Saturday, April 24, 2004
(7:37 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Advent of Meta-Spam
I just received a piece of spam advertising a spam filter.
| | Main Page
(6:47 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Questions about Language
Is it possible to write something in one's native tongue that can be universally and transparently translated? Free of idioms, of puns, of any idea that can't be said in every language in the world (generating a translation that will never require footnotes)? Imagine attempting such a thing, even with your limited knowledge of foreign languages -- even if you know it's impossible, what would you do if you were to try? Would a text that attempted this feat be readable by native speakers? (What about music as a "universal language"? Or, better, mathematics?)
Isn't there more than one way to handle dialects? English is not a phonetic language -- in many cases pronunciations do not correspond to spelling. Why not write a novel in which, for example, the black characters get to have the standard spellings, while words are phonetically misspelled for any white characters, to indicate a "white accent"? Is there something about the politics of language that would make such a novel impossible -- or even obscene?
(The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn carries this logic to the extreme, endowing everyone, even the narrator, with an "accent." One wonders, however, if this is merely an emperical matter, a product of the novel's setting in the South -- does the Northerner's "non-accent" implicitly hold the place of the universal dialect?)
| | Main Page
(4:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
To List: A Post
I did a top twenty-one list of books a while back. Adam Robinson had some disparaging comments, which have been lost in the transition from BlogSpeak to HaloScan. I'll admit it: I am a poseur. I was trying to impress people when I wrote that list. I was trying to look educated and balanced, despite the fact that women were not represented at all and minorities represented only by a hair. So this time, when I list things, I'm just going to be me. I'm going to try to do it off the top of my head this time. So here are a few lists of favorites.
Albums
- This is Hardcore by Pulp (recently returned to me, after a year, by the lovely Katie Morris)
- Daisies of the Galaxy by eels (thanks to Mike Hancock for introducing me to this one)
- Kid A by Radiohead (with apologies to Adam Robinson)
- Vespertine by Bjork
Inevitable Presidential Candidates
- John F. Kerry
Books Recently Read
- Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money by Jacques Derrida
- A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis by Bruce Fink
- The New Imperialism by David Harvey
Bloggers I Most Wish Would Update More Often
- à Gauche
- Chun the Unavoidable
- Belle Waring (who has a moderately valid excuse)
| | Main Page
Friday, April 23, 2004
(1:53 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
An Open Letter to Discover Card
Dear Discover Card,
It's been about five years since we first crossed paths, and we've had some good times. I can still remember when I first got my card and immediately went $150 into debt to pay for overpriced college textbooks, then went to Denny's that same night. Since then, I've paid a finance charge or two, and you've given me my token cash back awards -- we've basically had a good, mutually beneficial relationship. That's why I've waited so long to bring this up. You see, there's apparently been some kind of miscommunication between us:
Yes, the checks.
I understand totally what your motivation is. You want me to take full advantage of my card by writing Discover checks -- whether for convenience at a merchant who doesn't accept Discover, or to help get out of a pinch with the utility bills. You're just trying to help out, and that's great.
The thing is, I've systematically thrown every one of those checks into the garbage for the past five years. I can see the value of persistence. I can see thinking, "Well, maybe the first batch of checks got lost in the mail." But it's been five years. At this point, you're just wasting my time and yours.
And honestly, I'm starting to wonder if you're just trying to trick me into paying unnecessary high finance charges. Is that what it is? Do you feel like I'm getting all the benefits out of this relationship by paying my statement in full every month? Do you feel used? We can talk about this if you need to -- the important thing is that we can't allow this lack of communication to go on, or it could spread like a cancer throughout our whole relationship. After five good years, I don't want that to happen.
Love,
Adam
| | Main Page
Thursday, April 22, 2004
(8:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
See, Republicans aren't Nazis
They're actually communists:
| | Main Page
(5:27 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Discussion Space: Entertainment and Ideology
What is the ideological function of Chappelle's Show (on Comedy Central)?
| | Main Page
(12:30 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Heresy
Bob Woodward reveals this:
Having given the order, the president walked alone around the circle behind the White House. Months later, he told Woodward: “As I walked around the circle, I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty. Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for forgiveness."I know Luther says to sin boldly -- but come on. We're all very fond of pointing out, when discussing practicing homosexuals, that Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery but told her to "go and sin no more." Well, how about when you've been caught starting an illegal war, based on lies, that has cost thousands of lives? Do you just get a pass for that kind of thing, since it's non-sexual?
Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There's a higher Father that I appeal to.’"
Even assuming that Bush is "sincere," which I guess we have to do, what he's saying here and in so many speeches is not Christian theology: it's heresy. President Bush should be denounced and condemned every Sunday, from every pulpit in this nation, until he stops blaspheming the name of God, and he should be denied communion at every church until he repents of his grevious sins and makes a good-faith effort to mend his ways. After all, Jesus did not die on the cross to give us access to cheap, Band-Aid grace to apply to our troubled conscience in between sins. Christ calls us to obedience, and whatever else George W. Bush may be, he is not obedient to the will of God.
As a brother in Christ, I call on George W. Bush to repent, and I call on my fellow Christians on the right to use their vast media empire to do the same.
| | Main Page
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
(8:59 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Fiction: A Space for Discussion
I just discovered this post from Elizabeth. I had said:
Ralph [Luker], The Steven Glass comparison is interesting, though I don't know enough about the details of the story to say for sure. Would he have gotten any attention had he been up-front about its fictional nature? Would he have gotten into Rolling Stone or whatever? Would people have actually read it? My feeling is, No. I don't read the short stories in literary magazines anymore, and I don't see people really discussing them. Perhaps my feelings are part of a broader cultural shift -- we can hear lies all the time, effortlessly, but if we're going to do something so counter-cultural as reading a book, we want at least a modicum of truth.Elizabeth replied (at her own blog):
Adam K - I only saw "Shattered Glass", so I'm far from an expert on Stephen Glass. I did take away from the film that it is harder and harder for journalism to stay "serious". Our media has become so sensationalized that Stephen Glass could provide TNR with stories full of lies until one person decided to research an article.Which is, of course, true.
Even with this aspect of our culture, though, I find your last line confusing. If you want to simplify it like that, so that fiction is "lies", and non-fiction "truth", I think a large part of the reading population would disagree. I guess I can only speak for myself though. I choose to read fiction because the world becomes too much. Because I am surrounded by liars and cheats in the world (well, my political spectrum anyway), I prefer to retreat to a world of fiction. I don't find such escape in non-fiction. Non-fiction does interest me, but the stuff I choose to read tends to get me riled up. Of course, some fiction does that for me too.
I don't think you should be so quick to dismiss fiction as passe because it is "lies". I have found truths in certain works of fiction that never would have struck me in non-fiction.
Questions arise: Is it just a matter of having new tools to "get at" truths in different ways? Are there certain truths that are only accessible through fiction that are not accessible through philosophy, theology, poetry, whatever? And what does it mean if I tend to prefer fiction writers who seem to me to be like philosophers in some important respects (Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jorge Luis Borges)? Am I missing another essential part of their work? Or what does it mean that I tend to prefer philosophers whose work is in some sense "literary" (Derrida with his puns, for instance)?
Beyond that, Adam Robinson wishes this conversation could continue, and so do I, so I offer up my big fat upgraded HaloScan account to all those who wish to discuss fiction. Feel free to ignore my stupid questions.
| | Main Page
(8:02 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Science and the Humanities
A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a couple natural science majors on a science-related topic. My only contribution to the conversation was some information I gleaned from a segment of "Bill Nye the Science Guy."
That said, I wonder if Robb has changed his CDs for the week.
| | Main Page
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
(9:23 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Leaving the Country
To begin, I'd like to retract any and all statements in my post entitled "Postmodernism: Good?" that gave credit to postmodernism for the democratization of education. As Ralph Luker points out in the comments, the inevitability of John Kerry's election renders it moot, but I strive for intellectual honesty and transparency.
I will try to be brief this post.
Today in my class entitled "Empire: Then and Now," with Professor Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., we were discussing the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, specifically the second section on changing political constitutions. We began the class, as usual, with our gleanings from the news media, and one student shared his finding that a large proportion of troops in Iraq are hired mercenaries. There are apparently independent armed forces for hire, whose status in international law is unclear. We are truly privatizing war.
In any case, halfway through class, it began to rain outside. I spent the remainder of the class simultaneously listening closely and plotting ways to leave the country, specifically by going to England to study and never coming back. No amount of debt seemed unreasonable to facilitate this. No area of study -- even theology itself! -- was too humiliating. It seemed very important to me to leave the country as soon as possible, and since I don't speak any foreign languages, England seemed like the only choice.
Certainly more than half of it was based on the very Anglo weather we were experiencing, but another big part of it has to do with my impression that people are smarter in Europe. For instance, in other countries, maybe their newspapers will carry a story about Kosovo other than one directly involving a U. S. citizen. Maybe the public airwaves aren't appropriated by amoral corporations who by definition want, finally, to make a buck at all costs. Maybe public transit is a reality. I'm sure I'd be gaining a lot of new problems, just like when I switched religions back a few years ago, but still -- it's a worthwhile line of thought for the back of my mind on a rainy day.
| | Main Page
Monday, April 19, 2004
(8:41 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Postmodernism: Good?
As a follow up to my previous post, I'd like to say that, all things considered, I prefer our postmodern university setting. For instance, two generations back, both sides of my family were dirt-poor and had about a thousand kids each. If not for the democratization of the university (along with the arguable "watering-down" -- stuff like PowerPoint, etc.), I likely would never have gotten a university education at all. Even if my life ends up looking formally like Jude the Obscure, in terms of never getting that elite university position and facing horrible tragedy in my dealings with women, I have had the distinct privilege, for most of my life, of being involved in an engaging intellectual community. I have elitist instincts, but when I really think about it, I realize that if we reinstated elitism, I would never have had a shot at getting in on it.
Thankfully, those kinds of windows will remain open in our country, since Kerry is inevitable and Bush cannot possibly win a second term, and since people will come to understand, before it's too late, that the Republicans want to privatize our nation's school system.
| | Main Page
(8:04 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
I am jumping on the academic blogging bandwagon.
And I am not ashamed.
Here's the story so far: John Holbo, one of my favorite bloggers and the holder of a tenured position over at Crooked Timber, wrote a nice little post about the uses and misuses of blogging for the academic life. A lot of people, including everyone's favorite aspirant to the title of "Visiting Assistant Adjunct Lecture at Podunk Community College," commented on that -- I mean not a lot, but the kind of numbers that would make me happy. Anyway, I'm not really all that interested in what most of the commenters had to say, because I'm not really an academic, and I think I somehow manage to do most of what John thinks "academic blogging" should do. So does à Gauche (who does actually hold a masters degree, so he's more qualified than I am).
Another of my favorite bloggers, Chun the Unavoidable (apologies to Ralph Luker), added to his voluminous comments to John's post by writing a post of his own. It is, like every Chun the Unavoidable post, a challenging and allusive work, but I believe I have reached a certain level of comprehension. I also believe that Chun's post was a letter meant for me, since he makes a remark about "an adjunct position at East Nazarene Valley State" (emphasis mine). In any event, the requisite blogospheric blockquote is coming... now:
The larger point that I’m coming to is that the blog encourages, by its very nature, resentment. It is a tool of false democratization. If you feel isolated within your department, start a blog. You attract a like-minded readership, and you feel vindicated. Note that nothing has actually happened, but you feel that it has. I don't pretend that there's anything novel about this “echo-chamber” analysis of blogs, but I do think that Holbo fails to recognize how powerful it is.The point here -- if we’re all equals in this discussion, and we’re all participating, then why exactly is it that you're the one with a guaranteed job for the rest of your life, and I'm visiting assistant adjunct lecturer at Podunk Community College (if I'm lucky)? If the university wants to save itself as an institution, it’s going to need to reinstate its elitism. Bringing “power to the people” is not an adequate way to save the institution when the majority of instructors in a university are already temp workers—in fact, I don’t know how the university could possibly restore its former stature without simultaneously returning to its former basis in economic inequality.
What would be a great thing about academic blogs is the potential for people from different disciplines to discuss ideas without the institutional anxieties and resentments that normally inhibit such discussion. With real names and affiliations, however, nothing much changes. I often find myself deeply suspicious of many blogging philosophers just because I know that's what they do.
To quote Hardt and Negri:
We might say that postmodernism is what you have when the modern theory of social constructivism is taken to the extreme and all subjectivity is recognized as artificial. How is this possible, however, when today, as nearly everyone says, the institutions in question are everywhere in crisis and continually breaking down? ... The omni-crisis of the institutions looks very different in different cases. For example, continually decreasing proportions of the U.S. population are involved in the nuclear family, while steadily increasing proportions are confined to prisons. Both institutions, however, the nuclear family and the prison, are equally in crisis, in the sense that the place of their effectivity is increasingly indeterminate.... In the general breakdown, then, the functioning of the institutions is both more intensive and more extensive. The institutions work even though they are breaking down—and perhaps they work all the better the more they break down (196-197).The university is surely one of these disintegrating institutions, and yet look at how eager people are to be a part of it! In fact, let’s do more and more university work on the internet, as a PR thing! Before long, you’ll need an MFA in blogging before you can sign up for a Blogspot site, and they’ll only let you keep your site for free if you agree to do some clerical work for them on the side, and you won’t know if you get to keep your same domain name from month to month.
Perhaps the academic left needs to renounce the idea of tenure altogether. Beyond that: perhaps the blogosphere must destroy the university in order to save it.
| | Main Page
Sunday, April 18, 2004
(8:54 PM) | Michael Hancock:
The Art of Reading Fiction
In Adam's defense, feeling sorry for not reading fiction is probably as damning in popular culture as actually reading it. I remember reading some short piece of prose back in high school that was probably quoted from another source; it was about how those people that truly love reading would probably prefer a good book to most kinds of social interaction, and that, upon death, would find in heaven a rather lackluster eternity awaiting them, unless they had access to their favorite books. Then they would gladly wander off to some quiet corner, away from the hullabaloo of praise and celebration, and enjoy a view moments of quietude.
I imagine that I am one of those kinds of people. It hardly matters whether I'm reading something new and interesting, or something I that I could probably recite from memory; the act of reading itself is an enjoyable experience, and one that I make a part of my everyday routine. Eating, cleaning, working, even showering; all of these are made far more enjoyable with part of your brain listening to John Steinbeck defend the working man, or Tolkien explaining the geography of Middle Earth, or anything like that. Needless to say, spending all of your time in your head gives you a pretty raging inferiority complex. So stop making fun of me.
Love, Michael.
| | Main Page
(4:57 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Reading Fiction
Ogged apparently doesn't anymore. He tells of a high school English teacher who stopped reading fiction at some point and says:
Even though I'm now just about half his age at the time, I think I understand what he meant. I've managed to read, all the way through, three or four novels in the last five years. When I was in high school, I would read that many in a week, or even a weekend. But I just can't do it anymore. I lose interest. I even resent the author for thinking that I'll spend so much time in a world of his creation.I have also largely stopped reading fiction. I know in my head that it's good and worthwhile, and I'm a strong advocate of particular novels, but I just can't motivate myself to get through them. I don't know that it's a problem of a "world of his creation" that's the problem, since I did read Phenomenology of Spirit in its entirety -- I can't really figure out what changed.
In any case, maybe this is something we could talk about, since I know there are several very avid readers of fiction in the Weblog Commenter Community.
| | Main Page
(12:49 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
In the Flesh?
Last night I saw some members of my favorite blog, The H is O, live and in person -- so those of you who thought the site was some kind of Turing test gone horribly awry have been proven wrong.
| | Main Page