lapsedmodernist | unique interests

A meme from

apropos: the exegesis of your "unique" user interests.

Disaster memorabilia--souveniers of tragedies/disasters. It's an old industry, from souveniers of the Golgotha and pieces of the Cross to the WTC memorabilia that I shot a documentary about last year. One of the people featured in the film is Constantin Boym who, as a part of his Souveniers for the End of the Centrury line designed two sets of sculptures: Buildings of Disaster (including the 9/11 Memorial Set, Chernobyl, the Oklahoma City Federal Building, etc.) and a strange, poignant Missing Monuments. He and another interviewee, Proferssor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett really helped me conceptualize the idea discursively, rather than didactically.

Ethnographic filmmaking--I am kind of surprised this is a "unique" interest; I think it's pretty self-explanatory. I guess sometimes it is used interchangeably with "visual anthropology" but I would take issue with that.

History as sorcery--a concept Michael Taussig writes about in Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man--basically the idea being that at times (colonial) history-as-trauma constitutes an "epistemic murk" can only be articulated through discourses of magic and sorcery. If you've ever seen Jean Rouch's film "Les Maitres Fous" where he documented a ritual performed by members of a Hauka possession cult, who, during the trance were "possessed" by the spirits of colonial rulers (the governor-general, the major, etc.) and behaved transgressively and "madly" as they embodied these figures, that should give you some idea of how this concept can work.

Homo Sacer--the human being that can be killed but not sacrificed. In Ancient Greece there were two discourses of life--bios--the "qualified (i.e. political and social) life" and zoe--the "bare life" (i.e. the biological existence, the natural processes). Giorgio Agamben develops that idea in conjunction with the Ancient Roman concept of the homo sacer--a man condemned to death, stripped of his social/political life and down to bare, biological existence. According to Roman law he could be killed, but not ritually sacrificed. Agamben uses this idea of a man being reduced to such a legal status that to kill him is not a crime to consider The Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th century in a new way. He also explores that concept in terms of what it means for power and sovereignity today.

Human universals: I am a closet universalist

One-dimensional man: as per Marcuse, the one-dimensional society is a society where the space for critical discourse has been completely obliterated, and a one-dimensional man is a denizen of that society, deluded into interpreting his choices as a consumer as "freedom."

Possibly apocryphal stories: I like stories so good that they sound apocryphal, and I like apocryphal stories that make me go: "if that didn't happen it should have."

The un-50s: the zombie 1950s, a.k.a. here and now.

Theories of value: as in different systems of exchange, from capitalism to gift economies. In particular, I am partial to Simmel's relativist theory of value, reliant on subjective judgement and desire. This interest also dovetails with "gift economies," a rich and interesting topic in anthropology.

These lacustrine cities--a John Ashbery poem I am obsessed with.

"The real"--The Lacanian real, the "natural" prelingual state from which we are forever severed once we enter into Language.

Promiscuity of objects--a term I really like that I encountered in a Nicholas Thomas book, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific. The term refers to the material artifacts that shed and acquire meanings and histories as they are given/taken/exchanged in different cultural circumstances.

The "Left Behind" Series: you know. The Rapture happens. The Antichrist comes. He is the head of the UN. He moves the UN to New Babylon. The Jews have to be converted. Wackiness ensues. I've actually only read the first two. But I find them very interesting.