And another thing . . .

2012-01-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

Lucy & Ethel Barbie Doll Gift Set
from the 1952 chocolate factory episode

Delightful collectible dolls based on the I Love Lucy chocolate factory episode, Job Switching, originally broadcast on Sept. 15, 1952
Both dolls are wearing all-pink coats, baker’s hats and heels
Dolls have finely detailed faces that appear to be stuffed with chocolates

Meritocarchy

2011-11-11T00:25:00.001-05:00

two words for the entrenched belief that the rich earned their wealth through hard work: Paris Hilton.

2010-10-18T21:59:00.003-05:00

2010-10-18T21:59:00.001-05:00

State universities now charge fellows fees for unpaid fellowships.

There is a $400 affiliation fee which
scholars accepted to the BBRG Scholars In Residence Program must pay to
the Visiting Scholar and Postdoctoral Affairs Office at University of
California at Berkeley.

2010-09-29T17:18:00.001-05:00

Sales tax revenues currently amount to about $150 billion annually
and make up approximately one-third of all state revenues.... States that don't have a personal income tax, like Texas, are even
more dependent on sales tax revenue. (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon do not have sales tax.)1

States with no income tax are Alaska, Florida,
Nevada,
South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. New Hampshire and Tennessee
limit their state income taxes to only dividends
and interest
income. Illinois has a flat 3% tax.

1 http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-article-a-2604-m-2-sc-59-sales_tax_on_the_internet_who_pays_it_who_doesnt-i

Who knew it was coming?

2010-04-01T10:47:00.001-05:00

A good timeline of prescient critics about the impending economy crisis at http://rwer.wordpress.com/foresight-and-fait-accompli-two-timelines-for-the-global-financial-collapse/

After Eve

2010-03-18T11:11:00.002-05:00

Lauren Berlant dedicated space on her blog to record the texts from a recent symposium on Eve Sedgewick at Duke University: http://supervalentthought.com/2010/03/18/after-eve-in-honor-of-eve-kosofsky-sedgwick/#comment-875. Including one must-see photo of Tyler Curtain, back in the day.

Witches at Halloween

2009-10-31T00:22:00.000-05:00

"Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches-I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."
-- Dr. Kimberly Daniels, in an essay posted on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, posted on Doonesbury's site at Salon

2008-11-30T10:48:00.001-05:00

Capitalist Feelings

"Most of the banks in the US are not broke, not in trouble, but they don't trust each other because they don't know which banks are bad. We've got to get the bad ones out."
- William Seidman

2008-11-08T21:26:00.001-05:00

From my bank: "The average American now has $8,523 in credit card debt. "

How dispiriting to be so average. (Amazingly close to my actual amount...)

ZIZEK AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS

2005-10-20T11:51:00.000-05:00

comentary to come

In New Left Review 34 (July August/2005), Slavoj Zizek uses women's sexual rights (or women's human rights) as the illustration of the phallacy of liberal takes on rights.

He also says that appeals to human rights in liberal-capitalist societies rest on three assumptions: 1) that righs are in opposition to fundamentalism; 2) most basic rights are freedom of choice and pursuit of pleasure; 3) human rights are a defense against excess of power.

"The opposition between the liberal-tolerant West anda fundamentalist Islam is most often condensed as that between, on one side, a woman's right to free sexuality, including the freedom to display or expose herself and to provoke or disturb men; and, on the other side, desperate male attempts to suppress or control this threat.....For the West, women's right to expose themselves provocatively to male desire is legitimized as their right to enjoy their bodies as they please. For Islam, the control of female sexuality is legitimized as the defence of women's dignity against their being reduced to objects of male exploitation." (119)

E.g., prohibiting girls in France from wearing the headscarf "did not participate in the game of making their bodies available for sexual seduction".

"In one way or another, all the other issues -- gay marriage and adoption, abortion, divorce -- relate to this."

"What the two poles share is a strict disciplinary approach, differently directed: 'fundamentalists' regulate female self-presentation to forestall sexual provocation; PC feminist liberals impose a no-less-severe regulation of behavior aimed at containing forms of sexual harassment."

Where to begin with this mash of confusion, bad logic, and fantasy? When to begin: later.

NATIONAL WORK AND FAMILY MONTH

2005-09-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

This just in, from a university president:

Dear Colleague
It is our pleasure to welcome you back to %^&#@ State for the beginning
of a new academic year, which we hope will be productive and
rewarding for each of you.
Last October, %^&#@ State joined many employers nationwide in
observing National Work and Family Month, designated by the United
States Senate in 2003. This recognition is evidence that supporting a
balance between your professional and personal life is part of a national
priority and an important strategy for excellence.
We are pleased to announce that the Office of Human Resources, in
collaboration with other campus offices, has once again created a series
of events that will occur throughout the month of October to observe
National Work and Family month. ...We hope that you will take time to participate in one or more
of these activities.
We all become so busy this time of year preparing for our students that
we tend to set aside our own needs. As leaders of this university, we
ask that you not let that happen. You are our greatest asset and your
success is %^&#@ State's success. Again, welcome back -- and best
wishes for a rewarding and productive year.

Commentary TK. Preliminary questions:

How does the 2003 National Work and Family Month square with the 2002 Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act?
Is this a sort of federal jobs program for the field of Human Resources? Create more workshops?
Are my own needs the same as, or separate from work or family?

And how can I find time? October is also the Month of:

Halloween Safety
Domestic Violence Awareness (a lot of faith in awareness and recognition)
National Breast Cancer Awareness
National Family Sexuality (what is that?)
National Physical Therapy
Rett Syndrome Awareness
"Talk about Prescriptions'
National Medical Librarians
Let's Talk
Down Syndrome Awareness
National Child Health Day (3)
Bone and Joint Decade National Awareness Week
National Radon Action Week
National Health Education Week
International Stuttering Awareness Day (22)
Hearing Aid Awareness Week
National Celiac Awareness
Healthy Lung Month
National Dental Hygiene Month
National Lupus Awareness Month
National Spina Bifida Awareness Month
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Awareness
Clean Air Month
National Orthodontic Health
National Liver Awareness Month
Children's Health Month
Drive Safely Work Week (2-8)
National Depression Screening Day (6) (I am depressed about the world and may go for a screening)
National School Lunch Week (10-14)
SAVE (Stop America's Violence Everywhere) Today (12)
World Food Day (16)
National Mammography Day (21)
Respiratory Care Week (23-29)
Lung Health Day (26)

And these are just the health related declarations. See http://www.healthfinder.gov/library/nho/nho.asp

I could make a hobby of collecting refridgerator magnets from these events.

What is the difference between national weeks, days, months and non-national ones? Are there State days? City months? What is this nexus of political geography and temporality?

Why all the awareness? Would it be too much to call for change?

Is October an usually heavy month?

KATRINA

2005-08-31T10:10:00.000-05:00

"The looting is out of control," New Orleans Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson told the paper. "We're using exhausted, scarce police to control looting when they should be used for search and rescue while we still have people on rooftops."

MTV Aug 31 2005.

DISENGAGED CEOS

2005-06-24T21:32:00.000-05:00

In Gallup's Q12 survey, it turns out that top executives are more likely than rank & file to agree with the following:

The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
At work, my opinions seem to count.
This year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Quel shoque.

Still, all is not rosy in the executive suites. Gallup found that 1 in 10 executives are "disengaged," not really minding the store. When executives feel they aren't listened to, and feel unempowered, they become disengaged. Gallup asks whether workers have a best friend at work - being lonely doesn't help.

Another 1survey found that 10% of executive respondents have called in sick to play golf.

Interestingly, one headhunter attributes entrepreneurial spirit to this alienation - it "develops as a defense mechanism," he said.

Some might be because of boozing, but fortunately companies pay the large rehab bills.

The CEO of Office Depot says he uses ten executives to make decisions: USA Today writes, "Those who disagree are not ignored; rather, energy is expended until they are persuaded to change their mind."

Apparently raises and payscale "don't matter much" according to several studies. A UT study finds no correlation between executive pay and engagement or loyalty. (More arguments for cutting executive pay: they won't even care! Just make sure they have a best friend and occasional plaque at work!)

Recycled source: USA Today 6/21/05 2B

LESBIANS BEHAVING BADLY

2005-06-23T21:11:00.000-05:00

What is with all these destructive lesbian mothers? Biomoms stealing the kids. Nonbio parentsgoing out for a permanent pack of cigarettes. They work homophobia for their own selfish or hostile ends. And so many have twins!

Meet Emily B, a deadbeat Mom. Emily had children with her partner, EMB -- they got twins, one with Down Syndrome. After a year and a half, Emily walks - and adds, no child support: "I'm not the children's father." No Kidding Emily! We thought you loved mowing the lawn & doing the BBQ! (USA Today -- a found copy -- reports that they "had even shared breast-feeding duties", though this isn't spelled out. Emily, you breastfed the twins and you're not a parent?

E.G. is another tragedy. E.G. took her partner, K.M.'s, egg. KM signed the rights to the eggs away - something one must do in to even transmit donor eggs. They too had twins. When E.G. wants to get sole custody, she cites that waiver of parental rights that allowed her to get the eggs in the first place!

Kristine also enters this hall of shame. She was with Lisa for 8 years and even had Lisa declared the legal father, and both parents, before their child was born. They are together 2-1/2 years -- the child has language, attachments, and so forth. Kristine now wants Lisa out, and her lawyer (Honey Kessler Amad0) aruges that she never intended to give Lisa full paternity rights. Oops, did that paperwork to name you Daddy - I thought I meant my Daddy! Not the baby's Daddy! Went to the courthouse, filled out forms, got them notarized, and all that, but it was one big misunderstanding that lasted 30 months.

Fortunately California's higher courts seem more gay friendly than these chicks. It's not that I think lesbians should be better than hets - but yes, in fact, I wish they would.

See USA Today 6/21/05: 3A.

POST-SCANDAL NARRATIVE

2005-06-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

The scandal narrative is (was): revelation, investigation, expiation & punishment, and return.

Mark Danner notes the change in our prevailing narratives from Watergate era to this moment. "What is interesteing...is that the heart of the scandal, the wrongdoing, is right out in front of us. Virtually nothing of great importance remains to be revealed." "What distinguishes our time - the time of September 11 - is the end of the narrative of scandal."

This is from a speech to the graduating English majors at Berkeley this year and so highlights the role of humanities thinkers as critics commited to truth and reality (in the current radical sense, contra the reality-making of the Bush regime). Danner doesn't elaborate on what caused or permitted the freeze at revelation. Why there isn't a narrative propulsion to investigation and expitation? Where is the need for narrative profluence? Or is there a different narrative? Are discoveries easily absorbed into the rhetoric of narrative of disgruntled elites and putting our men & women in uniform at risk - cultural class war and sentimental nationalism. Or is it a non-narrative - is the discovery of facts not a revelation of betrayal or contradiction from some presumed reality? We already knew Bush was keen on invation. Shit happens. We're at war. WMD don't matter. No rupture, no story, hence no movement.

Published in The New York Review of Books 6/23/05 (p. 53).

FEMINISM AT THE WSF

2005-06-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

TEXTUAL SOURCES FOR FEMINISM AT THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

I. WSF TEXTS
The WSF Charter of Principles – (about the forum itself)
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2

WSF 2005 Program (Porto Alegre)- http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=7&cd_language=2

The Background, Present and Possible Future of the World Social Forum (with a substantial bibliography of writings about the Forum)
http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/wipo/seattle/pa03/waterman.html
(http://manifestor.org/pipermail/mi/2003-June/000074.html was a draft)

The Manifesto of Porto Alegre (an unofficial manifesto) - http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/123579.php
Includes women + feminism occasionally, e.g.:

4. The right of every inhabitant of this earth to work, social security and pension following the equality between man and woman as a finding element of all internal and international policy.
8. First of all, combating all forms of discrimination, sexism, hostility against foreigners, racism and anti-Semitism through different political measures.

II. FEMINIST ORGANIZING AND THE WSF

World March for Women – Women’s Global Charter for Humanity (December 2004)
http://www.marchemondiale.org/

Feminist Dialogues - (Isis International (Manila); DAWN - Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era; INFORM (Sri Lanka); WICEJ - Women’s International Coalition for Economic Justice; AFM – Articulación Feminista Marcosur, FEMNET – African Women’s Development and Communication Network y NNAWG – India National Network of Autonomous Women’s Groups)

Article about FD @
http://www.wluml.org/english/newsfulltxt.shtml?cmd%5B157%5D=x-157-119969
http://wsf.amarc.org/pressrelease.php?action=shownews&id=214
http://www.awid.org/go.php?stid=1440

Articulación Feminista Marcosur
http://www.mujeresdelsur.org.uy/

Also see entries in this blog from late January. If you use this source, please cite it.

THE GAME OF POLITICS

2005-06-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

The link between electoral politics and sports is more than metaphorical or attitudinal, it's institutional.

Front page on a found copy of USA Today (6/8/05), a story about pro-sports leagues hiring government veterans for PR and crisis management. Ari Fleisher helps baseball. A Rove flunkee helps basketball. Democractic professionals work with the National Hockey League on labor and PR, and with Marion Jones to manage the steroid image. (Hockey? Say it ain't so, Dems.)

ADOPT A PETRI DISH

2005-05-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

Earn money in your spare time!

Adopt an Embryo!

Stop murdering stem-cell researchers!

This just in: The US Government is providing just shy of one million dollars for organizations -- including religious bodies -- to promote the adoption of fertilized ova that were not used for insemination. So our tax dollars underwrite a religiously-inspired advertising campaign rather than research.

The Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announces the availability of funds for FY 2005 and requests applications for grants for public awareness campaigns on embryo adoption. The increasing success of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) has resulted in a situation in which an infertile couple typically creates several embryos through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). During IVF treatments, couples may produce many embryos in an attempt to conceive with several being cryopreserved (frozen) for future use. If a couple conceives without using all of the stored embryos, they may choose to have the remaining unused embryos donated for adoption allowing other infertile couples the experience of pregnancy and birth. Embryo adoption is a relatively new process in which individuals who have extra frozen embryos agree to release the embryos for transfer to the uterus of another woman, either known or anonymous to the donors for the purpose of the recipients attempting to bear a child and be that child's parent.

Any public or private nonprofit organization or agency is eligible to apply for a grant. However, only those organizations or agencies that demonstrate the capability of providing the proposed services and meet the requirements of this announcement are considered for grant awards. Faith-based and community-based organizations are encouraged to apply for embryo adoption public awareness grants. Please note, however, that grant funds may not be used for inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, and proselytization. If an organization engages in such activities, they must be offered separately in time or location from the grant-funded program and participation must be voluntary for program beneficiaries. An embryo adoption public awareness campaign program, in providing services and outreach related to program services, cannot discriminate against current or prospective program beneficiaries on the basis of religion, a religious belief, a refusal to hold a religious belief, or a refusal to actively participate in a religious practice. [emphasis added]

METROSEXUAL KING TUT

2005-05-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

The renditions of King Tut from a CT scan of his mummified body present a hip, white (or ethnic white) metrosexual face, complete with eyeliner. His 19-year-old lithe self would be a big hit at the raves (except that he seems to have broken his thigh a few days before death). Except for that overbite and weak chin. But how do they know his skin color from a CT scan? He was identified as caucasoid North African: does that mean white?

(It is too difficult for me to add a photo with my current blogging skill set. Search King Tut CT scan. Or King Tut overbite.)

AROUND ARENDT: FACT, CODE, RENDITION

2005-05-11T20:09:00.000-05:00

It seems that Hannah Arendt is making many an appearance these days, adding depth to commentary about the current US regime. This quotation is irresistably apt, from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951):

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

The quotation appeared in the 5/26/05 issue of TLS which also featured an article on codes - on US military use of codes in operations and intelligence (a review of William M. Arkin's Code Names). The essay notes the significance of amateur plane spotters (who knew?) in identifying the movements of the ominous Gulfstream V jet that was involved in "rendition," the term of art for moving detainees to states unsqueamish about torture.

Rendition: That's what the senior advisor to President Bush means, when he tells The New York Times (Sunday Magazine), "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Render reality, render subjects, render the facts.

Back to codes: There was a secret level of secrecy in the planning for war in Iraq. This upper level of clearance was called "Polo Step." When the mere existence of this coded level of secrecy was revealed in the Los Angeles Times, the Air Force spent $1.5 million to uncover the leak. (And they can't find who leaked the identity of a CIA agent?) The government invests in codes of codes.

But someone names a code. Amateur plane spotters spot a secret plane. An officer slides a cd of torture and sex photos under a door. We don't even know - concretely, specifically, for sure - these violations until we get these facts. How is this not revelation of truth? If this is a different kind of naming, of language as code from the coded renditions of the Bush regime, how can we speak about that difference? Do we? (the we being the "you" of the university who "study what we do" as history's actors). What are the linguistics and semantics of this difference? I am invested in the distinction. I am drawn to the propositional, the referent, the signified.

On Lacan and language as password, see Jodi Dean's 4/26/05 entry from her thread on Zizek, at http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2005/04/comrade_stalin_.html.

THE POOR WE WILL ALWAYS

2005-05-05T22:22:00.000-05:00

Harper's May 2005 has several superb articles on conservative Christianity and capitalism.

La plus ce que ca change: Ireland, 1845-1850. An evangelical-ridden British government stopped food relief (of imported U.S. corn) to Ireland during the great hunger because it was an intervention into the free market and into the wages of sin: "This crisis seemed to offer the opportunity for the Irish to atone." The assistant secretary of the treasury suggested that "the fear of starvation would ultimately be useful in modernizing Irish agriculture." Their free-market modernization thesis was linked to an evangelical doctrine of original sin. "The trials of economic life...were earthly tests of sinfulness and virtue...they saw the pain of earthly life as means of atonement for original sin." Compassionate conservatives without the benefit of public relations professionals,1 press officer, or campaign strategist. The good news is that this evangelical political economy fell out of favor at least until recently. From Gordon Bigelow, "Let There Be Markets."

Perhaps Ridley Scott should make a movie about the potato famine -- would a film titled The Great Hunger have a slamming first night? It could have a score with that damn tin whistle that seared Titanic into one's cortex. And star American actors playing Irish folk with fine sets of teeth. But surin' enough, couldn't we use some popular cultural imaging of the cruelty of capitalist christianity now?

1 The Bush administration spent more than $88 million on contracts with public relations agencies in 2004. Over the past four years a single agency, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spent more than $94 million on contracts with public relations agencies. Had the British administration contracted public relations services, the great hunger of the potato famine could have been recast as the "migration freedom act." Source: http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/26/paid.pundits/

ELECTIONS + VALUES REDUX

2005-05-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

Emily's List has sent me their newsletter even though I need to renew my donation to them.

According to their pollster's review of 2004 election polling, reproductive choice was not a decisive feature in the election of George W. Bush. Instead, it apears to be incumbency, Iraq/terrorism, the economy, and "personal feelings" (as opposed to impersonal sentiments) about Bush.

The pollster Mark Mellman also said "how a candidate approaches an issue is almost as important as her position on the issue" and so candidates should "explain to voters why they have come to a particular position." (Notes from Emily, March 2005, p. 4). I'm not sure what this conclusion means - it may simply circle back to the notion of "values" governing votes.

I'm not sure what meta-level analyses of polls say, either. (For manic meta-level reflections on interpretions of the election, see my archived posts from November-December 2004.)

I recall reading about a right-wing funding organization that said they got their idea for strategic targeted appeals to a network from Emily's List. Sigh. If progressives had copyrighted strategy and terminology, at least we'd make money off of the right wing.

FEMINIST MULTITUDE, PATRIARCHAL EMPIRE

2005-05-01T19:54:00.000-05:00

A transnational feminist reading group I'm part of just met to talk about Negri & Hardt's Multitude. All but the one post-colonial critic were impressed with the optimism and risks of the work. It risks essentialism, teleology, theology.

I was struck by their liberty. If the authors were in Women's Studies, they would have had to spend half of this book presenting lengthy discussions of process and caveats: who we are (apologies therein), why we wrote it, how we worked together, what we mean by "we" or "us" or "politics" or this or that: not merely the key terms of the works, but word we come to flinch at using, afraid of critique. They just rush forward, headlong into the Multitude.

I had a question about "flesh," which struck me (perhaps as it came from an Italian writer) as theologically weighted, particularly when speaking about transformations and immateriality and bodies. I haven't seen Lee Quinby's or Bill Maurer's discussion of the millenial & theological logic of Empire/Multitude which might illuminate my questions. Perhaps it would help if I knew anything at all about Spinoza.

There are obvious feminist critiques to be made, and I haven't read those out there on Empire (e.g., by Lisa Rofel), nor I have I read my favorite feminist anthropological/soc/geographical writers (e.g., Saskia Sassen, Aihwa Ong, Anna Tsing).

I identified three main dimensions of feminist critique.

1) Sins of Omission: There are omissions. Judith Butler aside (and I'm not sure how true they are to "performativity"), they do not cite many feminists. And they neglect clear opportunities for noting gender or women in many of their supporting arguments and examples - when discussing peasants and land; or worldwide movements (feminism is subordinated in a list, it doesn't meet the criteria for "revolt"); or affective labor; or habits.

2) The Unhappy Marriage: What might revisiting 1970s+ socialist feminism suggest about Empire and Multitude? It seems that they consider women/gender/feminism in an additive way. But if the Multitude as it exists (the first kind of multitude) is patriarchal, sexist, male dominant. Gender is shot through empire and its other. It might dampent the optimism a bit, for one. Certainly they do not map how the current conditions they describe are generating, internally, immanently (not externally or transcendent), gender and sexual transformations in common. These remain part of singularity rather than part of the common.

3) Feminists of Color and the Critique of Feminism: It would be fruitful to consider Negri + Hardt's model of singularity and common in relation to the critiques made by feminist, womanist, post-colonials of color. At its most basic, the critique is that white women have generlized their condition into a model of gender inequality and feminist politics, and this more or less invalidates prevailing modes of feminism emanating from metropolitan/white/Western worlds. These feminisms (Euro feminism, white feminism, whatever) have responded by attempting to recognize and address diversity. (Far more than any other movement has addressed gender or sexuality, it seems often to be forgotten.) But there is still a sense of falling back on unity, on the feminist equivalents of the party, masses, people, or workers that Negri and Hardt depart from.

PRIVATIZED CHILDREN

2005-03-28T10:15:00.000-05:00

Children as Unlikely Events

I just purchased airplane tickets for two adults and two 2-year-olds. The cost is the same -- once children turn two, they require full-price tickets on many airlines. Perhaps at two they begin to ding the airline hostess button too often, or eat more peanuts, or carry on their two allowed suitcases plus carry-on plus purse. This makes for very expensive travel.

And when it comes to boarding, children are on their own. Airlines have eliminated early boarding for passengers with small children. They did this, they said, in response to customer feedback. Did all those parents and full-fare-paying children call the airlines, irate, and say: "Stop boarding us first!" So those who bring carseats have to board with child, carseat, their carryon & purse, child's carryon & purse, and install the carseat and child, along with the throngs of customers. Of course who boards first is a function of money and the market. (Children may be boarded first informally, through the discrete kindness of airline staff.)

Flexible spending plans are one treat the government throws to the middle and upper classes. What parents can do is transfer part of their tax burden to low-wage childcare workers -- parents declare childcare expense, but also report the tax information (social security number) of the providers. However this is no free ride.

As with medical plans, one has to estimate how much one will spend. That amount is taken out of a paycheck. So that one must first pay twice -- when it is taken out of the paycheck and then to the provider -- before getting reimbursed. For that risk, the reward is that a reduced paycheck (pre-tax) reduce one's taxes: so the middle class can reduce their taxable income by up to $5000 a year per earner. Why can't one just declare how much one spent on daycare on the tax form itself, and not have it reduced beforehand, twice? If you overestimate how much you will spend, at least until now, you have forfeited the amount of overage in return for reducing your taxable income. It is a middle-class gamble. (Unlike healthcare, it is difficult to overestimate how much one will spend in childcare, however.)

There are public playgrounds for beautiful days. But what about the many cold and rainy or scorchingly hot days? If the public is entitled to outdoor playgrounds, why not indoor ones? Most local recreation centers have activities for older children and adults (particularly men), not for young children. One is left going to the Gymboree, the commercial establishements where children can roll around in plastic balls and get stoked up on sugary drinks and fatty carbohydrates for a $20 afternoon.

This is privatized childrearing. Children are seen as a personal choice, an unikely event that need not be structured into commercial or state institutions. At a local foodstore, there is a sign warning parents not to leave their children alone in a car for even a second! Yet most of their shopping carts cannot hold a child and they have none that hold two! Parents end up negotiating brief legal transgressings as they dash back and forth, negotiating caring for children with legal requirements and the specific infrastructure of shopping carts, entrances, bathrooms, cars, etc. Provincetown shops put water and jars of biscuits out for doggies but can't accomodate a single stroller. The only break for parents of small children comes unintentionally from the Americans with Disabilities Act and institution's palpable fear of litigation. Because the U.S. government says that institutions must allow disabled people access to labor and consumer markets, there are ramps, wide doors, and automatic door openers that help parents. Parking, however? Forget about it. So you have to risk your child's life navigating a chaotic parking lot of frenetic drivers and stray shopping carts. You aren't the legal risk. Once a legal category of persons is created, it becomes real and entitled to provisions.

Given the lack of sustainable communities, where so many people cannot afford to live where they grew up (I grew up in Chelsea, NYC -- forgetaboutit), most of us live at some distance from our families of origin and the worlds of our youth. The age-old system of collective participation in childrearing has been eroded by the conditions of industrialized and post-industrial life. The state may underwrite health care and education but the day-to-day care? No. This loss is replaced either by parents' labor (often mothers') or by paid assistance. Depending on the labor markets where you live, this paid assistance may be women of color and may be immigrants (documented or not). I haven't lived in those labor markets, which means I have employed white women. The employers of women of color are criticized for participating in racist and sexist global structures. Yet most of us are implicated in these systems -we rely on the carcinogenic labor of those who work in dry cleaners, the underpaid work of food preparation, and other hard labor that supplements the gendered labor of social reproduction.

Radical Queers mourn their comrades' turn to reproduction, seeing it as an abandonment of what is truly radical and political, because it is not sexual and it seems to embed participants in the American lifestyle. They forget the old feminist lessons about the political economy of raising children, which is one of the key frontiers of capitalist privatization vs. democratic socialism. The parents of children absorb most of the cost of young children, aided by whatever resources their immediate world is able or willing to share with them. (Which is often considerable.) And they engage local and international labor markets, as do we all. But despite the fact that we all were children, and that we rely on people having more children, our world is not designed to accomodate the basic elements of rearing children.

WHAT DOES GENDER MEAN?

2005-03-18T13:28:00.000-05:00

Gender has been the provenance of feminist theorists and social technicians. While its meaning is widely agreed on, its usage varies in ways that alter the political and even definitional meaning.

At a medical office, a poster encouraging mammograms asks what the risk factors for breast cancer are. One of the risks listed is female gender. But gender doesn't put you at risk for cancer, sex does. Gender has come to be the new Mrs., a polite way to address women without calling attention to petticoats.

In academic and queer circles, gender has come to mean transgender. If there's a conference about gender, you can't tell which conception of gender it means.

Ricki Ann Wilchens organization GenderPac is a fine liberal organization aiming to make life better for children and other people. Its scope reflects the transformation of gender from a systemic analysis of male dominance to oppression in relation to gender categories. The organization aims:

To ensure every American can participate in the workplace, the classroom, and the community regardless of whether they meet ideals for masculinity or femininity.

to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes by changing public attitudes, educating elected officials and expanding legal rights.

An enlightened mission perfectly in line with much early feminist efforts (Free to Be, You and Me) that does important educational work. It has a slick website and impressive top-shelf academic speakers (Sedgewick, Fausto-Sterling). It's doubtful that they would speak at a Free-To-Be, You-and-Me-type feminist conference today.

My concern is GenderPac's use of gender terminology. There is not an exact fit between GenderPac's "gender" and feminism's "gender." A statement of GenderPac's values says,

Generalizations, such as, "You straight white males just don't get it" are something we all use and we're usually wrong, because none of us is merely the sum of our group.

Well, feminist analysis is predicated on generalizations, although we hope ones more sophisticated than "you just don't get it."

More troubling:

Gender oppression is not only about "transgressing" gender norms. It's also about a 4-year old jock-in-training who finds herself forced into pigtails and skirts; a quiet, artistic boy who is beat up in the boy's locker room; or a lesbian femme sexually assaulted and then blamed for wearing a short skirt and tight sweater.

The lesbian femme sexually assaulted does give one pause. By whom? By a lesbian butch? Who blames it on the angora? What on earth does this example represent?

But even more than such overly inclusive examples is the use of "gender oppression." For feminists, who coined the terminology, it is about more than transgression, tomboys in pigtails, and sissy art boys. The very term represents the hard struggle of feminists to show that women were disadvantaged as a gender. There has been an intersectional critique of "gender essentialism" that generalizes about men and women as a class. That critique does not explain the different usage by GenderPac, although the group does ask for individual "sensitivity about difference and diversity." Their different use of gender oppression represents a shift in the assumed political meaning of gender.

GenderPac speaks of "gender-violence" and "gender oppression." This use of gender represents an enormous change from the feminist analysis of the gender systems or patriarchy. It can be seen as an appropriation of the intellectual and activist labor of femnists, who have had some success in gaining recognition of this area of gender inequality. In this feminist meaning, "gender-based" means that something bad is directed at women because they are women, in a system of male-dominance. Here is the UN definition of gender-based violence, for example:

The term 'violence against women means any act of gender- based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women..."

Whatever the limits of the UN, the term gender-based violence is used worldwide by feminist advocates and activists. It represents a systemic analysis predicated on the understanding that women, as a social group, are less enfranchised and are politically subordinate to men, as a group, and that (male) violence against women is a diffuse informal practice that has systemic consequences in recreating this arrangement. It is based on generalizations about gender.

GenderPac recognizes that "Gender rights are for those of us who transcend narrow gender stereotypes, but they're also human rights, and they're for all of us."

This is not meant to pick on one group but to note a symptomatic example of a rupture between feminist gender analysis and trans gender analysis. The rupture is often blamed on feminists (for not radically altering their conception of gender) but more often is barely addressed at all.

DARWINIAN FAMILY VALUES

2005-03-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

“marriage is a thing, through history, between a man and a woman for the propagation of the species, and I personally object to the shifting definition of terms within our culture.” Larry Woodward, member of PTA in Cupertino. (From “Jesus in the Classroom,” Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker 3/21/2005: 63)

Hint: Propagation of the species might already indicate the shifting definition of terms within our culture.

CRITIQUE FATIGUE

2005-03-14T22:11:00.000-05:00

This is how they get us. Who can keep up? In any given week, we have stories of corporate corruption (in the current climate, this translates into a sexual scandal, e.g., Boeing); religious and reactionary political appointments (Wolfs in poverty-reduction clothing; torturers as legal czars - hey, it is the Attorney General, afterall); roll-backs in rights, protections, and regulations (bankruptcy laws); give-aways to corporations (bankruptcy laws); and advances in the culture wars.

I need a specialization. Shall it be corporate malfeasance? Or the subcategory of erotic -malfeasance as stand-in for corporate corruption? Newspeak about entitlements?

From seeing the daily triumverate of news on AOL recently, I can better comprehend the state of the public sphere. There's one haiku on entertainment, one on health/life, and one of "news." These are accompanied by phrases that give a sense of participation through the hyperlink-blue choice, an opinion, a "vote." Participation in the three is equivalent, horizontal. ("What made audience fave drop out of Idol?") The brevity of these truncations betrays pain-staking labor and accumulated experience, a full-time position.

Left, photo of Condoleeza Rice.
Is it too soon to rule out 2008?
Rice rules out White House bid.
Vote: Tell us who should run.

Post-WSF THOUGHTS

2005-02-07T15:30:00.000-05:00

* * *
I'm trying to write down thoughts about the World Social Forum. One can't focus on outcomes, certainly not for feminists or queers -- there aren't any. So instead, one thinks of process, network, symbolism, motivation. The recreation of alternative political culture (though mostly with the same symbols that have been used for 3 decades). Social relationships....(indeed).

I might think about it in relation to Empire & Multitude, and also Analise Rile's critique of the use of Network.

The political scientists speak a lot about strategies -- strategic uses of concepts, of the WSF meeting. But a strategy by whom, toward what? There isn't a feminist party. What is the aim from an alternative, progressive social space? It didn't seem the feminists were clear, other than wanting to have a presence there, and meet each other (again, mostly -- people know each other from former meetings).

Also clear was the absence of concrete, palpable political visions. What are the feminist visions of global politics, of governance, of economics? Clearly we are critical of capitalism-- are we against capitalism? If so, with what sense of alternative? Sweden? We don't think through the specific conditions, possibilities, institutions.

The main agenda seems to be getting feminism & women represented at the WSF -- rather than what the content of that representation might be.

The other major focus for feminists is process: being inclusive, attending to voices, to diversity. There is much effort to the means of politics, where the means are not separated from the ends. Someone always asks about those who are not present -- were they excluded? What does their absence mean? Mauro's presence pointed to a new frontier of inclusion, the trans man, as did a m2f transgendered woman who spoke to an enthusiastic response from the younger members of the audience in particular, who find in the transgender community signs of new politics and of some social and political urgency.

WSF TUESDAY JAN 24 2005

2005-01-25T13:01:00.000-05:00

Today I attended the feminist dialogue in the morning, in the English 5 group, which included women from India, Africa, Uruguay, US, Scotland, Canada & Malaysia. Our goal was to come up with three strategies for feminists, although the guidelines were general, and hence the discussion rather diffuse. It was difficult to arrive at specific strategies. We often proposed goals or pointed to difficulties, such as whether one works with religious women or whether we are seeking alternatives to capitalism or are resigned to working within it. (The World Social Forum seems to belong to the latter camp.)

Now back for the plenary.

GETTING TO THE WSF 2005

2005-01-24T17:09:00.000-05:00

The blizzard of Jan 2005 slowed many pilgrims -- flights cancelled, many delays, reservation not recognized. But I made it to Buenos Aires on a flight to Porto Alegre full of the tell-tale figures of the World Social Forum -- nuns in blue robes, passports of all colors, and alternative dress to the business class. I sat in the last available seat between a bearded community radio activist who had dabbled in archeology, and looked the part and the Filipina woman -- who knew him from listservs & radio organizing -- who works for the Women~s Int~l Tribune Center, but recently for ISIS (which organized the feminist dialogue I was trying to attend). So we had a nice chat in the very last row of TAM flight 1802, on which they serve whiskey & wine at no extra charge to economy class.

I caught a cab with Marvik to the feminist dialogue, where I ran into Svati, Sususanna George, Susanna Fried, Sonia Alvarez, and Cynthia Rothschild and met others.

CHRISTIAN SOCIAL DARWINISTS

2005-01-18T15:10:00.000-05:00

From a New Yorker cartoon (1/17/2005: 74)

"Understand, Richardson, I don't believe in evolution, but I do believe in Darwinism."

American fundamentalist/evangelical/conservative Christians reject Darwinism but they embrace social darwinism -- competition, winners & losers, "natural" gender/sex.

Perhaps we could redraw the logo on cars as an outline of a fish eating a smaller fish.

THE SUMATRA COLLECTION

2005-01-16T15:14:00.000-05:00

Shortly after the December tsunami, the Pottery Barn catalogue arrived, announcing the Sumatra collection. (The distinctive grain of naturally distressed hardwood...)
see http://ww1.potterybarn.com/cat/collections.cfm?type=coll&src=nulafurbedall%7Ccf042Crcollections&root=collections&pgid=p949&lid=16&gids=p949&cid=f042

It's not Pottery Barn's fault, they didn't cause the tsunami or control the timing. The catalogue copy does not wax on and on about colonial or native charms.

Yet PB's furniture line illustrates retailers' penchant for choosing place names as series, to capture diffuse qualities without paying copyright fees. And to the enduring attractions of the colonial aura. (The chests certainly aren't meant to convey indigenous appointments.)

Could places copyright their name and the associations with it?

CHICKENS AND MUSLIMS

2005-01-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

The abuse of doomed animals at a West Virginia chicken plant suggests parallels with the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and other US military cells?).

"Former workers at a chicken-processing plant caught on tape allegedly kicking and slamming chickens against a wall will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor said yesterday. Ginny Conley, head of a state prosecutors' organization, said the incident at the Pilgrims Pride plant in Moorefield, W.Va., did not warrant criminal charges because "these were chickens in a slaughterhouse."
"It needs to be handled more on a regulatory end than prosecuting someone criminally," she said. AP 1/11/05

Lynndie England worked at a chicken plant. She joined the reserves when she was still in high school and by the time she was out of her teens, she had been married and divorced within a year, lived in a trailer park and spent nights working in a chicken processing factory. (From Sunday Herald May 2004)

From parallel to linkages:

roots in West Virginia
the violent frustrations of the working class (or lumpen class?)
the abuses of animals and dehumanized foreigners, the disregard for Others
the answer is "to be handled more on a regulatory end than prosecuting someone", at least someone responsible

(Thank the goddess that Lynddie England is not a lesbian.)

SCHADENFREUDE: EXECUTIVE GIVE-BACK

2005-01-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

Executives from Enron & Worldcom are giving back money. Schadenfreude. Yet, they will be payng back millions to.....investors. Not Enron employees who lost their pensions but uninvolved, unaccountable stockholders.

The news made a big fuss out of the fact that the money is from their own pockets!!! It's significant because it makes the often untouchable (=their bank accounts) accountable, yet also illustrates how rarely executives actually pay for themselves. They pay for few of their gifts, little of their entertainment or travel, their legal fees, or for their home.

In Canada, Nortel executives will give back excessive bonuses (after manipulated financial reports to produce inflated rewards). Apparently this is the first time that executives had to give back money they produced by lying ("mistatements"). In the US, the government is trying to force top Fannie May executives to return ill-got bonuses as well.

See the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the US.

SOCIAL VS PERSONAL SECURITY

2005-01-11T13:58:00.000-05:00

The move to privatize social security -- or create "personal" accounts in the administration's Newspeak that the media cheerfully reproduces -- attacks one of the few areas of socialization of risk left for ordinary people.

Social security was a cornerstone of the post-depression contract between business, labor, and the government. It represented a safeguard against communism and socialism.

Why is the current corporatized government not afraid of worker unrest? Is it because communism is dead? Because they have dismantled unions?

Why don't the spate of corporate scandals inhibit them? Enron? Worldcom? Tyco? Or the galling contrast betweeen the golden parachutes/indulgent pensions for execs (who perhaps worked for a company for a few years) and those of ordinary workers who may have worked decades, their entire working life for the firm?

Executive compensation is unhinged from any straightforward concept of labor, certainly in terms of time -- it is not alienated labor by the hour. The term plunder appears. The executive elite distribute rewards among themselves as if it were monopoly money -- millions here and there, now and in the future. (I just read the New Yorker article on Eisner & Ovitz: a bad and illegal hire results in millions for both and a few hundred thou for the fellow who brokered it.)

WAL-MART WELFARE

2005-01-10T14:50:00.000-05:00

Because Wal-Mart employees are paid so little, they are poor. The government (taxpayer) then subsidizes their lives. In Georgia, one in four of the company's employees had a child in the state's program for needy children in 2003.

For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the US government is spending:

$108,000 for children's healthcare (California spent $20.5 million on WalMart employees' medical care)
$125,000 in tax credits & deductions for low-income families
$42,000 in housng assistance
= $420,000/year or $2,103 per employee in this store -- and the company employs 1.2 people

Taxpayers subsidize corporate accumulation. (This is even more extreme if you factor in government support after retirement.)

This information is from a February 2004 report by the House Education and Workforce Committee (from the Democratic staff), reported in a review of texts on Wal-Mart by Simon Head, "Inside the Leviathan," The New York Review of Books (Dec. 16 2004: 88) .

MAN ON FIRE

2005-01-07T15:39:00.000-05:00

We just watched Man on Fire for sultry Denzel Washington and as Stephanie Grant said, it's a Bush reelection movie. All Mexican men are corrupt or impotent (or both, as is the father-husband character who cannot respond to his seductive American wife). The best father is a kidnapper who is indifferent about his pregnant wife and disembodied as "the voice." It takes an American -- here cast as a black American -- to become the stand-in father and stand-up guy as penance for unspecified patriotic crimes in the line of counter-insurgency duty. The Mexican men are not portrayed as conventional machos, the virality drained from them by corrupt economic third-world ambition. The Mexican spunky daughter is played by a blonde American. The American wife tunes in and out of a southern-belle accent. The enduring usefulness of Others, altered here by a black man as the flawed born-again hero.

AID NEWS

2005-01-06T15:24:00.000-05:00

[Heroic music. Pan bleak tropical coastal landscape to CU of white American man holding Asian child. American-made chopper lifts off/touches down in background.]

US Helicopters aid rescue effort.

The nationality of a particular mode of transport makes headlines. Can you imagine:

Thai rickshaws convey food supplies

PRC-made bicycles move hundreds of tsumani refugees

How many photos of the Lone US Aid-worker (or soldier) holding an Asian youth can grace the above-the-fold front pages of US dailies? They have replaced the image of grief-struck keening women in sarongs as the narrative changes from Generic Third-World Natural Disaster to US-as-Hero.

The story of aid has become the an evaluation of US generosity. In ways this is good -- the assertions of American generosity reflect a nervous response to global criticism. The increase from a few mill to $35 mill to $350 mill as only the beginning is a product of critique.

That we spend more on killing than saving usually goes without commentary. Some handy graphs -- bombs and coffins compared to food packets and bandages -- would be a contribution from the media.

LEGITIMACY

2005-01-06T15:15:00.000-05:00

Commentors spoke of candidate's presidential qualities -- this refers to their legitimacy, their ability to embody and convey legitimate rule. Clearly Bush exhibited a quality of legitimacy, hence, even if people saw themselves as adversely affected by his policies, they saw him as the one authorized to rule.

What this points to is the construction of legitimacy. What confers the authority to govern? The mode of masculinity is clearly essential, condensed in qualities of resolve in this contest. It also raises the question of the legitimacy of government -- the winning candidate (barely winning, it must be remembered) best exemplifies the kind of legitimacy the US government is presumed to have, or desired to have.

This election was about meta-level concerns -- not who was qualified, or who would be best to rule, but a debate about what qualities people desire to be best. The red states were voting over the desire for legitimacy, rather than actual legitimate qualifications. Bush spoke to the desire for legitimacy, the desire for given authority. He reflected a wish that conventional structures be effective and virtuous -- the wish to have government appear to be what it is supposed to be. It is a desire for the appearance of authority that is a condition of legitimacy, of the operations of rule.

The Red Staters are the real post-moderns, embracing surface, appearance, style, and engaging in debates about that level, all through the currency of the real.

SUSAN SONTAG, 1933-2004

2004-12-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

Who didn't want her mind? (Well, many of those who voted for Bush because of, not even despite, his commitment to ignorance.)

The obituary in The New York Times neglected any mention of her long relationship with Annie Liebowitz (though they used AL's portrait of her) or of the child they had together. She lived in London Terrace, one block away from where I grew up in Chelsea.

How fitting that she went out fighting, with her ethical demands about the Abu Ghraib torture photographs.

For her simple piece in The New Yorker, which dared to ask whether the 9/11 terrorists were "cowards" and thereby attracted the on-going ire of flag-waving zealots, see http://www.smsys.com/wtc/ssontag.txt.

INDIAN OCEAN

2004-12-28T11:21:00.000-05:00

as of December 28th 2004:

Asia earthquake, tsunami death toll 36,946.
Officials fear the figure could rise to almost 57,000.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/110423374098.htm

For up-to-date information about the disaster, see this map from Relief Web. http://www.reliefweb.int/w/fullMaps_Sa.nsf/luFullMap/284A84AB71636D2D49256F7900273450/$File/usds_quake_idn_281204.pdf?OpenElement.

Nature and its effects are transnational: Estimated deaths/ Injured by country as of 12/28:
Bangladesh 2 India 9,499 Indonesia 7,072 Kenya 1 Malaysia 59 218 Maldives 52 Myanmar 34 Somalia 38 Sri Lanka 18,706 Tanzania 10 Thailand 1,473. (By 12/29, the estimate nears 60.000.)

The Washington Post wrote: "Many specialists said yesterday that thousands of lives ....could have been saved if an early-warning systems had been in place...US officials said that they wanted to warn the countries but there was no mechanism to do so." (12/27/04 reprinted in Boston Globe: A11).

NO MECHANISM TO DO SO?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put out a bulletin warning, yet it didn't get through, or didn't have effects....?

Why didn't southern Thailand and other areas have that warning system? Why couldn't an Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration get in touch with the right people?
Not even a hotel concierge?

Shankar Vendantam's Washington Post article continues: "Even without a sophisticated early warning system, specialists said, just learning about the nature of tsunamis could have saved lives." (Apparently experts have long underestimated the possibilities of such tidal waves in the Indian ocean.)

* * *

To get political, let's look take a look at the ever-vigilant anti-anti-Americans -- Here's what Jeff the American posted to Aljazeera, showing that hallmark compassionate conservativism:

"dont waste your breath on a canadian. they are not worth it i was gonna send some money for the relief effort in indonesia, but as soon as i heard that our so-called allies and the rest of the world calling americans stingy? i said to [apparently deleted] with them, let them drink water and if they get hungry? there's plenty of fresh meat to eat. thanks canada"

The "stingy" remark was from a UN official, and referred to the West, and to giving to the poorer world in general, not in this instance.

THE SELECTIVITY OF REAL POLITIK

2004-12-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

The logic of real politik is: it's a dirty world, so we've got to do dirty jobs. Naysaying peaceniks are in denial of reality. Such realism is a conservative canard that passes for masculine maturity.

Mary Douglas, among other anthropologists, have shown us that risk is a cultural construction. As Leviticus makes cloven hooves unclean, cultural discourses present certain threats as significantly real, regardless of their actual likelihood or scale. (Airplane versus car travel, terrorist threat versus murder, heart disease, or drunken driver.)

And conservatives have revealed that their relationship to truth is instrumental. The scientific consensus on global warming is discarded (even as the military assumes its consequences in future scenarios). Abstinence programs don't work. George W. enforces secrecy for customarily public records. They lie about the cost of war, the cost of privatizing social security, the growth of jobs, the safety or danger of risks. The Newspeak names of their policies are a bald soundbitten falsehood. They lie, baldly if not badly.

Their cynical rejection of the truth shows that their real politik is not based on a commitment to facts, however unpleasant, but instead part of their instrumental relation to reality.

Which indicates that conservatives want the dirty world, they desire the dirty jobs, they choose this violence, which violence. (As many have said, in so many words.) And moreover, that they create this dirtiness, not only rhetorically. Facts do not drive the US military to torture to death: desire does.

The general left understanding of the 2004 elections is that while the right-wing regime has an instrumental relationship to truth, the populace has an emotional one.

MULTIPLE MAPPINGS

2004-12-08T14:03:00.000-05:00

The tinted geography of the 2004 presidential elections has been calculated in a number of ways:

By IQ (high, low)
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/US-Election-IQ2004.htm
By white birthrate (higher, lower) http://www.amconmag.com/2004_12_06/cover.html
By antebellum history (slave-holding, free) http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/slavestate1115
By urbanity (urban, suburban/rural) http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/

HITTING U.S. WHERE IT HURTS

2004-11-29T13:19:00.000-05:00

The US economy needs global consumers.

Last year, at the World Social Forum in Porte Allegre, Brazil (January 27th, 2003), Arundhati Roy called for an application of Ghandi's strategy of non-cooperation to a worldwide boycott:

"The U.S. economy is strung out across the globe. It's economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant....We could reverse the idea of economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of People's sanctions on every corporation that has been awarded a contract in post-war Iraq. Each one of them should be named, exposed and boycotted—forced out of business."

Excerpt from "The Role of Boycotts in the Fight for Peace: Notes on Post-Election Strategy," Paul Rockwell. On CommonDreams.org, Thursday, November 18, 2004.

CHILE ON BUSH

2004-11-22T11:54:00.000-05:00

Heartwarming protests at summit of the powerful:

"protesters opposed to George Bush, the war in Iraq and unfettered capitalism marched through the Chilean capital Santiago just before the American president arrived for a weekend summit of 21 Pacific Rim economies.... at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum....But most of their outrage was aimed at Bush and the US-led war in Iraq.
Marchers held up posters saying “Bush, you stink”, and "Terrorist Bush”. Some chanted: “Bush, listen: Chile is not for sale!” and “Bush, fascist, thief, murderer!”

Organisers said 40,000 protesters participated in the march...Police put the number at 25,000.... Scattered protests erupted into today in at least four working-class districts around Santiago"

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3781682

ALMODOVAR ON FRANCO

2004-11-19T13:44:00.000-05:00

The film director Pedro Almodóvar says:

My rebellion is to deny Franco...I refuse even his memory. I start everything I write with this idea, What if Franco had never existed?

Can we deny Bush?

Can we refuse his memory, when he is gone?

Can we imagine his nonexistence?

Can we at least make campy extravagent films?

Quoted by David Denby in The New Yorker, 11/22/04, 85.

BLUE BAROMETERS

2004-11-19T13:41:00.000-05:00

What does it mean that we see the departure of Republican soldier Colin Powell with regret?
That we root for Arlen Specter (R) to remain on the judiciary panel?

Markers of climate change - how red the temp and times.

GETTING RELIGION

2004-11-18T13:49:00.000-05:00

The calls for the democratic left to address religion are increasing. (See discussions in the NYT, Tikkun, and NPR among other venues.) This religious project has several components:

1) Increasing the volume of progressive believers and clergy, having them voice dissent about the prevailing interpretations of punitive religious orthodoxy and strengthen a kinder, gentler Judeo-Christian (Muslim?) flank. This has been a project for pro-choice and pro-gay forces for a while.

2) Changing the discourse about values, compassion, and ethics. Stress the failure to attend to the poor, the Vatican's objections to the war in Iraq, the religious devotion to peace and charity. Recognize a widespread anxiety about materialism and consumerism.

3) Develop the spiritual, religious cast to the left. Dilute the Marxist opiate, or secular elitist tones. Convey the connection between spirituality and progressive politics.

One problem for the general program is its ecumenicalism. Religion, the abstract noun, is an artifact of modernity, the result of colonialism and state management of diverse populations and forms of intellectual categorization. Many fervent believers don't see their faith as "religion," if we mean one form of spirituality among many. As one feminist evangelical Christian told me, "Religion is what other people believe. What I follow is The Truth." Fundamentalist belief is not ecumenical -- there is One Way. The rest is superstition or satan or heresy. At most, the orthodoxy of the hegemonic faiths will recognize the people of the book, the few established religions. They recognize religiousity through established signs -- through these signs, Bush, who oversees the execution and torture of prisoners and the killing of civilians, is a good Christian. Expresident Jimmy Carter, who attempts to live a life of good works, is not.

Appealing to the critics of progressive politics by stating one's spiritual path, immersion in Buddhism, Bahai, Sufism, or the like is not going to work.

Using spirituality or religion to appeal to the fundamentalist evangelical Christians who voted overwhelmingly (but not completely) for Bush will also not work -- satan takes all kinds of forms, and attempts at connection might be a sign of his presence.

Our aim should be a secular state with a clear separation from religion (or the euphemism, faith-based organizations). This is the only possible mechanism to coordinate peoples of different, mutually exclusive and at times hostile beliefs.

COLLECTIVE GUILT

2004-11-15T16:59:00.000-05:00

At the American Studies Conference this last weekend in Atlanta, a number of us were talking about collective guilt -- how in three decades (or sooner) Americans will be taken to task for Abu Ghraib and other failures, and about how difficult it is for young radicals to perceive that they will someday be criticized too.

OHIO, THE HEART OF IT ALL

2004-11-15T16:16:00.000-05:00

Whose vote counts in Ohio?

Below from a letter drafted by Hugh Urban on behalf of the Comparative Studies Department of The Ohio State University appeared in the November 27, 2004 Columbus Dispatch. http://www.wideopenwest.com/~nanshanjess/

Franklin County was unprepared for the election: In the 2000 election, there were 681,949 registered voters for 2,780 voting machines. In 2004, with 150,000 more registered voters (845,720), only 13 new machines were added -- instead of 672, at roughly 245 votes per machine.
Which wards got fewer machines? There is a strong correlation between wards that voted primarily Democratic and wards that had fewer machines. There also appears to be a correlation between wards that are predominantly African-American and wards that had fewer machines.
There are documented cases of voters leaving the polls because of the long lines, which seem to have been particularly bad in minority neighborhoods.
According to VoteProtect.org, there were at least 1831 complaints of problems and irregularities across Ohio, ranging from long lines, to lack of provisional ballots, to voter intimidation, to failed machines and computer glitches.

They call for a VOTER'S BILL OF RIGHTS:

The number of voting machines must be proportional to the number of registered voters in each precinct;
All voters must be able to vote within a half hour of arrival at the polling sites;
There must be no differentiation in kind of machines that correlates with voters' ethnicity, race, or income level;
All voting machines must have an apparatus and regimen for a manual recount if necessary;
The number of "spoiled" votes that have been discounted must be made publicly available, listed by precinct, within three days of the election;
The total number of provisional ballots, their precinct and the number that were discarded must be publicly reported when the final vote is certified;
Where there are discrepancies in the number of votes cast as compared with numbers of voters in a given precinct (or any other such mathematical irregularities), there must be a full and complete investigation before the count is certified;
There should be uniform voting processes across the state and across the country. If electronic machines are used, they must leave a voter-verifiable paper trail, and the software must be subjected to scrutiny by a non-partisan observer.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE ELECTION

2004-11-10T16:06:00.000-05:00

One week later, it's time for more meta-level reflections. There are different underlying approaches to the disaster that was the 2004 elections, to explaining why people would elect a president who is so wrong for their lives, their children, our future. Let's consider them at this meta-level.

A. CONSPIRACY THEORY - This theory isn't packed away just yet, with reports of voting machine tallies way outstripping the actual numbers of voters in some republican counties, it seems. And the discarded votes, and untallied absentee or provisional votes, and long lines orintimidation driving blue-ish voters away. And from the White House, escalated color-coded threats, inflated reports of job growth, and ties to swift boats for deception.

B. THE IGNORANCE & FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS CLUSTER:

IGNORANCE - True enough, given how little people read and where they get news, but not truer than other places and periods and not a sufficient explanation.

FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS - There's a cynical elite who brainwash gullible masses, accompanied by that time-tested opiate, Christian evangelical religion. Not to be dismissed, this view. In Marxist terms, it's accurate -- many people say they voted for Bush even though they disagreed with or would be harmed by his policies. Many poor people did vote for him. One problem with this approach is their consciousness of false consciousness -- they see voting against their interests as a badge of honor, a sign of integrity, a commitment to something greater, a respect for his resoluteness despite immediate self-interest. Another is that wealthy progressives also vote against their simple class interests, at least in terms of taxes.
FEAR MONGERING - People were afraid because the Bush administration has fostered orange alerts and diffuse anxiety about terrorism (and perhaps about gay marriage). See cynical elite above. When afraid, they choose the familiar, the same horse in midstream, and an image of strength (rather than actual experience).
"CULTURAL ISSUES" AND "VALUES": LEFTY - The male left thinks that issues like abortion and gay marriage are a cultural fog that obscures the true economic & class interests of people. The decline of union power supports this vision, as does the limited powers of socialism in US history. See Harpers Magazine, Zizek in LRB, David Harvey, among others.
"CULTURAL ISSUES" AND VALUES: CENTRIST - Since Clinton, mainstream pundits have repeated their chants that Americans were disgusted by Clinton's behavior and flocked to Bush in search of good honest family values. See Maureen Dowd. For a trenchant critique, see Joan Didion, Political Fictions.

C. PSYCHOANALYSIS/POP-PSYCH - Is there some pervasive psychic structure at work in the denial of reality and the longing for fabricated masculine protection? Is it diffuse masochism? Is it basic Oedipal compensation? (We need to pay more attention to psych-ops, to the use of a crude psychology in military and intelligence operations.)

D. OTHERS?

ELECTION AS ENTERTAINMENT AND SPECTACLE - what role does news as entertainment, reality TV, media conglomeration play? (But careful that this doesn't simply duplicate false consciousness above.)
NARRATOLOGY - The story of Bush is better than the story of JFK2.
VICTIM POLITICS, INFANTILE CITIZENSHIP - Something about the wounded attachments of voters. See Lauren Berlant, Wendy Brown.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE OF CAPITALISM AND PATRIARCHY - At a systemic level, how capitalist interests and agendas coalesce with, or use, patriarchal ones.
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM - How longer trends have produced these voting blocs -- the long duree, with regional shifts, economic conditions, party membership and so forth. Nixon's Southern strategy, Dixiecrats, shifting populations, etc. Always good for the broad conditions, bringing analysis to the doorstep of individual lives.
RATIONAL CHOICE - Rational choice would assume that voters were voting in their best interests, to maximize something to their advantage, wouldn't they?

CRACKING CODE RED

2004-11-08T11:32:00.000-05:00

ON RELIGION AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

Cynthia Burack, political scientist: Cracking the cultural code involves being able to understand and speak the language of the Christian Right the way many academics can understand the speak the language of neoconservatives while translating their agenda for bystanders and explaining what's wrong with that agenda. We need to be able to do the same thing with the Christian Right. We may not be successful in reaching and persuading the hard core of the CR (that approximately 20-25 percent of our fellow citizens). But we can certainly understand their theology and the links between theology and politics well enough to speak effectively to those who are outside the core of the CR but can be persuaded in different directions. We just need to be willing to treat the theology-politics nexus of smart CR thinkers with the same degree of intellectual curiosity and respect we accord to people we believe are deeply wrong in other areas. Only then will our attentiveness to consequences and our arguments about morality resonate. Until then it will be weaken our hand that we are often so clueless about the deep structure of right-wing Christian thinking.

Stephanie Grant: Ten or 15 years ago the NGLTF started doing these Religious Roundtables, getting queer and left religious people together for strategic meetings to discuss how to fight the religious right. It was like, "look, you people speak their language, you talk to them." I think this was Urvashi Vaid's brainchild, tho I'm not sure. I remember gagging at the time, but even then I knew it was SMART to get someone who could sit at the same table with the religious right. How is it, all these years later, that we still haven't done this work in a larger way? I think it would be smart to talk about this public/private split more....There are social justice traditions in some religions--Catholicism is the one I'm thinking of--that place importance on the public.

MORE ON SEGMENTING

Cynthia Burack, again: "I think segmenting our understandings and communications are crucial so we're getting at the intersectionalities of politics and psychology in the heartland."

On segmenting, see this breakdown of red and blue districts nationwide that should implode rhetoric about "Americans," "a mandate," "the American public/people," "mainstream America," etc. (I haven't learned how to link these images to the blog.)

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/purple_america_2004b.gif

Feminist statement on the elections (draft)

2004-11-05T20:51:00.000-05:00

With a tip of the pen to the transnational statement against the war (http://www.geocities.com/carenkaplan03/transnationalstatement.html), here is an initial formulation of what some of those around me are saying.

STAY CONCRETE: SPECIFICS MATTER

Bush did not win by a landslide. This was the largest amount of votes against a successful presidential candidate. He did not win all the evangelical votes, all the white male votes, all the married white women's votes. Take Ohio -- the East is more blue, the West more red. The maps of Columbus reveal this variation - in the city, more for Kerry and more against the amendment to prevent gay marriage.
Here's the breakdown from the CNN exit polls: http://us.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

Mary Margaret Fonow, Chair, Women's Studies:
Even though 22% of the voters in the exit poll identified moral values as the number one issue, the economy at 20% was next. ... If you look at the map of Ohio, the old industrial/rust belt went for Kerry even more than they did for Gore in 2000 (need I mentionSteubenville went blue!). It is white folks in the small town and suburbs that went for Bush. Those are two very different constituencies. We need to break them apart.

Segment, segment, segment!

And then we have to ask about the trends that are there -- not all Americans, but:

Why did so many white married women vote for him?
Why do some (but not the majority) of poor men and women vote for him?
Why did more people in Florida vote for him than in 00?
Why don't young people (especially women!) vote much?
21% of gay voters are that masochistic? (That would make 79% doms, which we know isn't true.)

WHAT ARE PEOPLE'S "INTERESTS"?
Stephanie Grant: I do think it's this kind of thinking we're up against: who makes people feel "comfortable"? And again, the comfort comes from a sense of moral recognition; he'd do what I do, or at least decide the question using the same compass I have. ... Because logical argument- -appealing to people's material needs and priorities--isn't getting us there.

Mary Margaret Fonow: A lot of people I think voted for Bush because they perceived him (as a person) to be down home, average, folksy, a championof the average man or even of the down-trodden and not the rich guy heis! It's a gut reaction and has nothing to do with rational thought.Let's face it Kerry is married to a billionaire and it might have beenhard for people to relate to him.

The standard leftist view imagines that people should vote with their pocketbooks -- that their real interests are economic, as measured by their real incomes and by overall economic performance. This truism obviously doesn't hold up very well in recent years (although it's not entirely inaccurate -- poorer people and union states did vote more for Kerry).

First, what does motivate people to vote? As the media has noted, many who voted for Bush said they did so because of morality, values, and because of some sort of identification with him. So expecting people to vote for their interests, for someone who will act in ways that affect their lives, is often (but not always) misplaced. Perhaps they are seeking a figurehead, a father figure, a narrative, a symbol. Here cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and symbolic analyses could help. Explain what people are doing when they vote for the president -- how do they see the selection involved in voting, what is it for, what does it mean? From the second-hand answers presented in articles, it sounds like they are investing in an identification with an image (perhaps a simulacrum that has no reality behind it). It sounded as if they could imagine Bush in their world, mowing the lawn, like them. One said 'he works hard, he's honest, he's a good man': we know he doesn't work hard, he was famous for a moderate schedule as a governor and pre-9/11 president. We know he lies.

Second, an ethnographic perspective (or a Gramscian one) asks, how do people see their interests? How do they interpret their economic interests?

We still seem to circle around a version of false consciousness: we know that Bush is not what his ordinary supporters say he is, we know that he is not doing what they believe he is doing (handling the war well, making them safer, identifying with them, supporting families, etc).

ON MORALITY AND VALUES

Stephanie Grant, novelist:
What's really killing me is this question of "moral values." Why can't we seem to make a case for the war being immoral? For plundering Iraq being immoral? For Bush's cronies benefitting materially from his presidency being immoral? Because we're secularists (many of us), I think we shy away from the whole conversation, as if the question or morality were beneath us. In truth, it's sitting on top of us. The Right seems to be able convince Americans that only private acts--how you treat your wife, your kids, your relationship to
God, etc.--have the capacity for being moral. What about moral public behavior? What about sending poor people off to die so that Americans can drive big cars and not be shocked at the gas tank?

Rebecca Wanzo, Women's Studies & African-American Studies Professor:
How did the right manage to hijack language in this way? They own morality and family and values . . . the left has to get better at producing simple, seductive, messages that appeal to people's comfort zones. We have to learn how to make people feel good, while also mobilizing fear (the Bush administration is creating more terrorists everyday , Be afraid, be very afraid etc . . .) It's an overwhelming challenge. ... I'm feeling like we need whole new paradigms for understanding how U.S. politics are working now.

Jaime Grant, development director/screenwriter (paraphrased):
The Left has to work from a spiritual base--has to speak as if
spiritual values inform our decision making. (She sent an article by Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine.)
Mary Margaret Fonow:
Perhaps we needto focus more on ethics/fairness. I don't know if spirituality is goingin the right direction.
We have to find a clear way to change the discourse. Christian fundamentalists are not the majority and they are not really representative of the voting population yet they were the deciding factor. Let's find some other group to be the deciding factor next time!

Why doesn't economic ethics register? This is the most corrupt regime in recent memory - the right was all over Clinton about a few hundred thousand dollars whitewatered away. What of Halliburton, oil meetings, Enron - and before that, Savings & Loans and small oil companies with big connections? Why doesn't such enormous corruption in Iraq and California and Texas get noted?
And why has religion come to focus soley on sexual politics? Have they no shame? Are the 10 commandments ranked? What of concern with poverty, the vulnerable, forgiveness, state killings, lying and deceit?

WHAT CAN FEMINIST ACADEMICS INTELLECTUALS, AND CREATIVE TYPES DO?

We need fewer analyses of Buffy the Vampire Slayer et al, and more of the motivations of US voters and the ideological powers of the right (for those who work domestically).
We need less pure critiques of reason and more talking points, message to stay on, images, soundbites.
We do need theories of ideology, identification, and imaginaries -- but we need them attached to the concrete and allied with rich material.
Mary Margaret Fonow: We have to stay focused on his policies and combat nationalism, racism, etc. It is obvious to me that we need to focus more on alliances and united front politics.

QUESTIONS FOR FEMINIST CRITICS

How has the right been so effective in rhetoric, discourse, "common sense?" How do they make "resolute" a key virtue for a candidate? How do they monopolize "values"? This work has been started but we need more that is oriented to strategies.
What narratives might be more effective with white married women, suburbanites, those who are critical of aspects of the republican right? What stories are needed, symbols, images, plots?
ATTN: writers, artists, screenwriters: apply your skills!
If the right has been so successful, do we emulate their strategy, or do the means=the ends, do we need to forge some other tools? (We should remember that the right has stolen many effective strategies of the left. A major conservative funding organization says that they got the idea from Emily's List.)
How else can we win power, without appealing to endearing stories? Can we wrest power? Can we gain power from the urban, union, of color, young base that exists?
As the youth of the youth vote get older, will they vote?

Summary: Transnational Practices Against the War

2004-11-05T17:05:00.000-05:00

Transnational Feminist Practices Against War
Paola Bacchetta, Tina Campt, Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, Minoo Moallem, and Jennifer Terry (October 2001)
http://www.geocities.com/carenkaplan03/transnationalstatement.html

This is a crudely condensed version of the document, which outlines a project for antiracist, globally minded feminists to critically address the US "war on terror":

1. analyze the thoroughly gendered and racialized effects of nationalism... an analysis that elucidates the repressive effects of nationalist discourses
2. views the impact of war and internal repression in a larger context of global histories of displacement, forced migrations, and expulsions.
3. comment on the extent to which domestic civil repression is intrinsically linked to the violence of war .... practices that will further subordinate communities (especially non-white groups) in the US.
4. call for an analysis of the stereotypes and tropes that are being mobilized in the current crisis.
5. recognize the gendered and ethnocentric history of sentimentality, grief, and melancholy that have been mobilized in the new war effort, ... a massive deployment of therapeutic discourses...
6. a detailed critical analysis of the role of the media especially in depictions that include colonial tropes and binary oppositions in which the Islam/Muslim/non-West is represented as "uncivilized" or "barbaric."
7. call for a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism and globalization as it generates transnational movements of all kinds. ... in particular that religious and ethnic fundamentalisms have emerged across the world within which the repression of women and establishment of rigidly dichotomized gender roles are used both as a form of power and to establish a collectivity.
We refuse to utilize the binaries of civilization vs. barbarism, modernity vs. tradition, and West vs. East. We also call for an end to the racist scapegoating and "profiling" that accompanies the stepped up violations of civil liberties within the territorial boundaries of the US. We urge feminists to refuse the call to war in the name of vanquishing a so-called "traditional patriarchal fundamentalism," since we understand that such fundamentalisms are supported by many nation-states. ... Nationalist and international mobilization for war cannot go forward in our name or under the sign of "concern for women." It is our contention that violence and terror are ubiquitous and need to be addressed through multiple strategies as much within the "domestic" politics of the US as elsewhere.

Post-Election: I am not a Populist

2004-11-03T16:46:00.000-05:00

I am not a populist. I cannot fathom the majority of Americans who voted for Bush, especially those whose patent interests will not be served by his regime.

They say moral issues motivated them to vote for the most corrupt, nepotistic, and cronyist president in recent memory.

What are white married women thinking?

Where are the young voters?

Is gay marriage this important?

What feminists need is an understanding of this why -- what is involved in this desire, this identification with a wealthy smug cheerleader? We fall back on false consciousness, whatever our theories -- we say that people are deluded, they are uneducated (my mother, and Brits I know say this), they are not voting in their interests, they don't see.

We have access to more information and media than ever before. Truly, most of it is consolidated into a small number of grubby corporate hands which don't shy away from blatant bias. But there are other sources. And there are the facts that are out there:

* the rationale for the war was false and changes; there is no link to Al-quaeda or 9/11 or Osama Bin Laden, who is at large
* Abu Ghraib violations
* Handing contracts over to connected American firms: if you give an Iraqi a fish, he eats fish for a day; if you give Halliburton billions of dollars, they can corner the fish market?
* economy down
* favoring corporations & business and the rich
* no understanding of suffering or hardship
* hasn't earned what he has
* convicted of a crime; his wife caused a man's death; his daughters are boozers
* responed to 9/11 with bafflement and deceptions about the threat to Air Force One
* sanctions lies in campaigns (John McCain, swift boats)
* lies, lies, lies

We need to ask, what is the desire that people feel? What are they desiring? What narrative do they want to be part of? What vision of America do they want, and why do they want a vision of America that so contradicts reality? Why is it that now they are so drawn to a superficial vision, a delusion, rather than to reality?

I have to go pick up my toddlers from daycare. Ta.

First Day

2004-09-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

This is the first day's posting.