Critique {&} Resist: Poststructural Garbage

[Re]New[able] Technologies: a discussion on the implications of ecological, gendered, racialized, colonial, abilist violence of late capitalism

2011-03-24T20:26:00.001-07:00

We need technologies. The irony of this truth rings true in every group of people, animals, social systems, and economies. Pardon the irony of accidentally validating truth; it has simply been the case that tools for food, i.e. agriculture, cooking, eating, and disposing have been essential components of at least human groups. Understanding that every cultural group has a relatively tangible history of material technologies, and descriptions/prescriptions for bodily technologies.

We live in an admittedly "high" tech period. European-American global dominance both financially backing, physically creating, distributing and planning new technologies has fostered neocolonial dependence to farmers, governments, and peoples of Pan-African Diaspora, Latin America, and the (ambiguous) "Asia" (Especially India, China and Japan). But this isn't news. The privilege of luxury in the West has created annual oil spills in Nigeria the magnitude of Valdez for the past 50 years; the soy beans sent to Haiti destroyed surrounding crops and soil because of bio-engineered, invasive, pesticide resistant strains of soy beans created by Monsanto; "advanced" spaces that disregard (or progress exponentially faster than) different abilities of those in their communities; environmental racism. Medical-industrial violence on the complex array of diverse bodies under its scope and surveillance.

These divergent remarks rely on a new model for the future. Critique is necessary before creation. My point being the slavery of our time happens in many registers, intersecting as a necessary component to the 'given' of "development" in the Western Context. That I am blogging at all requires the multilayered oppression of the environment, classist and racist economic and social stratification, a military intelligence who produce such excess as to eventually market technologies as consumer goods (e.g. GPS, cell phones, nuclear power, computers). I would like to propose a model for future technologies that resist social, economic, environmental, gendered, and racist structures.

Can it be imagined, or is it of impossible according to our current form of imagining, that we produce a technology that literally self sustains? Buildings that reproduce their own resources, utilizing what we now call waste for fuel, technologies that repair and improve themselves so there is no room for the potential to exploit the people currently being exploited in these processes. Please, leave links and feedback with specific cases of people trying this, so we can collectively imagine an improved anthropocene.

Of [Post/Neo]Futurisms: a Path "Beyond" Postmodernity

2010-07-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

One preoccupation I've had for some time has been the future. Well, not quite "the" [objective] future, but instead [as I've mentioned earlier] futures, futurity, the concept and even 'social construction' of "the" or a future. Though I grew up a fan of industrial music, where "the future" was a familiar theme, I never thought about the concept of a future as a distinctly material, yet intagable collection of worries, fear, hopes and preconceptions circumstance. Like Lyottard's Postmodern condition, who considered the postmodern situation a product of postindustrial capitalism, I would like to say we've moved "beyond" a stage in the social construction of history, technology, social awareness (feminisms, queer theory, critical race theory, disability on top of classic marxist thought) and power, into something "different."

It is necessary that "I" po-mo out with the extensive quotation usage in order to properly convey in a simpler way what I mean when I propose a "beyond" postmodernity: there will never be a "next stage" in the world, not because the world has "stopped progressing" (indeed, Progress is the reason I see our current future projected towards) but because "Progress" is a movement of power. The pre-modern world was only marked posthumously (as era's and period's in history are) by its lack of technological advancement, which pointed to its lack of capitalism, decline in church power, and difference from current definitions of neo-liberal democracy. We called the modern era one that was fundamentally different than the pre-modern because of industry. The postmodern, in the most reductive sense, can be sited as a globalized telecommunication revolution.

We have been asking "so what comes next" in the succession of pre-modern, modern, post-modern, even post-postmodern when the answer, or question further, should be "there is only a present that we project into the future, whose possibilities are not inherently tied to the western ideology of Progress at all costs." This is a queer futurity beyond any thought by Lee Edelman, or even Zizek's End Times: there is no temporal beginning or end to the world, and indeed to even think it on some linear scale of apocalypse narratives accepts an a priori linearlity of Progress. Measure this against certain non-western conceptions of temporality like, for expample, in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The Ibo people measure the year in seasons necessary to plant and harvest multiple crops, but especially yams. They work hard to survive, and work with the Earth. They have knowledge of the best ways to farm, and their oracle gives advice when individuals have no one to turn to. They believe in necessity as the Ancient Greeks did.

What the west characterizes as its future is really a set of narratives about what technologies we presently hold valuable will be protected and persist infinitely into the future.

Lady Gaga: Fully Realized Dream of Postmodernity? [lol]

2010-07-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I could repost Gaga's video ouvre here, but that amount of loading is unnecessary to prove simple points about her. I do not want the following to be considered on 'either side' of the Gaga empire, either within or without, in support of or ultimately against, because she may be a good example of that amorphous amalgam of postmodern tendencies who contradict one another, as her image, music and tastes have.

The picture above is of Joanne Stefani Germanotta, Lady Gaga's 'real' name which she used to perform under. As many of you know, she attended NYU's Tisch school, she came from the 'underground' in NYC, and planned pop stardom early on. She could be part of the 'serious' canon for pop stars, such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Queen, Eminem, Elton John, etc. Of course, there is an irony citing a stable category like 'canon' for pop music; the nature of popular music is that its tied to fashion (as in 'what's in fashion, trendy right now') and therefore in constant flux. The images, expectations, norms and ideologies of pop culture and pop artists are often static, with another face filling the spot for a second. Of course, these artists that I quickly pile into a canon range in talent, genre and popularity; the quality they share is longevity.

From feminist/queer theory perspective, Lady Gaga brings us back to the, now seemingly classic, Madonna argument about sex, agency and ethics: Madonna was criticized by the popular media as being overly sexual, though she arguably was simply overt about her sexuality; she was critized by feminists for not having an open enough critical stance regarding her image as sexualized, as a poor role model, and as a 'mere object,' even though the 'image of Madonna' was, like all hyperimplosed hypertextual representations of 'the Real,' there are rupture of agency that we see in fragments. Madonna wasn't an individual, she was closer to a corporation: people produced parts of her image, proliferated meanings, and 'managed' her identity that weren't her, and did it for a paycheck.

Reducing Lady Gaga, as they did Madonna, to an argument over sexual objectification still reduces them to objects, of both study and sexuality. There needs to be a new way of thinking about pop, one that is a little more content based, and formalistic when content 'lacks.' What I mean is that pop music, pop culture, purports to be apolitical, sterile, something easily consumed by the masses and therefore only takes a stance as the best politicians do: in both the 'wrong' and 'right' side of whatever argument someone else often throws them into. And there should be a critical discourse. Most critics, however, on both sides, end up taking the Adorno position that:

He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme.

Theodor Adorno was part of Frankfurt School who was one of the first to criticize pop music (at the time was jazz and blues, which I take a bit of humor considering how much credit we give Jazz and Blues now, and rightfully so) for its militaristic rhythm (he favored harmony as most western high art theorists did, or highly theoretical noise/sound composition) that he believed broke down individual consciousness, making us suseptable to dominant culture and capitalism. His critique is formal and content based, where he thinks the 'nothingness' of pops content and its 'simplicity' in composition makes it a tool for hegemony, of which is to some degree true.

Lady Gaga, however, is an example against this type of theory. She is, I would say, a good example of the fragmentary nature of postmodernity, as well as a figure of rupture, opposition, and resistence while simultaneously representing the worst norms of the construction of feminity. What we will see is that these are not parts of Gaga but ways in which we interpret her texts (songs, videos, representation). Let's use the reductive interpretations first (exemplified by "LoveGame"):

The most noted, controversial lyric of this song is 'let's have some fun, this beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.' This fragment has made her more famous in minutes than many tracts by subversive authors. The criticism that I would attribute to Dworkinesque pseudo-feminist of the right wing news programs (Fox can't stop talking about Gaga and how much she is ruining our children) of this video/song, 'Telephone' and any new hit she comes out with, is that she is an object for men, obviously simulating sex with the other dancers. I would argue that Fox's hidden objections, just under the surface of their outright claims, are that this (and most of her videos) endorse interracial sex, which 'feeds the negative stereotype' that bodies of color are hypermasculine and hypersexual, while never pointing at white constructions of masculinity as oversexual. The Dworkin argument is senseless by these news casters as well because Dworkin's point was to call attention to heterosexual intercourse (in the book Intercourse) as under the umbrella of rape. The act of penetration was like that of a knife, and the representation of sex as part of marital rights (of men), the history of virginal imagery as used against women's bodies, and an ultimate control of women's bodies as exemplified in pornography all contribute to socially constructed mechanisms of oppression. Fox news is not saying anything near this. Fox news has never called for an end to sex, or that sexual objectification (if they've ever used the term 'sexual' when calling her an object) is a product of the male gaze.

How is this critique reductive? First, the idea that any woman's (or anyone's) sexuality is up for debate by white, rich men in suits is a problem. I will go beyond calling it 'problematic' because problematizing only goes so far. The critical tone of 'the problem of Fox news...' is necessary when talking about something so fucking absurd as Fox news (one of the most watched news stations on TV) because Tea Part politics have been the guiding 'light' for the largest resistence to feminism, queer rights, people of color, abilism, even sizeism. I feel like reciting why criticizing women's sexuality is infantile, but it must be done for the sake of stability: women (a problematic category to begin with) have had a sexuality forever, but it was rarely ever their own. Women who were raped in Puritan colonies couldn't stand as their own witnesses in court and could only have their father or husband sue the rapist for damaging 'their property.' Still, in many countries, women who are raped may be forced to marry the rapist to cast off shame 'she' may cause to her family (or her brother may outright kill her for having sex before she's married). The welfare debate often lands somewhere in 'slut calling' where women of color 'just can't keep their legs together, and I 'aint paying for that!' Female masterbation is talked about as much as FGM (of course I'm not equating them, just pointing out the lack of discourse around both publicly), and women police each other with judgements about when, with who, where and how it is 'appropriate' to have sex. "Lie back and think of England." Women have their clits cut in some countries to 'curb their sexual energy' and keep them faithful. Hysteria is a term refering to the 'neurosis women experience when they are too horney' and were classically 'released' from this tension by a doctor with a dildo.

Let's do a non-reductive reading of the same video, and we'll even add another afterwards to give a better rounded content analysis. The LoveGame video is suprisingly less sexual than I would have expected, knowing the song for longer than the visual accompaniment. In the beginning, she addresses a group of men assumedly 'hungry' for her, and she taunts them with her sexual power. This physical flirtation reminds me of a similar performence in The Handmaid's Tale (p. 30) where she flaunts her sexuality in a space where technically she is powerless but the men can't have her, nor can they sleep with any woman 'til they've 'earned it.' This commodifies the female body, and reduces her to a use value. Yet, she recognizes the slippage in the structure of power she finds herself (Offred) in: similar to the space of a apriori censorship of popular music videos, there can only be simulated sex and temptation. She is the one moving the most in this scene, because she holds the light, she is the wanter, the one who has enough agency to call out men she finds suiting her sexual needs.

She dances on a subway, with a large group of (probably gay in 'real life') Black and Latino men, getting touched, touching herself and them. The space can more easily be read as urban than sexual, and seems to represent areas that desire takes place in over spaces sex actually happens in. Later, dancing on the cars, the cops come in: ah, the white men in blue arresting the men of color for acting 'inapropriate' and 'sexually aggressive' towards a (very) white woman. The image of white throwning black men on the ground is almost a pastiche to every single ('reality' or fictive) cop show on television right now. Then, she takes a single officer into a telephone booth and 'lets him touch her' while presumably 'egging him on.' This seems counter feminist (as she is not affraid to admit she endorses male culture), but again there is a question of agency in these blurry moments. She is in his grasp, in his control; do we know she initiated, wanted, will want further regardless of aggressiveness this authoritative male attention? Does she see the cop as an indivual in a uniform devoid of that uniforms authority, representation?

And then something very subtle happens. The male cope switches back and forth, from male to female. In fact, the only full kiss (of Gaga making a decision as an agent to kiss, not simply be the passive object of recieving kisses on her neck) is when the cop is a woman. Is the uniform still representative of male authority at that exact instant? Is it simply a convenient space and time in the video to fool the viewer (because it assumes a male gaze sees a half visible man constantly behind her in each shot, missing the gender jumping, being fooled by buying into heteronormative narrative structures) or does it critique the cop costume as so inherently male that even a female body in its space barely threatens is machismo of the costume? And what of lesbian kissing? There is more agency as a lover than a sexual aggressor when the female body enters the police costume.

Before another video, let's consider some 'cred' for Lady Gaga: as restated in a recent interview by Larry King, Gaga admits to bisexuality, , her support of gay rights (which she could be criticized for advocating only male gay culture, with its fashion and hyperconsumer vibe) and a number of reasonable (yet often called left) political leanings. She is happy to self reference and identify as part of pop culture, a product of consumerism, of mass culture

Language Games: Technology, the Avatar phenomenon, and 'Laws' around Driving

2010-07-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

Within the last 3 weeks (since getting a job), I have been biking to work. There were three main reasons for this: politically, to not consume gas and perpetuate the problems BP is making apparent (about the oil industry in general, of its risk, its power, and its negelagence); personally, I don't have a car always available (I share one with my family when they aren't using it), and for my physical health (which is almost secondary to the first two reasons). As a result, there are unintended consequences of using biking as a primary mode of transportation, such as an autoethnographic analysis of car culture, the fear bikers expereince, the freedom they also experience, and a consciousness as a driver for the times that I am.

Without 'seeing' or 'hearing' bikers, when I was a driver, I recognize now that these experiences are silent and invisible. For those bikers that ride on the sidewalk (my biking is in suburbia where, not only is that allowed but preferred), the township never invests in new tiles that are devoid of (sometimes lifethreatening) cracks, or trimming the surrounding hedges/poison ivy. Of course, most bikers will not be inclined to have these gripes, since they 'share' the road with cars.

Well what the hell does all this have to do with video games? Or even language games? Ah, the classic poststructural 'clearing of the throat,' or the reason why some people hate to read Derrida: the point of this post is questioning the notion of games, either video or otherwise, or rather putting the power of driving laws in the questionable space of games (which, as we know of power and social construction, still has plenty of weight). Take ">this as an example.

There are a few related videos on youtube that show similar things from different countries. I did not see this video and think of the question of video games (as one might think in reading the clip explaination "guy makes it to work driving like he's in a video game") but instead typed in 'driving as video game' into google. The idea is easy to see, especially since there are tons of 'driving video games.' What I'm calling into question is the Realness of driving.

What are driving laws? From a legal perspective, they are assigned to the 'privilege' of driving: the law does not recognize driving as a 'natural born right' but as something which is nice, a convenience of modern living. The reason I use quotation marks around the word 'privilege' is define it against 'right'; yet they also signify irony in that only the privileged (with its varying degrees) drive. Of course privilege relies on context: in an American suburb, the majority of people are wealthier an 'require' a car, because suburban sprawl has killed public transportation, religating it to the level of 'those who can't afford cars, who might as well be left without a lifeline.' Even within those areas, the underprivileged, those struggling with labor intensive jobs, still have a degree of privilege when compared to people in Kenya or Benin. In America (and for the Western world) driving laws are flexible: people watch for cops so they can 'drive how they want' which may be faster than law allows. Laws regulate stopping, when to turn, who to yeild to, under what conditions, under what medication or substance people can drive. But, like every other law (though with these ones more than others) they are constantly broken, bent, restricted, made exceptions for, updated and deleted.

Most laws are hidden: we take a course when we start driving and we get a jist. We know that we can drive 5-10 miles over the speed 'limit' as long as we don't look like we're drunk. Some are explicit: new cell phone and texting laws are on most news casts. But, however we recieve these laws (in whatever version, since rarely do we have then given to us in full), they are not given from the actual authority. There are fragments on the radio, on tv, maybe a peice of mail that looks like junk mail, that are given and we are expected somewhere along our social/media jounrey to encounter them.

But we must admit that, like medical and legal jargon, the language that regulates driving is a language game, and the driving itself is a video game. I am taking the term 'language game' outside the context that its often used with Wittgenstein (that language is constructed in reference to an activity) and into the Derridian critique: each 'subset' of language, aka jargon (when concerning institutional constructions of languages). This does not make the laws surrounding driving unreal or destroy their power; on the contrary, it is a game whose power is firmly, 'clearly' placed in the realm of consensus and social agreement. 'Video' seems like an awkard term to use for this medium of gameplay; in fact its nomenclature is deliberatley awkward to show how we only consider certain types of technology as part of gaming. Cars are a 'serious' technology. True, they can kill people and they are 'necessary' for suburban, urban and rural transportation; therefore, they are serious.

I am trying to point out that cars are a piece of 'high' technology controlled by a user (like a video game), where the one's being is not reduced by its automobilic representation but made more real (if your car is seen doing something illegal, you get the ticket), therefore creating an avatar. This avatar functions by the gaze of other drivers and those outside the driving game, i.e. bikers, walkers, people in their houses, storefronts, etc.

The last point, of the constituitive powers of the internal (other drivers') and external (onlookers) gaze of the driving game, brings to mind Foucault's panopticon: power, intangible and hidden, in both unspoken language during 'gameplay' and written language 'becoming' alongside the game (not within, or during, the play nor by the actors) operates through the fragmentary yet contextually collective (not total but collective for the area in which one is driving) gaze of Others. For example, when I park in my car, my actions have to fit with the norms of that area. If I sit too long in the car in a suburban space, people take notice. If I hold up a cellphone and begin texting, within view of onlookers, I have justified my space. In an urban setting, this justification (and even the need to justify oneself and one's space) changes: the norms change with location, with space; the space I create, or affect, is regulated differently by different onlookers.

Similarly, the Other is constituted by the norms of drivers. My friends, family and I have all had people shout remarks at us while I bike alongside drivers. I have little power over drivers, and am vulnerable to their whim. This is a great example of how, even within their power structure (driver vs. empowered observer [cop] or casual observer [other driver, biker, onlooker]) there is a secondary power structure in which drivers, whose agency is restricted under their 'primary' structure (having to loosely follow the game), gain an agency through their action of shouting at, or acting in some other violent way, at bikers. The power of the driver constructs hiearchies that change for the biker: I have never feared being pulled over by a cop while I biked. This established (if not a fraction of) power through freedom from the pantoptic gaze of the authority (cops), even though there are technically laws I have to observe as a biker.

I will continue these lose, fragmentary ideas about autoethnographic and phenomenological experiences as a biker in future blogs. Hopefully with more media intergrated.

Intersectionality in Working with the Developmentally Disabled

2010-06-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

After being a week into the program, I see many things that are apparent about the classic race/class/gender spectrum at my job. There are interesting intersections too with sexuality, ability, and fat (to be fare reaching and as inclusive as possible). This blog will be part of an ongoing theme of autoethnography investigating the inclusion of Developmental Disablility (DD) into disability, queer, feminist, etc. theories emerging canon. As a subculture that makes up 10% of the overall population in the US, the institutionalization of DD creates a unique phenomenological experience to build an embodied subjectivity within people with these types of disabilities, ones often forgotten even by the scholarship advocating for effective empowerment of those with disabilities.

The first to note about the 'Individuals' (those with developmental and intellectual disabilities, as they are referred to by other medical health officials in the field) is that their lives are almost completely enveloped by the medical industrial complex, the church, and the state. Where one falls short, serendipity has replaced their function with another, each institution working together to provide perfect safe haven for these people with special needs. The movement away from 'mere care' to something like teaching independence and integration has been a great stride made in the realm of advocacy for those with 'MR'/ID (intellectual disability) and DD; this is not to be taken lightly. The seriousness now that abuse has in the field (including a gender right with is protection against sexual abuse/harassment) is also important to note.

Two things they do not have, as I can see from a 'perfect blueprint' meticulously planned by the state, church and medical field, are access to 'serious' political ideology (or rather an alternative to their institutionalized context's inherent ideology) and access to adult sexual freedom, except for the rare few deemed 'having the ability to consent' by psychiatry. I am sure that once I start on site with my individuals (ages ranging from 11-21) I will see that they have a knowledge of the 'sinful earth' (as their nuns would probably call... hell, queer nightlife, regular nightlife, socially non-normative/criminal activity) in their music, exposure to radio, possible cable TV and even the rare internet user. By analyzing from this position, both within the power structure of surveillance that the state has empowered me with (I would say unfortunately, since it creates a power differential potentially as invasive as the panopticon) and as a person engaging in critical resistance (by taking a critical approach in the interest of the Individual's human rights, to give voice to their nonverbal subjectivity, ergo resisting dominant culture's subjugating and blighting ability to make DD/ID invisible/speechless), 'I' will mediate my response to the system.

The rare exposure people with DD/ID would have with 'overt' political ideology would be possible commercials on the media they encounter in society, which is fairly regulated by the church/medical context, where psychology has deemed the majority of 'adult' issues too complex for people with DD/ID. While I agree it would be difficult and arduous to actually 'bring them up to speed' with our current context, and simplifying history to a point comprehendible will be reductive, I believe it their right to engage in whatever conversation they can about their multiple intersections with power in the world. Remember, difference isn't gender, color, class or sexuality blind. Though I have not seen represented, encountered personally, or been told a second hand story of any queer Individuals, I would not be surprised to eventually meet one. What politics do you get form pop music? Television without news? Commercials? These are the most deliberately apolitical entities in our capitalist structure, and apolitical because capitalism requires its contradictions hidden so we are less likely to seek solidarity in shared power differentials. Therefore, people with DD and ID totallized by this institutional setting, having limited access to 'overtly' political media, are less likely to improve their own empowerment in the realms of race, class, gender and sexuality rights on top of their unique ID/DD rights as a group.

Secondly, the only Individuals with full sexual freedom (having the ability to actually have sexual contact with someone other than themselves, in any way more than kissing) are those deemed psychologically able to consent to everything in their lives (i.e. giving out medically sensitive information, consenting to medical procedures, right to vote, etc.). Does a person need to know what the best approach in psychotropic drug therapy for them is in order to have sex? I don't mean literally, that the two realms of knowledge and understanding inform one another, just that the degrees of safety in each somewhat incommensurable. Granted, it is important to give education (which it is their legal right to be educated in) in sexual health, and as we teach our individuals to cook and clean themselves, how hard would it be to incorporate proper condom usage or even birth control and (arguably difficult for them to grasp the full weight, physically and politically, of abortion) an understanding of the options one has in 'family planning'. i.e. abortion, adoption or raising children by one's self. These are issues that we all deal with, negotiating how either one of these options will effect our lives is our right to decide, and they should be considered and discussed with people one has sexual encounters with. Yet, as we can easily see, these concerns don't stop anyone (at least anyone my age that I know) from having sex. We are just safe. And informed. Just as we're informed about what fashion is acceptable, and what the news might be, we're informed about our sexual health. And even so, those who are 'nuerotypical' don't (most often) have explicit, expanded, or even satisfactory sexual education or access to sexual health facilities.

I will continue in another entry on the workers in the industry of DD, being a field employing a large number of women and people of color it is interesting to see where there is a 'consumer/corporation' binary breaks down and power operates around care, or under the guise of care in instances of abuse as Foucault expresses in the History of Madness. Enjoy the second oil spill, the fucked wildlife (400 species) and the fucked economy of Nawlins seafood; thanks BP!

A New Inclusion of Developmental Disability in Disability Theories' Canon: My Experiences in a training DCC

2010-06-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, what an incomprehensible title!

So, I'm starting a new job within an agency that offers individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) and 'mental retardation' (MR) which each have a degree of functionality levels. The whole thing is very medical, even though the institutions (incorporated non-profits) are funded through (partially) public education budgets. I'll be assisting children (11-22), since this is the age to which free care is provided. The law which allows these institutions to service concerns free, compulsory education up until 21. Therefore, when a child is deemed 'mentally retarded [a medical term whose signification has become so pejorative that the DSM-V, released next year, is changing the term to 'intellectual disability']' a set of public institutional representatives (the committee on special education, the school board, the school psychologist) meet with the parents of the child 'in need' and agree to a legally binding contract creating an IEP (individual education program) regarding the degree of care will be necessary for the child's legally obligated educational/developmental needs. Therefore, since both medicaid and the school funding are at stake for the benefit of the child, there sometimes becomes a conflict of interest between what the school budget will allow and what the child needs in regard to its development.

As a worker in this industry, I'm learning everyday, more and more, I must become an advocate for people with DD, since their acceptance in society isn't too high. Of course, there's the default Christian guilt everyone barely believes in to pity the disabled, but it has no consideration of their social circumstances; their pity concerns itself with how hard that individual's life is personally because of its difference from 'everything normal, natural and expected' that they fear. They cannot empathize with those with DD because, as able-bodied minds, their 'ability to reason' is superb and incommensurable. With such difference, dominant culture's resistance to considering disability as a natural part of life and, as such, that integration (even with dependency and care needs) would not be so impossible. People are literally afraid of persons with DD when we take them on day trips to public areas. Most stare, I had a co-worker in high school tell me her secret, that she became a little sick when seeing them in the store. I could never understand her perspective, because I accepted them as people, and had worked with a few people with DD when in martial arts. Regardless of their function level, they are people with interests, skills, personalities, subjectivities, and perspectives that are both socially relatable and psychologically, freeing-ly different. They could perceive the world in ways I couldn't, and I always appreciated the ability to be exposed to a multitude of perspectives.

Academically, I will begin writing on the inclusion of DD into the 'canon' of disability, queer, feminist, and even fat theory. This will eventually lead into a broader range of inclusion that I will hope to accomplish surrounding mental illness and the intersection of all three (developmental, intellectual, physical disability) to show the multiplicity of phenomenological experiences extremely embodied within an othered subjectivity. Colonized by medicalization, and yet reliant on care ethics and therefore medical aid, the relationship that these individuals have to the institutions they interact with and rely on are complex and arguably problematic at times. My goal in problematizing the system that cares for these individuals is in line with the goal of these institutions: the empowerment of this social group that has faced oppression while getting them the help required for them to live happily, or even self-sufficiently if possible. By including mental illness in my analysis we will see the intersection of different medical gazes, which are of course industrial, such as psycho-pharmacology, neurophysiology, psychology, psychiatry, occupational therapy, speech pathology, and the entire major medical industrial complex with its investigation of the body in every objectifying manner. Understanding how perception works has been a predisposition of continental philosophy since the beginning, of queer theory, poststructuralism and 'postmodern' feminism with Freud and Lacan, critical race theory and postcolonial theory with Franz Fenon in The Psychology of Oppression, existentialism, and even the other other other side of the pond: Anglo-American Philosophy! AHHHHHHHHHHH

I propose an idea only rumored by philosophy nerds that continental philosophy should at least communicate with philosophy of mind, and therefore the whole lot of analytic philosophers. Though both hold strict to their linguistic differences, even on topics of linguistics, there can be an interesting clash and resistance to motivate writing on technology, social politics, and the mind. The psyche. Ego. Self. self. 'I'. whatever we decide to call it, we can all talk about the mind and, at minimum, shut Steven Pinker the fuck up about his ignorance on feminist and queer realities. Read "How the Mind Works," the second half to see what I'm alluding to, but read the first half if you want to learn about computational theory of the mind. And, where they lack any notion of consciousness, ergo ego, or "qualia" as they call emotional experiences, I believe there could be a more neurological approach to psychoanalysis' freedom to understand desire before 'natural, genetic behavioral pre-dispositions.' This would mean that social constructionist theory would actually get a point back at the science and medical community for their lack of observance in the effects, funding, or purpose of their research. To be against the agenda that science doesn't even know it has, aside from Alfred Nobel who was so horrified at what he did in creating dynamite, does not mean I hold an anti-science view. I am critical in the association it has with capitalism, industrialism, and power, but within itself (though as a means of violence in methodology, ethic as objectifying and believing itself to be removed from a subjective experience, even of the the facts they study. When I say that science or medicine has colonized the bodies of every oppressed group in history I do not believe it was intentional on the independent thinking of medical professionals throughout history. Power operates across vast spectrums to totalize (or attempt to totalize) its structure; medicine, government, popular and folk media all had equal share in the production of constructions of bodies as they saw fit to oppress because power was on their side.

Over the next few months, I will be reading and even deconstructing at times Foucault's History of Madness while learning about and interacting with people with DD on a daily basis. This auto-ethnographic approach to seeing 'non-institutionalized madness' (since most people mistaken call them 'crazy' and not having impairments or disabilities) will allow me to include Foucault's psycho-social analysis of power and institutions in the framework of a nearly privatized industry that regulated the bodies of a highly othered and forgotten group. Yet, in the potential spirit of queer optimism, the consequence of trendy-problematizing (overcritique without often a social alternative, often justifiably because an alternative is unthinkable given the current contingencies of power structures) leaves the very real, practical, embodied people in need of dependent care simply in bad places without real change. The method of change that these connected industries are susceptible to are not of simple 'social work' methods of patching up existing wounds constantly re-opened by the power structure we cannot escape. It doesn't recognize structural roots to the issues they solve reactively, and since the pervasiveness of institutions-- of power-- must be opposed while trying to alleviate the inevitable result of current power difference, simple psychology will also not suffice under a financial system that only treats the petty psychological illness of those who can afford it. My goal will be to explore what 'neurotypical' aka 'normal' and 'natural' are in terms of phenomenological, psychological and anthropological/sociological lenses.

On an unrelated, fragmentary note check out the new pre-performance audio of the gypsy caravan's "broken glass"

Coming Soon:

More on Neofuturism, apocalypse myth that dominates 'tea party' politics and the 'history' channel, and projections of present fear by constructing totalalized dystopias vs. critical resistance .

Histiography of 'mental retardation' and developmental disability: how people with DD experience a unique and complex, intersectiional oppression in fields such as sexuality, will in regards to resistance or political awareness at all, race, class, gender and of course physical disability.

Friendship: Aristotle's happiness for other's happiness, the notion of homosocial corporate spaces pre-and-post queer theory, membership, and power at the level of male bonding qua masculinity constructing gender/sexuality/racially exclusive spaces.

Gypsy Caravan

2010-06-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

This blog is an outlet for both my personal life and consideration of things bigger than me. One project that I am a member of, yet is at the same time much larger than me, is the travelling gypsy caravan troupe. The Jessicas are the founders and main movers, and when I'm in Jersey City, I help out. The first major goal of the troupe is to compile a CD of live sessions in the local parks of Jersey City.

Each session has seen the same routine: we/they enter the park (or surrounding area) playing instruments. So far we have brought a harmonica, pan flute, bamboo flute, large "sogo" drum and smaller hand drum. At once the kids are interested to see new people and new stuff brough into the park. Once we encourage them to try playing, they start accumulating around the instruments and play however they like. Though we encourage sharing and respect (kids end up fighting over who plays what when), we let them do what they want as far as rhythm, syncapation, areas to play in, and duration. We then record everything with a single mic on an mp3 device, edit and master the tracks.

We will eventually (soon) give out these CDs (hopefully for a small donation) that we will give entirely to two organizations: (20%) Creative Grove and (80%) a charity of our choosing at the time of our 'selling session'.

With this project, we are hoping to make children in urban areas interested in music, especially when so many programs are already underfunded and being cut further back. Bringing non-western instruments to areas of color allows children to incorperate all types of sounds and possibilities into their experience, as both musicians and people. One of the main directions we've used thusfar is learning; we do not claim to be musicians (especially not by any established musical standard) and we are not seeking children with previous exposure to musical education. Instead, the more 'natural' curiousity that children have towards new things they can interact with is what we want to capture.

Please check us out here and leave feedback either here or there: gypsystreetperformance.tumbler.com

We Live in the Future

2010-06-02T18:44:00.000-07:00

A short list of current events: "the worst oil spill in US history" euronews.net, activists are being fired at by Israeli armed forces, and every half hour or so there's a fatherhood initiative PSA paid for by another corporation [ liz library ]. Things are looking down.

What qualifies as a future? We [which may include you the reader and "I" the author, or the whole host of readers who may eventually read] edify future states. We do not choose the future; but it is by our collective workings, random and indifferent towards one another, that this future happens. The present is a meeting of the past and future, which are the same road going in opposite directions (I believe that was Arendt quoting Nietzsche), and we regret the fact that we cannot act backwards in time. The eternal return only matters in the face of the irony, po[st]-mo[dern] as that may sound, that we cannot act backwards; our actions will ripple on into the future [Arendt]. I would like to propose a seemingly unradical idea of admitting Arendt into the poststructuralist, if not postmodern, 'cannon'. Her ideas on plurality (and not mere plurality that David Hoy in Critical Resistance might accuse) and totalitarianism speak clearly to our notions of the polymorphous perverse in Freud, queer theory, and poststructural feminist critiques and biopower with the trend of infinite Foucaudian readings currently occupying our academic journals.

If we think about the future as a product of power structures operating at the level of desire, and consider both psychological and socio-anthropological implications of power moving us to do anything-to-everything, then we have to keep a critical eye on the present and past. The critique must give way to resistance, because no system is closed and no power structure could exist without resistance; since we must change how hard the world has been and will become for the oppressed, we must take full advantage of our pocket of action against power. This can come from consumer power, legal power to social power and public persuasion. People must be impressed upon and have a counter-conversation once and a while, even to ethnographically research our neighbor.

Today I was talking with someone about the big oil spill BP caused. We discussed how there is a crucial moment approaching in regards to our dependency on oil to carry the weight of hyper-industrial and highly technological Western countries like the US. Could this disaster give enough public outcry and demystification about the process of Progress-by-any-means-necessary? The future is literally set in front of the consumer and I predict the following: for some time, people will urge a publicly funded research program for alternative fuel sources. IFF no body cuts the funding after media attention halts (when the news gets bored of the now, when the now becomes a then, but not a past), then there will be a public interest in the fashion of alternative fuel. For a year maybe people will buy into the trend, on a mainstream level embracing corn utensils, converting engines, buying entirely new cars because we refuse to pay European oil prices (what would amount to $20 a gallon). Then, as usual northern industrialists often have done, the price of living will get higher, people will become disenchanted because they expect some immediate results (that could never surface in such a short span of time) around global warming, fuel dependency, and 'progress' and the major companies that fucked us up today will lobby their way into power once again, fucking us into the next century. The recession will monopolize existing powerhouses and blight any competing alternatives in the fuel industry. In 20 years max we'll have another oil crisis.

If there was a serious effort on the part of our government (which seems unlikely but not impossible [important distinction]) to regulate existing reliance on oil and incentivize alternative use, and a consciousness as a consumer group that we all can change how things work, we can see a new future.

500 teachers are being laid off in Ohio, and entire sports programs in low income areas of New Jersey are being completely taken away. The educational system has worked to give 'our future' (a true yet seemingly loaded slogan for DARE and the like) the least analytic capability. Without critique, resistance can be dangerous, and therefore will not be effective or long lasting. Also, if the people 'act out' after being disenfranchised for so long, they will buy into their own oppression through committing themselves against each other racially, along gender and sexuality lines, and most explicitly along class lines.

We have to demystify the future. It is not what happens but what we let happen. I feel like every person I know watches the news like a movie or another reality TV show, strung along by 'sub par' plot lines because apathy is endorsed. We literally have apathism, where people are offended when we disagree with any single major or minor political view. Moreover, they never even think they have a political view to begin with. They claim that the way things are will remain unchanged regardless of how much we know about them and how wrong we know they are. The fact that there are so many problems in the world and, therefore, so many causes to get behind more often leaves people indifferent to the entire enterprise of being socially conscious. As if it were a sport that they could choose to pick up if the season was right.

This first post might seem a little dry but I'm getting used to this format. Shouting into the void will eventually refine itself into specific and eclectic thought streams. The topics will range from fashion [theory], TV commercials and shows, futuristic films, what will soon be called neofuturism, global and local news stuffs and philosophy, cultural studies and lit theory inspired jargon. Please post any thoughts on improvement, to argue, to ramble absurdist phrases in the comment box.