "offensiveness" and I probably will. But for now I'd like to talk about this student's comment in relation to Kelley's point about racism as knowledge.
For one thing, if racism is about knowledge rather than ignorance, the remedy is not necessarily about acquiring the kind of knowledge that helps "fill in the blanks" such as learning about the history of minstrelsy and blackface. That kind of knowledge is important, especially since minstrelsy was one of the most popular cultural forms in the United States in the years before and after the American Civil War and as popular culture continued through most of the 20th century. But equally important is that the memory of minstrelsy and blackface in popular culture has been more or less repressed, especially for those of us who are privileged and can pretend most of the time that race doesn't matter. Understanding minstrelsy and blackface in terms of repressed memory raises a lot of interesting issues. In addition to recovering that memory (as painful as it is), it means asking questions about the mechanisms of its repression. Did minstrelsy disappear, and if so, why? If it disappeared, does that mean that racism has disappeared as well? Or if the memory of minstrelsy was repressed, is it possible that it returns in different forms? In particular, I think it's important to talk about what's at stake in its repression--it seems to me that one of its functions would be to locate blatant racism safely in the past, making it something we no longer need worry about in a post civil rights society.
By characterizing racism as knowledge rather than ignorance, Kelley shifts the burden. It turns out that everyone has knowledge about race, even if it's been repressed. And knowledge about race no longer is equivalent to understanding blackness and the history and politics of representations. If everyone has knowledge about race, that includes knowledge about whiteness, even if one of the privileges of being white is the ability to pretend that "white" is not really "race." Gaining knowledge about race is no longer a question of white people reading up on black history, or worse yet, asking black people to educate them about that history. Instead, the burden shifts to the students (and to everyone who defends the party as mere "political incorrectness" or "satire" or "blowing off steam") to interrogate their knowledge about race and racism and to think not only in terms of acquiring information, but to think about the ways in which discussions about race are framed, and about various forms of complicity to racism.
What I'm writing here about the politics of representation certainly isn't new--in fact, this is old hat to most of the people who also listened to Kelley speak. But it bears repeating, I think. The news stories, and the comments I read in blogs were very narrow in their focus on "offensiveness" and "harrassment." I wasn't privy to conversations that took place on campus, but based on my participation in other such conversations I have to wonder if they unfolded along the lines of "racism as ignorance" or the more productive trajectory of "racism as knowledge."
]]>But also, this list--a particular act of naming--invites self-reflexivity about the use of language. In the Forest of Rhetoric, tropes and figures are classified under the heading "Flowers," in a taxonomy that is explicitly metaphoric. The category "Flowers" (which, as the site explains is derived from the Latin phrase sometimes used for tropes and figures, flores rhetoricae) suggests variety, beauty and ornamentation. In terms of variety, the garden of tropes and figures has much to offer, as Greek and Roman rhetoricians named hundreds. Now, some regard style as mere ornamentation, as that final touch one adds to make prose more beautiful or compelling. But perusing the list of hundreds, it becomes clear that style is not just about beauty or the force of language: even the most ordinary expressions have a style. (For example, see the entry on anesis.) Roman rhetorics reinforce this point with three general kinds of style, plain, middle and grand.
And as many have pointed out, style is not mere ornamentation, but in a turn of phrase condense complex persuasive processes. The figure anamnesis, "calling to memory past matters," is said to establish ethos, or the character of the speaker. A figure may encompass social rituals, as in the case of accismus, "a feigned refusal of that which is earnestly desired."
In short, one cannot not have a rhetorical style. The extensive list of tropes and schemes calls attention to the use of language as an art, or artifice. But in rhetoric, style is subjected to classification in a taxonomy with three levels of style, two broad categories of language, a short list of tropes (sometimes four master tropes, sometimes two, sometimes one). It's a very orderly garden.
Now, I am a terrible gardener, admittedly because I am lazy. For that and many other reasons I am grateful my neighborhood does not have a Neighborhood Association, a kind of governing body I regard as a threat to democracy. But to be less hard on myself, perhaps it's not so much laziness as that the weeds that appear on my lot don't bother me that much, and in fact I like the bluebells and the other plants that I can't name with the pretty white flowers that appear just around the beginning of summer. I only now pay attention to the little tree seedlings that pop up in my yard because I learned they are called "volunteers" and I found that kind of charming.
What I have is not exactly not a garden, because it's about minimal cultivation and I still have aesthetic preferences. With a little more effort I could create an oxymoronic "wild garden." So it's not a clear-cut choice between cultivating a garden or reverting to nature. And if I put more effort into my garden, I'd probably learn the names of all the plants that establish themselves in my yard, and pay closer attention to their cultivation--I'd be more active and involved.
Is the difference between a weed and a flower that one is left to grow under its own volition while the other is cultured? What kind of control do we have over words, and what kinds of wild turns might they take on their own?
"Words are weeds--pioneers, opportunists and survivors. Words are irreducibly 'tropes' or figures. For many commonly used words, we forget the figural qualities; these words are silent or dead, metaphorically speaking. But the tropic quality of any word can resurrect or erupt to spoil--or enliven--things for even the most literal-minded among us. In Greek, tropos means a turning, treipen to swerve, to not get directly at something. Words (not to mention sentences) trip us, make us swerve, turn us around; and we have no other options."
Donna Haraway, enlightenment@science_wars.com: A Personal Reflection on Love and War, Social Text, 50 (Spring 1997): 123-129.
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