Raya D. Sunshine, PhD.'s Journal [entries|friends|calendar] Raya D. Sunshine, PhD. [ website | The Chalet School ] [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

Someone on the internets is right! [16 Aug 2009|06:30pm] I just found this on this post and thought it was really smart -- a subtle analysis of the often-subtle difference between sympathizing and derailing. Whiner said... It's quite obvious that "being mistaken for the help" happens more often to POC than white folk. It's also clear that a lot of times when people jump in with a "But that happens to me too!" they're often trying to say "Therefore what happens to you isn't really about race and you're just deluded". And that's obviously bad. OTOH, "That happens to me too!" is a pretty normal method of expression and bonding between people... if one person describes something happening to them, others will naturally chime in with similar experiences, not because they want to make the situation All About Them, but because they want to both give and feel the happy sharing you-are-not-alone feeling. Sympathy. Really, it's the "but" that's key. The "but" is denying the first experience's validity. The other is just potentially a bit clueless. 2 comments|post comment

rage [02 Jun 2009|04:45pm] Since Megan McArdle's stupid blog won't accept my comment, I paste it here for my own satisfaction: Megan, the slavery debate was not "the last time" we had a debate about personhood. What about woman suffrage (mid 19th-early 20th century)? What about civil rights and desegregation? What about the ERA debates? What about gay rights (which are still hotly contested)? Almost every group of Americans who are not straight white males are still fighting for the right to be considered as fully human as, say, Justice Roberts. It's simply preposterous to pretend otherwise. As for the putative personhood of the fetus, in cases where this comes into direct conflict with the indubitable personhood of the mother, the latter will always and categorically win as far as I'm concerned. I hate Megan McArdle and find her smug conviction incredibly irritating. She is, IMO, a fucking moron and should have the grace to realize it. But in the wake of Dr Tiller's murder, what remains infuriating (as it always is) is the ongoing claim of self-nominated "reasonable people" to be occupying some sort of "middle ground." The truth is that on this issue there is no "middle ground." Either you believe that women are autonomous human beings, with all the same intrinsic rights to bodily self-determination as men, or you do not. If you do, then there is simply no ground on which you can justify LEGISLATING what goes on inside a woman's body. Period. You can teach and encourage and cajole and bully all you want. But you cannot LEGISLATE what goes on in there. If anyone on my flist is anti-choice, please go ahead and defriend me now because I'm not interested. 7 comments|post comment

BSG finale [08 Apr 2009|10:22am] Finally watched it. Agree with jennyo. That's pretty much it. 2 comments|post comment

PSA [24 Mar 2009|06:18pm] Obama-Mania: Critical Essays on Representations of President Barack Obama in Popular Culture Editors: Derrais Carter & Nicholas Yanes Publisher: McFarland Website/Blog: http://obamainpopularculture.blogspot.com/ Deadline for Abstracts: May 25th, 2009 Description of the Book: The 2008 Presidential Elections has been one of the most intensely debated and commented on race in modern history. The passionate standpoints expressed in this election not only stems from ideological conflicts, but from Barack Obama’s uniqueness as a Presidential candidate. This book collects specific examinations of President Obama in popular culture with the hope of creating a scholarly record of Obama’s presence in popular media free of historical revisionism. With this in mind, Obama-Mania will bring together essays that examine how Barack Obama’s image has been used in comic books, music, television shows, movies, and how talk shows and radio programs have commented on Obama’s campaign and election. In short, the specific focus of this book is not specifically on Obama and the politics surrounding the 2008 Presidential election, but on the conversation between popular culture and President Obama. Expectations for Proposals and Essays: Ideal proposals will contain a clear thesis, an abstract which is two to three paragraphs long and a list of potential sources. Additionally, we want a clear thesis, not an overview of a medium. For instance, if one is to talk about Obama in comic books, we will not accept a paper discussing every Obama comic book appearance. Additionally, if a person wants to write about the President’s influence on music, we will not accept an essay simply documenting every song which was used in the campaign or that makes reference to the new Obama. We are not looking for political propaganda. Submitted essays must not be an “I love Obama” or “I hate Obama” paper. We are looking for papers of academic quality. We are looking for 10 to 12 essays between 6250 and 7500 words - this includes each work’s bibliography. Essays need to be MLA formatted – parenthetical citations, not footnotes. And it is up to the author(s) to get permission to reprint copyrighted material. Though this should go without saying, we will not accept work that is plagiarized or that has been published elsewhere. Proposed Topics: 1)Comic Books & Science Fiction: Depictions of Obama as Superhuman 2)Music: How have musicians addressed Obama and the 2008 Election 3)Television and Film a.Movies: The Cinematography of Change b.Scripted Fictional Television: How Escapist Television Predicted and Has Been Influenced by Political Reality 4)Non-Fiction Political Programs: News Shows and Radio Programs 5)Internet: To Obama Girl and Beyond For more specific information for proposed topics please contact the editors at: ObamaInPopularCulture@gmail.com post comment

[21 Mar 2009|06:57pm] Dear Roger Scrotum Scruton, Bite me. No love, Raya I find it particularly telling that, in his supposed "nostalgia" for "the old humanism" (i.e. the "humanism" of the good old days when people who didn't believe in God knew their place and didn't go so far as to mention it or deviate from the behaviour of their Christian neighbours in any way), he says this: But the bus adverts [paid for by the British Humanist Association, reading "There probably is no God; so stop worrying and enjoy life"] fit the spirit of modern Britain, and not even the Muslims complain about them. "The Muslims." Nice. By the way, Scruton's problem with the ads is not that they deny the existence of God (which of course they actually don't, because apparently the Ad Council refused to permit them until they added the word "probably"), but that they condone "enjoyment" (a "hedonistic message" to which Scruton reckons those Good Old Humanists of yesteryear would have respeonded with "disgust.") This goes against Scruton's view, which he assumes to be universal among right-thinking (i.e. Christian and "Old Humanist") people, that life is about "restraint" and "sacrifice," and pleasure is by definition sinful and wrong. According to Scruton, the pleasure one derives from art or music is only acceptable insofar as one thinks of these things "not simply as pleasures, but as sources of spiritual strength." If you don't happen to feel that you need spiritual strengthening from Chaucer or Bach or Picasso or whoever, but derive pleasure from their works anyway, YOR DOIN IT WRONG. You can, I suppose, have ice cream for dessert, but only if (1) you believe in God, or (2) you compensate for your lack of belief in God by evincing disgust at every bite. The comments are, as ever, even more depressing. Commenter ccd fights the good fight, but is swamped with Christian dittobots straw-manning him with Paris Hilton (has anyone actually asked Paris whether she believes in God? Because if I were a betting man I'd wager that in fact she does), triumphantly quoting Scripture at him (really only a winning strategy if you're arguing with someone who shares your belief that the Bible is inerrant), and generally engaging in all the sorts of behaviour that radicalized Richard Dawkins to the point of buying ads on buses in the first place. Not helpful. For the Christians on my flist, I make haste to specify that "Christian dittobots" refers narrowly to the kind of person who refuses to believe that it is possible for a non-adherent of Christianity to live a moral life or have values. I am more than happy to live (as I have all my life) alongside believing Christians and respect the practice of their religion. However, I do demand that a similar respect be accorded to those of all faiths, including those with no faith at all, and I don't think anyone has the right to go through life without hearing any dissent around their beliefs. Bah, this has already wasted too much of my time and attention. In happier news, HURRAY Ireland won the Grand Slam in the Six Nations rugby! I am particularly pleased about this (despite not, as it were, actually having a horse in the race) inasmuch as I watched the match with an Irish friend at an Irish pub. So it would have been rather a sad occasion had Wales won (as it looked for about 70% of the match like they would!). Two nice things about the experience of watching it, in the "sporting event as great unifier of humanity" vein: first of all, the girl standing next to me who was Indian-American, thus neither genetically nor environmentally conditioned to give a crap about rugby, but was cheering for Ireland with all her might (her boyfriend, from his accent, was Irish) -- sort of a "today, we are all Irish" moment. I like the way that cheering for a team can bring together people from a lot of different backgrounds under one umbrella, even when it's an ethnic umbrella -- if that makes any sense. And secondly, there were actually a couple of guys in red Wales jerseys at the bar, and whenever someone shouted "Come on, Ireland!" they would shout "Come on, Wales!!" and someone else would shout back "Screw Wales!" -- a totally good-natured exchange, and the fact that the two Welsh supporters felt perfectly safe wearing their red gear and openly cheering for Wales, in a bar full of increasingly sozzled and very emotionally-invested Irishmen, well, it speaks well of rugby as a sport and of that sports rivalry in particular, I think. (Though I remember being far too petrified to do anything that would've identified me as a New Zealander when my brother and I went to Cafe Oz one year to watch the Bledisloe Cup match [against Australia, for those not in the know].) Hard to imagine a similar atmosphere of good-natured ribbing (as opposed to murderous violence) in the event of a couple of Man City supporters walking into a United bar.... And now it is on to the final of the Women's World Cup (cricket) in Sydney. I'm supporting New Zealand, of course, though I expect England to win it without too much trouble -- they just seem very in form. 12 comments|post comment

oh yeah, and [20 Mar 2009|12:59pm] WTF -- Baltar's father is Worzel Gummidge?? I will miss Adama and Roslin and the rest so much, and I continue to admire the acting from almost everyone, but this series has seriously gone off the rails and is dealing in the most laughable emo clichés. 8 comments|post comment

Random thoughts [20 Mar 2009|12:11pm] The Facebook layout sucks so much that it might even drive me back here! But it sucks, because LJ to me is chiefly an anonymous blogging tool/community (most of my LJ friends are not people I know or see in RL), whereas FB had enormous value to me as a way of keeping up with all my RL friends -- a very geographically far-flung group -- and a significant portion of my family as well, for a relative low time cost. Sort of keeping a lot of relationships on the simmer (ready to be brought back to the front burner at any time) that would otherwise die of neglect. Now they've abandoned that in favour of copying Twitter and, as ever when popular web applications misunderstand their user base and try to "get" someone else's users by fundamentally diluting/destroying their own brand, they are doing a crappy job. Heigh-ho. So what else? I was tickled to see Admiral Adama weighing in on RaceFail '09: When one of the UN's representatives talked about how part of their mandate was to safeguard the human rights of everyone, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and station, Olmos got a little heated. "You never should've invited me here," he said, before blasting the UN for continuing to use race as a term of separation, of division among peoples. His voice rose, steadily, as if years of social activism was coming to a head on this night. Then, directing his attention to the high schoolers: "Adults will never be able to stop using the word 'race' as a cultural determinant....There is only one race: the human race. SO SAY WE ALL!" Awesome. And I love that everyone in the room shouted "SO SAY WE ALL!" back at him. I have been thinking a lot about the fact that nothing anyone ever says in the pubic sphere is reliable -- almost by definition, but especially in any society where public truth-telling has severe consequences (so that, for example, the problem in America is that some people DO tell the truth but can't get anyone to pay attention, whereas in the USSR it was more than your life was worth to tell the truth. You could do it pseudonymously, at great risk; or in a non-literal form (music), which is why so many people were and are deeply invested in Shostakovich's politics (as if the truth about them could ever be known, or indeed could be a singular "truth"); or in private, in low tones, around the kitchen table. I think the only person in Soviet history who ever stood up and told the truth -- AS HE SAW IT -- in public, regardless of cost, was Pavlik Morozov. And we all know how that turned out. Delicious and simple recipe: I have been eating my way through Spring Break with the following very quick, simple and gratifying healthy dish. In a pot, boil up some whole-grain pasta (I used bow-ties today: yum). Meanwhile, in a saute pan, heat a little bit of olive oil, lightly fry some diced onion, add a couple of handfuls of washed, chopped greens (preferably something sturdy and not too wilty: turnip greens are PERFECT), stir, chop up a couple of sun-dried tomatoes (and/or a small quantity of diced fresh tomatoes) and add, stir, remove from heat. When pasta is done, mix it in with the greens and season with grated Asiago cheese, fresh papper, and anything else you like. Obviously, anything else you feel like (e.g. diced bell peppers) can be added to the pan of veges. It makes a lovely warm pasta salad which I am totally going to make in VAST quantities next time I have a party. Am trying to resurrect the Daily Five, which fell by the wayside as soon as the semester started. But it's hard because there is ALWAYS something more urgent to do than any of the five things on the list: at the moment I have a letter of recommendation to write that is due, like, NOW, and a huge stack of papers to grade, and a smaller paile of midterm exams, plus a HUGE amount of material to prep. for my graduate seminar on Monday (I got ambitious, to put it mildly -- but now I owe it to my students, who are fab and will have dutifully ploughed through all this material, to distil two-hours' worth of really useful, structured discussion out of it). On the agenda for today: write rec letter, prep guest room to receive next week's houseguest, grade at least 10 papers, do a guided Ashtanga yoga practice (I have that booked for 2:30pm), read at least part of the novel for Monday and watch the film. Also study Georgian for an hour or so (I had to drop Ukrainian because I didn't have the time or funding to continue it this term). I really need to get at least twice as much as that done in order not to get SLAMMED next week, but the day is so horribly short... post comment

[09 Mar 2009|11:01pm] What synecdochic said. Linking partly as statement of agreement, partly in case anyone missed it who'd like to read it, but mostly to have a link to a resource I expect to return to often. ETA: And what rosefox said as well. Exactly that. Please know that when I say I am grateful for what you have taught me, I do not imagine that you express yourself for my benefit, and that when I say you are beautiful, I am not erasing or discounting the pain and scars you carry along with that beauty. ETA2 Ahhh, and dolphin__girl has this brilliant post about why this has not been an "absolutely goddamn pointless discussion" as some would have it, but something else: Yelling Class. In which learning comes at a high price (disproportionately paid more by those who have already paid more than their share), but is nonetheless necessary. post comment

Okay.... [07 Mar 2009|04:37pm] ...RaceFail '09. I have been too embroiled in big, scary RL deadlines to follow it until the last few days, and I feel that it's rather superfluous and self-indulgent for me to comment on it since (a) I'm not much of a print SF reader, (b) I'm barely a "fan" of anything these days (though I still joyfully allow myself to be pimped into and subsequently become obsessed with various texts), (c) lots of smart, eloquent people have already said, in widely-read posts, things that express what I think much more articulately and insightfully than I could have done, and (d) I barely ever post here, most of my non-RL friends have probably defriended me at this point and definitely no one is waiting with bated breath for me to update my journal or offer my two cents on this not exactly under-discussed issue. Plus, I'm white and really, even if I had zillions of avid readers, who gives a shit what I think? I mean, even *I* don't care what I think about this issue -- I've been clicking through rydra_wong's links to see what OTHER people think, and to learn from them, and to be moved and amazed by some of the wonderful, insightful, generous things that people have written in an effort to share their perspectives, and to be disgusted and horrified by the behaviour of the people whom I will generalize as The Other Side. In short, what linaerys said. But I do want to go on the record as saying that -- while I don't personally know any of the people involved -- I deplore what was done to coffeeandink and those who leapt to her defense; that I was both deeply moved and brilliantly schooled by deepad's beautiful essay, I Didn't Dream of Dragons -- and all her other public posts on this topic; that I have learned a lot from reading the posts by coffeeandink, Seeking Avalon, bossymarmalade, and all the other intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, and above all generous -- with their time, patience, and wisdom -- people that rydra_wong has linked to. I am deeply grateful to all those people for continuing to engage, to try, and to explain their experiences to others who have not shared them, even in the face of being treated shabbily by a dispiritingly numerous selection of assholes. I did not see any of those people demand cookies in exchange for working so hard to help white people understand what the world is like for them. I did see several white people demand cookies in exchange for kindly condescending to read these comments and pretend (temporarily, as it turned out) that they found them interesting or relevant. And I was very ashamed, on their behalf and on my own. I do not understand people who would rather spend their energies defending the blamelessness of their privilege (or protesting against the very notion that they have any privilege) than accept an opportunity to learn how the privilege affects their view of the world and how the world might look through the eyes of someone without that privilege (or with different privileges). I do understand that privilege is often invisible to the possessor until it's pointed out and that learning of it can be shocking and destabilizing, but I do not understand preferring to share one's life with something invisible and unexamined (creepy!) rather than wanting to examine it carefully and try to take it apart. Although most of the people who have persevered in writing thoughtfully about this topic will never read this post, I want to express here my gratitude to them for taking the time to educate me even though they were under no obligation to do so. That goes double for my RL friends -- who will read this, and who know who they are -- who have graciously taken the time to school me, to patiently dismantle my cluelessness and open my eyes to dimensions of reality that would otherwise have been invisible to me, and who have probably often done so while wincing that I needed it done at all. I love you and I appreciate, more than I can express, what you have done for me. AND (because this whole context is so fucked up, with all the colonizing and appropriating that's gone on) I do NOT mean that to sound like my affection is a special reward in return for services rendered!! I would love you even if you weren't so generous with your wisdom and patience, just because you are awesome. 2 comments|post comment

Wasafiri Announces New Writing Prize [25 Feb 2009|12:22pm] No idea why I got this in my inbox but posting i9t anyway....mostly with rahael in mind, but I know there are a lot of writers on my flist.... Wasafiri Announces New Writing Prize in Celebration of its 25th Anniversary Year 'Wasafiri is ... vigorous, searching, stimulating.' (Jackie Kay) Does this describe your writing? Can you meet the Wasafiri challenge? Wasafiri will be 25 years old this year; what does '25' mean to you? Can you write a piece of fiction or life writing, or a poem on the theme of '25'? If so, Wasafiri is looking for writers to submit their creative pieces to our New Writing Prize. A £300 prize will be awarded to the winner of each category, to be announced on 31st October 2009 at the South Bank in London. The deadline for submissions is 30th June 2009. 6 comments|post comment

On slobbery [27 Nov 2008|06:02pm] Can anyone give me one good reason why I shouldn't just wear the exact same clothes I wore yesterday (now that I've finally bothered to shower and dress after spending most of the day in my PJs)? No, I didn't think so. That's what I'm doing, then. 8 comments|post comment

America finally overcomes electile dysfunction [05 Nov 2008|10:08am] This is a very happy map. Two things I especially liked in Obama's speech: 1. "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change." Amen. and 2. "To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too." A stark contrast to Bush's words after his razor-thin (and contested) victory in 2004: "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." (Mind you, I have to hope that by "I will be your President too," he means "I will do my best to lead you to a less fearful and hateful view of the world" and not "I will totally pander to you on issues such as gay marriage and abortion.") The Onion coverage is hilarious: Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress Bush: 'Can I Stop Being President Now?' Saddest moment for McCain: his supporters BOOING Obama and Biden every time he mentioned them, even though (to his credit) he was trying to get them to join him in a gracious message of concession and congratulation. Yes, "my friend," you created this monster of hatred and bile and total disregard for all the norms of basic civility and respect. Don't you feel proud now? What an achievement. This is how you will be remembered: as the man whose supporters (self-identified "patriots") booed not only the 44th President of the United States, but the historic election of the first black man ever to become President of a majority white nation. They're so absorbed in their own pettiness they don't even realize how bad they are making you look. I feel genuinely sorry for John McCain: not a nice man, or even an entirely sane man (it sometimes appears), but certainly a man who thought he meant well, and who has, I think, been truly surprised to learn just how much of a delusion that was. It would have been nice if he could have lost with a modicum of dignity, but his own campaign made that impossible. That said, if this destroys the Republican Party for a generation, and/or forces them to become a different (less toxic) kind of party in order to survive? Net gain. 10 comments|post comment

Too many events! [03 Nov 2008|12:09pm] The problem with working at a major research university is that there is just too much cool stuff going on at the same time. For example, on Wednesday night, there is an "election post-mortem" with Hendrik Hertzberg and Katha Pollitt -- two of my favourite periodical-housed political writers -- and,at exactly the same time, there is a concert of all Milton Babbitt's string quartets, being performed on the same evening for the first time ever. However, I can't go to either of these things because instead I have to be at a choir rehearsal. Gah! 3 comments|post comment

Follow-up to previous [16 Oct 2008|03:09pm] I actually want to propose a course -- I was thinking a First-Year Seminar (and probably it would still be most appropriate there), but maybe I could get away with it as a Comp. Lit. course, meaning I could teach it as soon as next year -- on the themes I incoherently hashed out below, called something like "How Can We Possibly Understand Each Other?" (In practice, if a comp lit course, this would probably turn into something anodyne and meaningless like "Envisioning the Other" or "Engaging Otherness" or some similar shite....) Texts: Homer, Odyssey Chekhov, SS Forster, A Passage to India Merchant-Ivory, A Passage to India (film) Aamir Khan, Lagaan (film) Bill T. Jones, Fela! The Musical Readings [there's a ton of scholarship looking at Fela Kuti's legacy from different angles] Original footage and, of course, music In the Heights (musical) Junot Diaz, [texts] Jhumpa Lahiri...? (Better choices? This would be a popular choice with my college though, since she is an alumna) Chang Rae Lee, Native Speaker Something addressing the complexities of the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union, perhaps (Iskander? Aitmatov? various representations of the Crimean Tartars? etc.) But what I really want to dig into is (a) the people who are AROUND US, but who come to us (in our ivory tower) instead of us going to them; and (b) the people who are divided from us by, literally, continental divides: so, of particular interest, Asia and Africa (South America perhaps less so as more familiar -- but I don't know). Would love to include a "unit" on South Africa -- an extraordinary case study. But NOT the books of that awful man, J.M Coetzee -- I would be vomiting all semester. So what then? Maybe the REACTING game? .. Suggestions of films, other performances/media, and literary or theoretical texts gratefully accepted in comments! 13 comments|post comment

Incoherent because I'm trying to articulate inchoate thoughts and have to leave for work, like, NOW [16 Oct 2008|07:02am] I wish I had time to post here about the stuff that's really on my mind. It's too complicated, though, and I just don't have the time to set it all down. It has to do with trying to be human....trying to understand each other. I went to see In the Heights last night, which -- while not perfect, like sometimes it's not clear what the ensemble choreography is supposed to convey (although for the most part even THAT is brilliant and really captures the feeling of the constant foot traffic in the barrio) -- is an incredible show, an amazing tour de force by the guy who originated the idea, wrote the music and lyrics, and stars as the show's protagonist. Anyway, I found it not only thought-provoking on many levels (no time to enumerate) but also deeply moving: it portrays a unique, instantly recognizable place, a neighbourhood defined by transition (parents all FROM somewhere else, kids all dreaming of moving TO somewhere else) yet possessed of a culture that is home to all of them, like Ithaka to Odysseus, despite all its imperfections. A neighbourhood where people don't notice whether they're speaking English or Spanish, and slide between the two several times in the course of a sentence; a neighbourhood where the streets are packed with people, festooned with trash, resounding constantly with bass-pumped merengue, bachata, and hip-hop (often all the same time, at extremely high volume, from cars parked on adjacent blocks). A neighbourhood that shaped (and shapes) the childhood of many, defines their identity in fundamental ways -- and which I (on a very small, personal scale, and despite myself) and the institution I work for (in much larger and more callous ways) are bent upon eradicating. It hooks up with ( the many misgivings I've been having... ) Step one: cut a hole in the box. 4 comments|post comment

[15 Oct 2008|11:48am] Let's say Obama actually wins this election by the landslide he is headed for right now (3 weeks is a long time in politics, so being "headed for" a landslide 3 weeks out doesn't by any means translate into actually getting one On The Day -- but let's just imagine he does). It's tempting to imagine, especially if the landslide is due to the youth really turning out in unprecedented numbers thanks to Obama's youth-friendly, tech-savvy, and potentially paradigm-changing campaign, that this would translate into a complete paradigm shift for American politics: the breaking of the race barrier, the re-involvement/re-investment of a large youth demographic in politics after 30 years of apathy, and a massive shift to the left which would re-sanitize the word "liberal" and make it kosher, even "normal," to be liberal again. Unfortunately, I doubt very much that this will happen, landslide or no landslide. First because Obama will be certain to disappoint -- not necessarily b/c he has promised more than he can deliver but because much, much more has been imputed to or projected into him than he can (or wants to) deliver. This will piss off the young voters who "thought he was different" and they will tune out again. Second because he really has no interest in moving the country to the left. He hasn't promised a restoration of civil liberties, a shoring up of the welfare state, an ethical reform of free trade, or a reining in of corporations (except insofar as he'd like them to, you know, obey EXISTING laws). He just wants the country to be run more competently (or hey, AT ALL competently), and by people of good will. The left in general, and young people especially, are going to have to take very seriously the John Edwards mantra: "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away." We are going to have a lot, lot lot more work to do. 9 comments|post comment

[13 Oct 2008|02:58pm] Oops, forgot to post here yesterday as promised. Anyway. Am currently hunting high and low for my copy of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (WTF where is it??) and mostly thinking about national anthems (for the paper I have to give in Ekaterinburg next week). But would like to offer some further thoughts relating to nationalism: (1) As Anderson is not the first to point out, nations haven't been around for very long. Like, two and a half centuries, max. The notion of patria, "homeland" (lit.: fatherland) has been around much longer, of course, as has the accompanying idea of amor patriae, love of one's own country, or (in a purely sentimental sense) patriotism. "Patriotism" in this usage denotes love of one's birthplace, a sentimental attachment to it, even loyalty to it. It does not necessarily connote an irrational assertion that's one's homeplace is OBJECTIVELY better than any other place. Rather, the relationship with one's own country is like the relationship with one's own family: you cherish it because it's yours. (2) As long as there has been "patriotism"/"love of one's own place," it has been used as a rallying cry in war. (3) However, the attachment of "patriotism" to a nation-state on the modern scale is very new (as is the modern nation-state). (4) This matters because of the way "patriotism," in the sense of "loyalty to nation," is used politically: rather than occurring naturally as a result of growing up somewhere, it is now an artificially generated sense of identification with an entire nation, which one may feel (or is supposed to feel) even about parts of the nation one has never seen, or has nothing in common with): thus, a native of New York City is supposed to identify closely with the Arizona desert, the Kansas prairie, and the Louisiana bayou despite never having been to, or even perhaps met anyone from, these places. (5) Politically, this artificially generated sense of identification is used not only to recruit soldiers to the armed forces and to exclude foreigners, but also to prevent the underclasses from bonding with each other across national lines. Marx wrote, "Workers of the world, unite!" (with the clear implication that economic injustice can only be ended if its victims -- vastly more numerous than its perpetrators -- band together and press their numerical advantage). Wealthy elites responded to this call for internationalism with a call to nationalism ("patriotism") -- thereby sectioning the "workers of the world" off into little isolated groups (the "workers of nation X"). You are supposed to define your self-interest as being entirely contained within the borders of your own country -- better yet, define your own self-interest as synonymous with that of the people (usually rich white men) who hold power in your country. Do not, under any circumstances, imagine that you have any interests in common with the ordinary citizens of other countries. (6) This, obviously, sucks. (7) Think about this when McCain, Palin et al. go around the country frothing at the mouth about "patriotism." Especially when they accuse other people of "lacking patriostism." They are full of shit. (The Democrats too, of course, but they tend to do less of the accusing.) 17 comments|post comment

working working working [11 Oct 2008|04:16pm] I'm leaving exactly one week from now to give a paper in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and I have to write it this weekend....argh!! 2 comments|post comment

Daily updates [10 Oct 2008|09:00am] I've decided I want to try and post something here every day so that y'all remember who I am. That said, that's about all I have to say at the moment. 7 comments|post comment

[07 Oct 2008|11:26pm] What the fuck is up with John McCain? Why won't he shake Obama's hand? Is it some kind of weird occult thing like sleeping with Buffy only in reverse, where if he shakes Obama's hand his soul will come back and he'll have to live with the guilt for the bad things he's done? The CNN guy was like "he clearly has some disdain for Senator Obama," but really, how much disdain do you have to have for someone to risk looking like that much of a dick right there on teevee in front of millions of people? In other news, I have a special fondness for my favourite laundry guy. That is not a cryptic message. It is the literal truth! 16 comments|post comment

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