let's all do the SNL "code orange" dance!
Feb. 13th, 2003 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistI was all depressed about Valentine's day this last week. Well, guess what, I am not anymore. In fact, I have never been so unconcerned about Va;entine's day. Usually I get all annoyed at being forced to reflect on why exactly it is that I am "alone" in the V-day sense of the word on February 14th, which leads to all sorts of fun retrospective analysis of my exes, and ruins Leonard Cohen for me for at least two weeks. Valentine's day is always horrible. Not as bad as my birthdays tend to be, but still pretty shitty. But not this year. No, Valentine's Day is not an issue anymore, because Duct Tape is the new Chocolate Heart. Instead of feeling depressed, I feel schizophrenic, watching CNN act out someone's graduate paper "Constructing Fear: A Dialectic of Discourse And Praxis" and simultaneously feeling really close to having a nervous breakdown, and meta-smacking myself for being manipulated even as I realize that I am being manipulated into being afraid and not being a good citizen doing my civic duty of not becoming a mindless moron like the 1 in 2 Americans who, according to a recent poll, believed that Saddam Husein was responsible for 9-11 terrorist attacks. The insidiousness of the exiting discourse is the fact that not only does it foster a split into "rational" and "irrational" reactions, it is impossible to know which one is rational and which one is irrational. It's like the puzzle with the doors in Labyrinth. Except with no logical loophole to find a solution. My mind has never had such fertile material for such maddenning epistemological Ultima Thules. I feel like I am watching a horrible game of connect-the-dots and the only logical conclusion lies in the realm of "conspiracy theory" thought. And yet, my heart freezes any time the subway stops underground. I am jittery and spooked by loud noises. I feel visceral unpleasantness in my stomach when a plane flies too low. Huh, too bad I live near LaGuardia then, right? I have to great freshmen papers before going to be, and I have to fight the urge to write in the margins "Dear Timmy, your paper sucks, but who gives a fuck. Here's two dollars, go to the store and buy yourself some duct tape." why not? If my advisor can say, in the course of our conversation over beers about the state of anthropology today, that the topics of global thought aren't very relevant anymore, and that brand of academia is going bye-bye because it's not important, not compared to whether there's gonna be a bomb dropped on Wall Street, why do I have to explain to Timmy why we don't refer to people as mammals in ethnographic exercises? See? Not only am I becoming a bad citizen, I am becoming a bad academic. And did I mention that if I hear the words "duct tape" one more time I am going to scream? And that if I ever get my fucking degree, I think I should get any job that I want, because I will deserve it, because it has fucking SUCKED going to grad school in NYC for the last two years? I was re-reading "The Nervous System" by Mick Taussig earlier today, and came across this quote that I underlined several years ago when I first read it during my first year living in New York, which I will always be grateful for, for having the experience of living here and being in love with the city before September 11th, when my biggest source of stress was a messy romantic entanglement with a boy who couldn't put his money where his mouth was. Man, one could really mine that colloquialism in a paper on prostitutes. I suppose a more appropriate rephrasing would be "couldn't put his heart where his dick was."
anyway, Taussig talks about "a state of doubleness of social being in which one moves in bursts between somehow accepting the situation as normal, only to be thrown into a panic or shocked into diorientation by an event, a rumor, a sight, something said, or not said--something that even while it requires the normal in order to make its impact, destroys it." I can relate. Furthermore, this last week I kept thinking how we live in a Benjaminian state of emergency, except with the past collapsed into the present and *preemptively* appropriated by the powers in charge. Where is the room for radical discourse "without" if the internal schizophrenia makes its existance "within" an epistemological impossibility?
And by the way, has anybody else noticed that all TV anchors and news analysis presumably in possession of some advanced degrees, or at least Hooked on Phonics certificates of completion say "nucular" now? What is this? Indirect bias transmission? Infectious stupidity? Deferral to the lowest common denominator! Ayn Rand warned us about this.
Dear CNN, governemnt and y'all people who want to kill us. Thank you for alleviating my Valentine's Day angst. I know it must be hard for Bush and Cheney to be apart on this special day (shit, even CNN acknowledges that, they ran a caption about the Shrub and his Vice being separated reading "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do), but we all know that their bond is as strong and resilient as duct-tape, so no worries.
anyway, Taussig talks about "a state of doubleness of social being in which one moves in bursts between somehow accepting the situation as normal, only to be thrown into a panic or shocked into diorientation by an event, a rumor, a sight, something said, or not said--something that even while it requires the normal in order to make its impact, destroys it." I can relate. Furthermore, this last week I kept thinking how we live in a Benjaminian state of emergency, except with the past collapsed into the present and *preemptively* appropriated by the powers in charge. Where is the room for radical discourse "without" if the internal schizophrenia makes its existance "within" an epistemological impossibility?
And by the way, has anybody else noticed that all TV anchors and news analysis presumably in possession of some advanced degrees, or at least Hooked on Phonics certificates of completion say "nucular" now? What is this? Indirect bias transmission? Infectious stupidity? Deferral to the lowest common denominator! Ayn Rand warned us about this.
Dear CNN, governemnt and y'all people who want to kill us. Thank you for alleviating my Valentine's Day angst. I know it must be hard for Bush and Cheney to be apart on this special day (shit, even CNN acknowledges that, they ran a caption about the Shrub and his Vice being separated reading "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do), but we all know that their bond is as strong and resilient as duct-tape, so no worries.
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nucular bombs
Date: 2003-02-13 09:15 am (UTC)Re: nucular bombs
Date: 2003-02-13 09:25 am (UTC)Charlie Thinks: Code Orange!
Date: 2003-02-13 10:06 am (UTC)Let us look at the Dick Cheney/Dubya relationship as being the duct tape that we Americans are applying to our windows in lieu of government warnings that recommend using it to shield out the threat of-- Code Orange! (dah dah dah etc.). Now this duct tape is strong, resilient, and utterly useless against most forms of bio- and/or 'nuculer'- terrorism, although maybe it'll fend off the sarin gas for a few minutes. But people are buying it en masse because they want some futile hope against something they cannot protect themselves from, and as a result this duct tape has gotten all twisted up and stuck over everything and organized an enormous war on Iraq that benefits nobody but their energy concerns- specifically Halliburton- while simultaneously ignoring a PERFECTLY VIABLE 'NUKE-U-LEHR" THREAT IN NORTH KOREA FOR GOD'S SAKE, thus totally invalidating its original premise for the war!
Fucking duct tape! Code Orange!
Re: Charlie Thinks: Code Orange!
Date: 2003-02-13 10:21 am (UTC)didya see the onion article, "north korea wonders what it has to do to attract US military attention"?
Charlie Thinks: Code RED?!? NO! CODE ORANGE! FUCK U, BATHROOM MEN!
Date: 2003-02-13 10:40 am (UTC)Heart attack! Heart attack! Heart attack!
So I said, like, "What?!?" and he repeated it, and I fled back to my desk to see if people were talking about it, and asked people "Um, did we just move to Code Red? Because I'm fleeing the vicinity on foot, running to Nassau County if needs be"; everybody else freaked out and we all logged on to CNN.com and there wasn't anything on it, nor on Yahoo, nor on anything. SO what the fuck? I got freaked out, and everybody else got freaked out, and my heart SERIOUSLY HURTS, I mean SERIOUSLY hurts, and it won't stop, and Why haven't I gone home yet? Why haven't I just left the city yet? My heart HURTS goddammit, and my mom said she'd pay my rent if I went to Hawaii with her and I said NO and I'm stupid. OHhhhhhhhhhhhh...Code Orange!
(neer neer doo doo doo doo neer neer)
all the colors of the rainbow!
Date: 2003-02-13 10:47 am (UTC)the guy in the bathroom is just some ASSHOLE who needs a roll of duct tape to shove up his head which is shoved up his ass, the latter obviously not providing enough of a muting envoronment.
if you leave the city, the terrorists and the governement have already won.
vday?
Date: 2003-02-16 05:24 pm (UTC)the one thing i learned (or liked) at that conference on... liberation theology, modernity, and coloniality (or whatever the fuck it was about... maybe globalization or ducel... ducel was the champion that day) is that... it isn't going byebye, it is just changing. freya, who's whole focus is indegenous video production and the like threw a wrench in the discourse among all the older male professors (there was nelson, and he is young and mexican so he doesn't have that non-acknowledged pass of europeanism and he is the liberation theology professor). so the first half of the conference is all about ducel and the condition of the poor in liberation theology and the like. then freya presents and begins to talk about how she is eschewing theory in her work (and here i'm totally going to mutilate her idea since i'm frozen into my house and, at this point in the evening, drunk... with only a cockatiel to talk to).. . i like the way she introduced it, "usually i'm pretty conservative in my work, so i decided to be more bold... theory as it is today is useless." not that she is throwing theory out the window, but that she doesn't want to deal with the totally abstract theory that doesn't give credit to particularities because historically that was the whole point of theory. but the conclusion she has come to when studying indigenous film production and being hyperaware of her location is that you can't get anything done if you attempt to use the kind of theories that are prevalent today.
and there is my mutilation of what she had to say. i just spent 20 minutes trying to write something coherent that concluded this all and got to the point i was trying to get at, but i'm pretty drunk and it didn't work. i'm having a weird weekend because i haven't actually talked much throughout it. i went to the protests but lost the people i was with so didn't converse, and while i'm into the chants, i'm not a chanter. a guy behind me at one point exclaimed, "introverts for peace" just once, and i felt that incapsulated it. and i worked all night last night so there was no talking then. and now that i'm frozen into my house i of course haven't talked to anyone all day so i'm a little stir crazy. awk keeps saying, 'hey baby' and 'com-pu-ter' (which is by far my favorite and when i'm not in the room you can hear him practising it... questioning himself after not so great pronunciations) i didn't realize this (the not talking) until i read about the children of mark and realized that there was no one around that could even come close to realizing something like that with me. yes, no talking.
i don't remember, but can i delete this when i'm sober and i look at it and cringe?
i'm going to post this before i drink anymore.
Re: vday?
Date: 2003-02-16 07:59 pm (UTC)what exactly do you mean theory today is useless? if her point is about historicizing theoretical discourse, i think everyone who isn't invested in being a total post-global-thinker-yet-not-global-thinker wanker would agree with that. indigenous film is particlarly interesting because it combines these two sets of issues that traditionally have been treated in discourses that were situated in very different locales--"indigenous"--think metonymy for authenticity, colonialism, etc. and "filmmaking" that is all Western and post-industrial and post-WWII and because of how those two theoretical discourses developed--again, historically, it is absolutely impossible to just apply them to indigenous filmmaking, because there are no real disciplinary or historical bridges between the two theories, so new stuff has to be generated that has to do with what's actually going on today...i wish i could have been around for that conference, it sounds really interesting.
not talking can do weird stuff to one. i think it's harder to process things when there is no interlocution, but there is also a false feeling of being more introspective. i had a bunch of "non-speaking" weekends in L.A. i guess i was being introspective, but without verbalizing things and getting input, i wqas only delving in-depth into my thoughts, but could not progress with them. and talking to oneself is not the same. i wrote a whole paper on talking to oneself last semester. it was a good paper, too, if i say so myself.
i think it's so cute your bird says "computer" i was thinking about pets the other day and realized how much life i am putting on hold until i am done with fieldwork it's like i feel like my "real" life won't begin till then. i guess knowing how dislocation can affect/change things, on some unconscious level i find it difficult to plan for long-term things when i know that a year from now i will have to be gone from my life as it is for a year. but it manifests in all these little ways, like i can't get a bird, or a dog, until i come back. i can't plan for all these practical things because it seems like anything i do now is going to have to be reevaluated or truncated within a year anyway. it's a weird feeling. also, you know, with my luck, i will meet some amazing guy, like, my soulmate, a month before i am supposed to leave for the field. maybe i should try to be in an "isolation bubble" until i am done with fieldwork. and then i will meet someone in a grocery store who will nonetheless pursue me try to convince me that i should not Plan my life, and then i will learn The Lesson that life is what happens while you make Other Plans, and then i will realize that i am in a kate hudson movie. or something like that.
horrifying
Date: 2003-02-17 12:49 pm (UTC)i have no idea what i was trying to get at. spending so much time not talking doesn't give one the the false feeling of being more introspective, but rather the feeling of being totally fragmented. so lemme see if i can clarify the mess i made:
the discourses that you name, in reference to two locales and in response to indigenous film making is something freya is very aware of. she was a graduate student under my father, so she can definitely identify, critique, and eschew that approach. the particularities that she was trying to emphasize were race and gender which get left by the wayside if you susbscibe to some kind of kantian metaphysical abstraction for everything. she definitely isn't applying either of the two discourses you named to indigenous video. her approach to indigenous video is something i really like, and something i haven't seen before. i'll look at my notes and try to get something coherent written. i REALLY need to lock my computer room or something when i start drinking heavily.
that being said, my watched the first season of buffy this weekend and is *really* getting into it. and she is totally into angel. i promise not to post anymore while really drunk, or if i do make sure i slaughter only my own ideas, not ones belonging to other people.
christ
Date: 2003-02-17 12:52 pm (UTC)Re: christ
Date: 2003-02-17 01:56 pm (UTC)i *like* your drunk posts! but if you prefer, you can send me drunk emails. i like those too. what you were saying before makes more sense now. i'd like to know if this woman uses any theorists to articulate race and gender issues, like more recent theorists. i mean, anti-kantian discourse is always right, it's just that it seems like in contemporary academia the anti-kant thing is a shortcut to positioning oneself, it's not wrong by any means, but it's like creating a diachronic straw man. lots of theorists that i've read/heard talk start out positioning themselves by saying that they are working against kant's metaphysical absolutes, then they often cite Bourdieu's critique of Kant in "Distinction" and while there is nothing wrong with that per se, they don't treat it like the given that i think it's been pretty much since poststructuralism as a meta-theory first showed up.
but this woman's work sounds interesting because liek you said, there isn't really a whole bunch of gender/race stuff in indigenous movies. there is some race stuff but the default discourse seems to be the nationalism/modernity/globalization/technology one, which acknowledges localized discourses but rarely does anything with them. where did she do work?
oh, on another academic note, i got an email from the guy putting together that conference at columbia that i submitted an abstract for, and he said "unofficially" that i should count on presenting. so now i have to actually WRITE to paper--it's the one applying Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history to the (am)Bush administration. if i can just manage my time well for once, i am sure writing it will be a rewarding experience. but knowing myself, it will all end with an intellectual freakout and ritalin and merlot. but hey, that worked out okay for my film paper last semester, so maybe...
anyway, i gotta go home...it's snowing and the subway is slow and i want to clean my room before the finale of comrade joe millionaire!