Ghost in the Machine

Ampersand & Usage

2007-12-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

What are your opinions on the ampersand?

I sometimes want to use it when the "and" is a part of a list, yet want to type out "and" when it's joining statements. But in the end, I usually just end up typing "and" in all cases as I'm not sure I want to direct much attention to its usage.

Thoughts?

justin's - Untitled

2007-11-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

In emergency
press lever down
slide doors open

says the train, as passengers
enter and dance through and around
each other, swans' necks tangled, painted
in starlight, slick sweat waiting for hungry eyes
and lost tongues; somewhere
along the line, we lost our ability
to smell, musty salty
human, active
human, ravenous
human;
try not to let my misery get caught
in your skin, lost in this
thick, wet night, this
last, hot night, this
emergency

press (lever)
down,
slide (doors)
open

---------------------------------

Justin, there is a unique voice in this poem that is different from the rest. Your images are very dynamic and are infused with tactile and acute sensitivity. The parallelism of the first and concluding stanza is well crafted; the conclusion reads is if ir were an antistrophe after a dramatic collision that occurs in the 2nd and body stanza.

This is a beautiful and well crafted poem; perhaps the strongest i've seen from you. My only recommendation is to consider the movement of your poem- for example, the line "dance through and around" sets us up for something graceful when in fact we are moving into a crowd- "dance" is an important verb as one of the first actions that takes place very early in your poem: are you sure you want us to "dance" into this poems of a potentially claustrophobic train ride? Why dance? There is no noise or music in your poem, - it is rather prosaic and necessarily so- I only mean to scrutinize "dance" to show that this is a rather important verb and if you feel "dance" is the appropriate action to begin your poem.

This is a very strong poem, hence my perfectionist scrutiny. It does not require much but perhaps a little more work can make it one of your best (that i've read).

thank you for sharing, there will be more to critique.

critiquing is very hard!

2007-06-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

Justin, your poems are extraordinarily good. I like how descriptive they are and how you managed to infuse certain sentiments and ideas in them. It is extremely difficult for me to take it apart because they are so neatly crafted. I have little to comment on your style, it is very wordswordian yet distinctive. You create an interesting voice for the reader, distant yet still welcoming. These poems sound very private (especially "sitting across...") as if one had stumbled upon hearing a monologue amongst yourself.

I noticed you like to conclude your poems with some sort of diversion. The concluding stanza seems always curt and short. Its a little "punch" if you will. You pull it off well, but sometimes it seems the diversion is a bit tacked on for the sake of ending a poem. I notice this mostly in "to a willow....", the sudden rhyming pattern and meter is a surprise after such a strong prose. It sounds almost lightly comic, as to bring your romanticization of the tree "back to earth". i'd be interested as to know why you choose to write this last stanza. I like the poem, especially your description of the tombstones.

"Rust and Fire" is a very strong poem with much invested energy that is especially apparent in your language such as in the lines "...my heart’s eyes" and " you are ablaze" and others. I like how it seems you are speaking to someone in particular, yet the poem may be directed to all women. However, i find that the poem is a bit of a contradiction since you are speaking of women yet there is no voice from her. She remains your subject that you describe from your (masculine) point of few. it reads almost voyeuristically. I know your intentions are good, but this is such criticism you may receive from other readers. perhaps removing your intimacy with the subject by taking the "I" may universal the voice, rather than keeping it yours or belong to someone. To make it ambiguous of who is speaking is one strategy you might want to consider.

"Sitting across..." is a very sweet poem. It is very introverted and speculative of "common people". I refer to Wordsworth's romanticization of the peasants when i say that. You take a portrait of a stranger and make him familiar through imagination. It is a very sweet and magical transformation that only poetry can allow. My only question is why make this stranger suddenly become a close and gracious figure to the reader, and then take away that familiarity with a latin phrase? It is rather esoteric and often not associated with "an art of the people". And again, as in "To a willow..." the poem ends with a curt volta-like turn, bringing us back to grounds. I would like to know why you choose to end the poem like that?

thank you so much for submitting your poems; they were a pleasure to read. I hope to further discuss them and read more in the future.

Annie.

My Submissions for Possible Submission

2007-06-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

“To a Willow Tree in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery”

Wisdom found in each drooping branch,
nestled in the beard of an old man
who stands stooped but firm at the edge of the world...

(cascading)

...surrounded by the speeding monuments of the living -
above, below, around and through -
that infringe upon the slabbed stones of the dead;

past the Eaton mausoleum
where men bring their excesses,
and lions keep their secrets,
to the grave.

(cas-
cad-
ing)

What memories and tears
of long ago romances and funereal rites
have you etched into your bark
and drunk into your roots?

This is our waterfall of cascading leaves
that do not drown us but embrace us
as in the arms and sighs
of a hundred friends and lovers.

Oh, wily willow tree,
rain your wiry willowed branches
    down on me.

“Rust and Fire”

In the limitless yet discerning view of my heart’s eyes
  I see your life, breathing heavily,
  as though strained and tested,
  and for one moment
  you are ablaze
  in rust and fire.

But I will not go to you as a saviour
  or label you as a fallen angel
  or think you virginal in your sleep,
  perfectly innocent,
  as even in your dreams
  you are less than innocent.

For you are a woman
  (worthy of praise enough)
  and above all
a human being.

“Sitting Across from Me on the Subway”

His hands are large
and calloused,
probably from playing guitar and building things,
both an art of the people.

He could use his hands to lift you up
and place you gently upon the
               bed,
leaving sparks across your waist
from where he held you,
gooseflesh trailing up your back and
    shoulders (
more romantic than
cutis ansirina)

                  My hands are small and
                              weak.

eliot is over rated anyways

2007-06-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Thank you Justin for your insight readings of the poems.

I particularly like your reading of Song of Childhood, and your interest in the “child’s mind”. I don’t doubt the twins have anything to do with this interest.

There is a prevalent nostalgia in the poems we’ve chosen, particularly in Wordsworth’s ode. However, the sentiment of lost childhood I find is somewhat different from Hendke’s. Wordsworth is one as we can say for the sake of a better word, a “romanticized” lost, where the mind and imagination of the child are epitomic faculties of a human spirit untouched by the pollutions of civilization. It is this ethereal and ever fleeting moment of pure innocence, of art without language, of love without judgment, that dissipates in the exchange of social order, etiquette, and minimum wage.

I find In Hendke’s poem however, the theme of childhood is not so much explored as a stage in one’s life, but instead looks at the characteristics of children that are inherent in all of humanity. As you’ve mentioned Justin, that the refrain does point out to the audience, making the anonymous “child” the reader. Thus, the child that is in all of us, is the inherent nature of Man’s curious being. This is not to be mistaken with the idea that we are all childish at heart, but that our existence is also one as fragile as a child’s, that we as a species are foolish and curious, that we have grown up, but not grown out our nature to inquire, play, indulge, and joyously love.

I think it’s interesting that we all choose one poem dealing with the theme of childhood. Song For Naomi, is an interesting deviation from the others I think, and one Justin, I’m sure you appreciate. It differs from the others because of the voice of a father. Unlike the others that investigate and explore the idea of childhood, Layton’s voice is almost distant as an onlooker, a protective father watching his daughter from a distance. The refrain “who is that…” however, does sound nostalgic, as if her growing up so fast makes her unrecognizable to him. Unlike the others, I think, it is a personal poem about his growing daughter. The poem is not particularly a mourn, an ode, but a gentle internal sighing. I love this poem.

As for the Eliots, I don’t blame you Justin for being so curt with him. He is a subject on his own. I love Eliot because of the damning banal existentialism that plays like a violin throughout his poems. The wasteland as you boys might have guessed should be on my list, but preludes, and song for… are the two that really get me going. Like Layton, they are portrait poems of sentiments painted in the modernist fashion.

Thanks again Justin for the critiques, and I apologize with being so late with mine.

I would like to hear Peter’s thoughts on the poems before we move on to workshop each other’s poem.

I think a good way to start our workshop is to read one member’s poem(s) that he (or me) wants to critique. That group will read the poem and provide feedback before the poet shares his (or her) own reasoning behind the poem.

If you are comfortable Justin, do you mind if we could workshop your poems first?

Annie.

I feel like an outsider with no Eliot

2007-05-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

I thought I could begin with some impressions about Annie's and Peter's chosen poems.

"Song of Childhood"

This one is tied to a theme near and dear to my heart, childhood, though my feelings about it have changed over time. I used to think of childhood somewhat romantically when really, if I'm honest with myself, I know it came with its own set of issues. However, there are parts of it that I forever want to hold on to, especially playing "with enthusiasm." There is a looking-forward-to-things aspect that I often had as a child but seem to be severely lacking as an adult. I'm much more likely to dwell on negative aspects of my life, and the what-ifs, rather than focus on the positive.

It's hard for me to detach this work from "Wings of Desire." I see the imagery when I read the poem.

It's interesting that I still ask all the same questions as Handke's child - about evil, existence, and so forth.

I like the repeating of "When the child was a child," as it makes me think that he refers to us all as still children, but perhaps in different ways.

"To Nobodaddy"

I like the ties between the obvious allusions to God but also that of one's father specifically. "Father of jealousy" - as in reference to the Bible, where there is the Lord, "...whose name is Jealous."

I also particularly like the last two lines, as it makes me think of the "mysterious" God. Mystery is hot, and is an easy way out to explain away one's behaviour. Mysterious ways can't be questioned. But also, the pointing out of "females" leads the reader to the idea of an actual man, spending time womanizing or somesuch.

"Song for Naomi"

This one also is dear to my heart given the two new additions to my life. A growing daughter, unaware of time, and who time does not stop for, but to whom he hopes is kind. There is a palpable feeling of affection here, one that I hope I can embody in my relationship with my own daughters.

I like the repetition of stanzas, like the chugging along of time.

Now I'm going to be lazy and group Eliot's poems together, while pointing out something I like in each.

There seems to be similar themes in all of them - a frustration with human beings, a pessimism. Yet the finger seems to point inward as well, especially in "The Hollow Men." People work and play, poets included, constantly trying to fill some void in their being by whittling time away. There is a persistent focus on the unimportant, the distractions in life. Eliot weaves in desperation, yet almost passively, about the state of everyone. There is an obvious connection to our own times, when it seems so many people are focused on satiating immediate desires and are completely unaware of it. Now the metaphor is perhaps the zombie.

I wonder if he thinks there was a time when things were different, yet I'm not so sure. I think it seems so because people have more free time in which to do nothing progressive. The same battle goes on and on - some strive for some kind of salvation, whether through works here on Earth or looking up above, while many seem to run blindfolded through their lives.

I do relate to "The Hollow Men" quite a bit with my own bouts of feeling stagnant and ineffective. "Life is very long" indeed - I hear the ticking of the clock, on and on. My mind often seems to be in the moments of "in between," waiting for... something.

In "Love Song," my favourite lines are:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

This makes me think of Hamlet, who is referred to in the poem, and indecisiveness, which I also suffer greatly from. My time is spent waffling, weighing this and that, until the act of not making a decision becomes much worse than the perceived worst decision would ever be.

And:

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

That feels like a punch to the gut - a giving in, which I am also all too familiar with.

"Preludes," while dealing with similar themes, is obviously more focused on the descriptions of a "dingy," black hole of a city. Sometimes I relate. The surroundings can become too much and I feel swallowed up.

Anyway, I hope this was adequate. I just wanted to start contributing and get that ball rolling.

We will not forget beauty

2007-05-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Thank you Annie for introducing our little project . It could not ask for a better host. There is no turning back now. We will not forget beauty.

Peter

let us not forget beauty

2007-05-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

I was initially going to continue this blog to post further developments on my Transitional space project; but given the urgency of our fading poets corner, I think this venue will be better used for my neglected fellow poet-eers. So here it is, our long awaited blog. I presume later on the title and address name will change. But for now, because of our stubborn ambivalence, this will have to do. Besides, you boys know how much I like to recycle.

So here it is, our first post by yours truly. I thought it necessary to take up the first of the three favourite poems we choose this winter as the topic of discussion. For our next entry, let us share our critical and reflective readings of the poems, and express our personal invested meaning to our picks and each others. I think if we sample the work we find influential and inspiring, as a group, we come to understand each others writing better. I think it is good to start our criticism on our picks, so we can develop the comfort to be critical on each other writings.

I am excited at the potential of our little workshop. I have read both Justin’s and Peter’s poetry, and am pleased to work with such talented writers.

Annie.

Justin:

William Wordsworth: "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
Early Childhood"
>http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollection/

Pablo Neruda: "Lost in the forest..." (similar theme)
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lost-in-the-forest/

Marge Piercy - "Barbie Doll"
>http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/barbie-doll/

Peter:

Song of Childhood by Peter Hendke

http://www.wim-wenders.com/movies/movies_spec/wingsofdesire/wod-song-of-childhood.htm

To Nobodaddy by William Blake

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-nobodaddy/

The Hollow Men by TS Eliot

http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html

Annie:

“Love song of Alfred J Prufrock" By TS Eliot:
http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

"Preludes" By Eliot:
http://www.web-books.com/classics/poetry/anthology/Eliot/Preludes.htm

"Song for Naomi" By Irving Layton:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~rayser3/naomi.txt

new age

2007-03-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Is anyone else terribly besieged with deadlines and projects? This is my excuse for my negligence, dear blog.

As for New Ageism, the sudden fervor of an escapist spirituality available via Visa or American Express, is a convenient phenomenon for a consumer society diagnosed with manic depression. A rather bleak way to introduce my impression on New Ageism, but I do find the anthem for the Age of Aquarius and the experience derived from it, an interesting hallucinogenic reality endowed with so much meaning and even a bit of beauty.

Yet the meaning of these lived fantasy in the moments of LSD induced experiences, are reduced to pharemecutical procedures rather than magical moments. Yet, at the same time, this property of spirituality rolled in to a pill (or a splith), makes the ancient experience of shamism accessible to the urban dweller in an era of machines.

The principles behind the movement, of self-oriented, monkey's grace orthopraxy (rather than cat's grace orthodoxy), reflect a particular type of renaissance with a twist of capitalist flavor. As the article delineates the links of Buddhism and new ageism, the 'return' to an age of innocence and uncorrupted social behaviorism, and the subsequent pseudo bohemianism modeled after the ancient ways of shamas, yogis, and other "pre-modern' archetypes of sacred "others", leads way to a rather pompous hyper-humanism; a perfect venue of redemption for the modern consumer.

The Mystification of Scientific Abstraction

2007-02-23T10:41:00.000-08:00

It becomes slightly discomforting when one recognizes the source for X-File plot lines, as not entirely derived from the creative imagination of a sci-fi writer, but extracted from real narratives in our culture. And I’m being deliberate when I mention “our culture”, rather than “sub-culture” (if subcultures truly exist anymore, but that’s another Frankfurt story), because the sentiments and attitudes conjured up by ufo’s and aliens from outer space, are not hushed aside to the margins of society. Rather, ufo’s and extraterrestrial beings are a common theme in popular culture, and the terror, hope, and ambivalence they garner, is not unlike other speculative discourses permeating the public, i.e. religion.

Thus, it is not surprising our representation of ufo’s and aliens fit the epic archetype of a greater-than-man hero. Like Zeus and the Olympian gods, their formulaic personalities, omniscient presence, and higher knowledge, is no more different than the temperamental, and all knowing ET’s.

This link between the divine and the quite literal outer-worldly, is fundamental to occult leaders and followers. The manifestations of this linkage, often seen in x-file episodes, are communities based on the mystification of scientific abstractions, and the faith of biblical text.

Though the latter is a familiar and human sentiment, the former, mystification of scientific abstraction, is a process experienced in this regime of rationality and functionalism. In a society where our rituals and routines revolve around the systems of machines and technology, skepticism and cynicism towards angry gods are justified by statistics of global warming. However, when scientific and rational logic become the dominant discourse, we forget however, that it still remains a discourse. That is, the language of science is highly esoteric and omits the public from understanding specific facts. Nonetheless, it remains the dominant discourse in which people rely and place their faith in. The ramifications of this faith thus beings to look like a blur between scientific and science fiction. When scientific inferences are interpreted as facts by the public, the result is no different then how religions and faiths are formed.

Take for example, the black box. A piece of technology that functions though we don’t know how. We accept nonetheless, that through the magic that is technology, this microwave will heat up my food- no questions ask. On a metaphysical level, the black box does not singularly point to its function, i.e. Microwave = food, rather, it points to the all mighty and omnipresence of Science. And it is these instruments of technology that make up enivorment, brings us closer to a new god, a new faith, a new transcendental enlightenment outside of archaic churches and temples.

go go gadget go

2007-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

I’m finding this semester’s paradigm shift away from western ideology, towards particularly Islamic thought, an interesting route of inquiry. Of particular interests are the apparent emotions and energies invested in this debate of science and religion in Islamic societies. That is, to justify resistance or allowances of certain technologies, depends entirely on the ethics of the Qu’ran. Factors of human affect rather than technological effect seems to be of latent concern in western societies, but is central to Muslim praxis.

It sounds almost idealistic, that Islamic rationalist theology provides an encompassing yet diversified ideology to what westerns would call interdisciplinary. And according to our speaker yesterday, and Nasr’s article, “there are no categories” that house science and religion into two different spheres of thought; they are contingent on one another.

Yet, we can not deny that culture is not a static entity unsusceptible to change. As our speaker articulated with her five Muslim students of different sects, Muslim orthopraxy is diverse since ambiguity of the Qu’ran verses allow for varied interpretations. Thus, over time and space, the meaning and understanding of these verses change, and in turn instigate cultural changes.

Having said that, we also can not deny the global influences on Muslin societies. Coming from an outsider, in a contemporary context, the claim of a borderless relationship between Islam and science, seems like a nostalgic negation of globalization.
Looking back to Muslin civilization, particularly the library of Baghdad, a religio-science is apparent in the history of Islam. But after yesterday’s film which attempted to legitimize Islam via “scientific proof”, viewers can not but ignore the intent to overcome western pressures and criticism against Islamic strategic essentialism.

Attempting to address this concern in the language of western ideology, the film demonstrates that such ideology is not absent in Islamic thought. In other words, if science is used as “proof” for the Qu’ran, scientific empericalism becomes the point of reference for validation, rather than the Qu’ran. Thus, if the Qu’ran needs to be “proven” via science, rather than having science stem from Qu’ran as it did in the days of Baghdad library, then divisions of science and religion become apparent.

Thus, my concern around Nasr’s article, or rather rant, is that she fails to recognize the necessity of cultural change and the potential that may follow. One must address these factors, not deny them.

tradition et technology

2007-01-20T22:52:00.000-08:00

Nationalism constructed on the pride of a country’s advancing technology is an interesting and strange sentiment to understand. As Subramaniam eexplores the revival of Vedic sciences, or rather more appropriate, the hybridity of an archaic modernity, the dangers of establishing ‘hinduness’ in India as the dominate cultural ideology, which attempts to embraces development via technology, negates social tensions of caste, gender, and race symptomatic of dominant discourses.

Yet, this rhetoric of nationalism is a familiar argument for progress and development, often a competitive response to the rest of the post industrial world, at the cost of human rights. Such is a utopian sentiment of blinding optimism disinterested in the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies it presents. A visual illustration of such “nationalist spirit” is typified as the formal motif in socialist realist art. Below is a Chinese propaganda poster promoting communist prospects of scientific advancement with a caption reading: ‘Science can be dangerous and difficult; bitter struggles can set new standards”.

(1979)

Below is an earlier image poster distributed during the “Great leap Forward” campaign. The sails bear the slogan, “Better, Faster, Cheaper”, while Europeans and Americans welter in the waves on the right.

Juxtaposed to one another, the nationalism these posters present reflects the authority of tradition and the enthusiasm of the new, similar to what Subramaniam portrays in her portrait of an archaic modern India. That is, both attempt to modernize with a façade of “culture and tradition”. That science in India is “distinctively Hindu”, or communism to Moa is “clearly Chinese”, such blatant ethnic characterizing blurs the lines of national and cultural identities. Thus, the irony of a janus-faced nationalism of nostalgia and progress is that modernization is legitimized by the authority of tradition, that celebrates a future liberation via technology, without dismissing ostracizing via tradition. Thus oppositions are met by a combined rhetoric of science and tradition

2007-01-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

My attitude towards the assigned readings for this class fluctuate on grid lines of cheer or chore. As my blog entries will show, I have a tendency to focus nominal on the articles discussing related topics, or talk only about the article. This week, I thoroughly enjoyed the reading, so this entry will be of the latter- though more boring than the former.

Of particular interest is Eueben’s discussions of spirituality and technology in the context of Islam, and the binary of post-enlightenment western rationality, and Islamic modernity she presents. However, Euben’s paradigm shift is not solely based on juxtapositions, rather she problematizes the incongruent ‘essentialism’ within both streams of western and Islamic rational thought, and reads them as critical ambiguities. She thus call for an approach that returns to the morals and values that religion provides, with the aid of scientific processes, rather than the hindrances of it.

Throughout her essay, the tone of contest against western reductionalism sounds like a call to pack our bags up and go. However, rather than abandoning one side of the binary for the other, she proposes a hybrid of “horizons”, and a shared “expressed ambiguity” that does not dismiss religiosity (rather than secular spirituality) or science, that can utilize rationalism as points of merger rather than failure.

Interestingly, like many other theorist we have read, Eugen leaves us with the challenge of finding “the middle way”, but provides us no map or compass for our travels. Yet, this investment of hybridity in her article, a pithy conclusion of two pages or so, does illustrate nicely the complexities and tensions such a hybridity entails, yet the necessity of it.

A problem then, as explored by many of the theorist we’ve read in class, is how to re-orient our binaristic mode of thinking, when according to Derrida, our systems of meaning function on a mode of difference and deference of binaries. How can we stand in the in-between of knowing, and not knowing- or rather, how can we deal with the inherent attitudes of violence, apathy, and frustration in these spaces of knowing-and-not-knowing? How do we find this fulcrum of accepted ambivalence, and the courage to act with certainty? And, perhaps most important to me, how do we experience this ambivalence, and what can we learn from it? To Kant, experiencing the limitation in both faculties of reason and imagination is a moment of the sublime.

2007-01-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

In a history textbook some years ahead, I won’t be surprised if the chapter “The twentieth Century” is subsequent to a subtilted “The Silicon Age”. But as history is to textbox; time is to literature.

Sci-Fi literature, as Hayes describes in her reading of Egan’s trilogy, a genre of future dystopian or utopian worlds, can only arise from a post enlighten, industrialization, mechanization era. That is, the view of a hyper-siliconized world in literature is derived from a reflection of our own familiar techno-saturated landscape.

The Posthuman as Hayes describes, under the rule of The Computation Regime, points to the proximity of Egan’s sci-fi plot lines, and our contemporary world. Thus, Egan’s literature is more than allegory; it’s metaphoric intent severs the ties between the reader and his or her culture, to scrutinized the obscurity, yet familarity of a posthuman protagonist. Through these echoes does the suspension of one’s disbelief become less and less suspended, while the plot becomes more and more believable.

oh no....

2006-12-18T00:13:00.000-08:00

Get this, Tschumi says, “The concept of space is not space.”
And here goes, Heidegger says, “the essence of technology is nothing technological”.
Exciting isn’t?

To be continued…

What annie thinks about @ 4am

2006-11-15T01:01:00.000-08:00

Since Noble’s note on Hiroshima, there has been little consideration for other cultures and their approaches to technology. Kudos to Paul Wolpe for pointing out the differences in ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ approaches to technology.

Yet, only a small portion of the Wolpe’s article mentions “Sushi Science”, and it seems his questioning of ethics remains somewhat, in a narrow and restricted.

The article begins with an interesting discussion on pomo culture and the ethics of genetic science. However, it’s a shame Wolpe doesn’t expand on the differences of cultures and the questioning of a ‘self-identity’ in a postcolonial context. Instead, Wolpe uses what seems to be staple to ethicists in this discourse: the Diaspora and victimization of Jews. Though the examples of Diaspora, the embodied self, and Eugenics illustrate the tensions of cultural construction and biological determinism, in a pomo-poco setting, these are issues that are experience on a global level.

In one of his essays, Said’s speaks of the immigrant experience as an “exile’, that is having a ‘house’ but no ‘home’. Though Wolpe mentions the import/export setting of a pomo world, is not a cultural identity crisis experienced by any Canadian with a hyphenated identity? Under the title, “Jews in Diaspora”, for the sake of postcolonialism, lets appropriate Wolpe’s opening sentence to the following:

insert any Canadian hyphenated identity here] struggle to live in some dynamic tension between the expectations of society and the expectations of being [insert any ‘race’ here]”.

As for the issue of Jews and Eugenics, I’m surprise Wolpe departs from the “Negroes”, as not equally a victim of eugenics. Though not with the same tone as Hitler, the physiognomic rhetoric of the “other body” nonetheless justified racism and the torment of Africans during the slave trade.

I’m criticizing Wolpe not because I don’t think he’s wrong (I really liked the article). Ethicists that use the holocaust or the ‘jew example’ need to reflect it back to the world, and not as a point in history. As Athena points out in her article, the risk of seeing the holocaust as a stand-alone example makes invisible the ‘language of eugenics’ (another facet of biopolitics) occurring on a global scale, just as Wolpe’s negates the racism against Africans.

what's Athena's beef?

2006-11-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

With Heidegger that is....

Alright so let's break it down Athena's article without the jargo jargon:

The “cut body of humanity” refers to the Other / Humane dualism. You can't be 'humane' with out knowing what it is to be inhumane. So we point to other 'bodies' as "Other" to stablize our concept of "humane" as the opposite.

Athena criticizes Hiedegger for ignoring the power politics of "Enframing" in reference to Auschwitz. Rather than seen as a part of the tandem of sitting reserved: agricultural production and airplanes...etc; mass deaths (not corpses) have to bee seen as a separate segment of that tandem to understand the biopolitics at work. If it is dismissed as a just a product of "enframent", then it falls into the danger of "neutralizing biopolitcs", that is letting it go unnoticed.

Athena adamantly re-reads Hiedegger’s Enframing as the “technomediated representation of bodies,” and thus, “the language of biopolitics”. In other words, if bodies are seen as “sitting reserved”, then a body of power (sovereign) can determine whether these bodies are worth living, and which are not. Hiedegger does not differentiate between the body of the “sovereign” and the bodies of the “other”- the victims of enframing.

Thus, Athena concludes (I’m omitting of course many other points raised in the article) that the biopolitics experienced in the Holocaust, is experienced presently on a global and local forefront. Yet, it is the invisibility of biopolitics that is responsible for the “loss of humanity”, not enframent as Hiedegger claims.

A Question of Ethics: Discussing the languages of representation

Poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. –Adorno.

Athanasiou proposes to take up Foucault’s challenge to “rethink technology”. That is to re-orient the body outside of an ‘enframing’ biopolitics, and towards an ‘ethicopolitical force’ that manages the welfare of individuals and populations, and acknowledges human life (145). Yet she concludes the essay with little aid in providing a path, and unlike Heidegger, refers to Rose’s “Holocaust Piety”, purporting that art is not the way.

Thus, we are left with the dilemma of how to steer clear of the technomediated body as a political site “sitting reserved”, while avoiding the danger of mystification of literary, poetic, or artistic representation. The dilemma then precipitates into the paradoxes within the languages of representation, since both fail to represent the ‘Other-ed’: the former as silenced, the latter as aestheticized or dismissed as the “limits of language”.

Yet, is not the ‘enframing’ of art as a means of representation the negation of individual agency? Can art be appreciated as a terrain of individual expression, and not singularly as a project of representation; but equally as a process of exploring the sentiments experienced as humans? Can the failure of language in art be recognized rather than the limits of language, but the ambiguities inherent in the aporias of expressing ‘human life’? In Defense of Poesies, Philip Sydney argues poetry (and art) does no seek truth, or attempt to be “Truth”, but rather a process of dealing with the fragility of language and understanding.

Digital Art is the new Primitive Art

2006-10-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Meet “Venus” of Willendroff, an 11.1cm statuette dating approximately 15,000 to 10,000 BCE. Her home is a pedestal in Vienna's Naturhistorisches Museum. A profound discovery by archaeologist Josef Szombathy in 1908, she is distinguished as the earliest example of primitive art (Stokads). The texture and pronunciation of shape and surface emphasises her abstract form as other-worldly and goddess like.

Ahem…

There is no doubt that the “Venus” is a beautiful object, beautiful enough to name it after our beloved classical icon of western beauty, negating its own historical context. It may appear as a mere nominal anachronism, yet the Eurocentric naming of the figurine points to the danger of positioning a statuette of a naked fat woman under the canon of “Art”. Art in the western sense is a relatively modern ideology. The culture of Art as we know it today is the result of the modernist phenomenon of secularization and specialization. Thus, the cultural production and consumption a of Picasso or Pollack, differs greatly from the context of a prehistoric figurine.

It's a crime to strip the figurine of its cultural context and impose western ideologies of Art on to it. Rather, we can postulate that the figurine is a product of an “archaic sacred” civilization, an idol perhaps, that shares the same world as her worshipers. As Szerszynski article describes, the world of an “archaic sacred” civilization, has no division between the divine and the human. Unlike the monotheistic notion of sin and salvation, the world of gods is situated in the world of humans. Yet, the point of particular intrigue, and excitement, is Szerszynski idea of a “postmodern sacred”, a weird position with one foot in an “archaic sacred” world, and another foot in a “salvation seekers” world.

And this is where it gets interesting. Like the fat woman figurine to a prehistoric tribe, the materials of technology are crucial components to the rituals and practices of our daily lives. Our tenuously reliance on technology has transform such materials to our cultural idols. Like the statuette that serves as both practical and spiritual cultural product, similarly, our relationship to a light switch, that enables us to turn a light bulb on and off, offers to us, on a ‘postmodern sacred’ plane, a practical and spiritual fulfilment. In a ‘postmodern sacred’ sense, it provides a site of salvation, a salvation not directed to a metaphysical world or entity, but points back to us. Technology in a sense is the project of humanity.

The ‘cult’ technology within the secularized field of “Art” (with a capital A) I believe, needs to be celebrated and understood as a cultural phenomenon, not on a pedestal or within the neutral white walls of a gallery. In turn, our participation will lead to greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. To appropriate a Joseph Beuys philosophy, “if there is conscious awareness towards our environment and actions, then everything is art, and everyone is an artist”.

It is all rather exciting.

Ganna be Heidegger for Halloween

2006-10-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

What can be scarier than convoluted philosophy?

Geeze, this blog’s collected more cyberdust than Napster. I confess I’ve been neglectful to the blog, but not to the course kit. I have to admit I was ‘losing faith’ in this class before I got into the course kit readings. And though I’m a bit of an anti-essentialist (who isn’t no a days?), I find the philosophy of Agamben and Heidegger’s nonetheless intriguing.

There are a few things that turned me on and off in Heidegger’s essay. One aspect I find troubling (as I bantered on about in class) is the logocentricism that is of principle support to his argument. As if returning to the etymology of words validated them as “more true”, rather than understand words as a constructed social concept. The pedestal treatment of the Classical Greeks as the ‘ideal’ society that coexisted with nature also raised one eyebrow for me. It sounds similar to More’s “Utopia”, an imaginary world used as a rhetorical tool to contrast the crumby reality of European culture.

Yet weather Hiedegger’s description of the classical Greek world is true or not is of no importance. Just like More's use of “Utopia”, Hiedegger uses ancient Greece as a literary tool to convey his argument. And I admit, it is really good use of rhetoric. Yet what strikes me is Heidegger’s grammatical structuring of “questioning concerning technology” in the first paragraph of his essay. Heidegger encourages a step back and “prepare a free relationship to it [technology]”, which will thus lead to a greater understanding of it. Thus, by positioning himself outside the culture he critiques, allows him to peel away the skin to get to the pithy seed, or the essence of technology: “the relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to the essence of technology” (63). Almost through an anthropological viewpoint, perched like a raven on a telephone wire, Heidegger’s concern around the question becomes “what is technology?” This “outsider” curiosity reminds me of a documentary where a white guy from England traveled to China seeking an answer to the question “what is Buddhism?” Weaved within the rituals and routines of everyday life, Buddhism and Chinese culture are inseparable and is understood rather, as a way of life. Likewise, technology is inseparable with western culture, and can not be understood as consisting of an ‘essence’ separate from cutlure.

Moreover, the trouble with the grammer of the question lies in the verb “is”. In the sentence “what is technology”, the verb presupposes a tangible concept or a concrete ‘thing’ that ‘is’ technology. The question of what “is” frames technology within an essentialist box; a perspective that I’m simply not interested in. As a participant within the technocratic culture, I’m interested in investigating the cultural process that are undergoing as a result of technology, and the sub sequential affects and effects that occur.

Yet, I appreciate Heidegger’s returning to art and poetry as the ‘redemptive’ qualities of our culture. Digital technology has become a leading medium in the production of art, and I am fascinated by this marriage of art and technology. Still an embryonic medium, I’m not intrigued by the ‘newness’ of a techno-aesthetic, but rather the creation of new myths for a relatively new culture.

Oh Agamben:

2006-10-06T15:43:00.001-07:00

Even the pronunciation of your name is a complication to me.
Reading The Open, is like reading the Tao...in German.

In conversation with western philosophy figure heads, ‘The Open’ brings to the forefront the tension in the divide between animal and human as separate natures; a perceived truism prevalent in western societies. In opposition to this divide, Agamben proposes a potentiality to dismantle the ‘anthropomorphic machine:’ the hierarchization of a linear evolution with ‘Man’ as a complete project. Though he never quite pinpoints just how one can reorient this mode of thinking, Agamben proposes the ‘Open’, a state of being within the caesura of man and animal.

Yet this state within the ‘open’, and the subsequential unfolding of ‘oikinomia’, is articulated in a convoluted interpretation of Heidegger, leading to a matrix of aporias and paradoxes. And like the Tao, I assume this complication, this problematization of a complete answer, contributes to the meaning of Agamben’s- or perhaps to the entire canon of philosophy.

Particular to Agamben’s “The Open”, this intrinsic frustration symptomatic of the limits of language to express a particular philosophy, a concept, a the-meaning-of-life idea, is perhaps an empirical example of Hiedegger’s 'closedness’. Language, verbal/visual/any medium of communication is what limits yet makes available an acknowledgement of our existence.

Technology thus, comes into this frame of problematization by presenting an ‘objective’ language: science. Science presents a disjunction between the designation of Homo Sapien, and the humanistic distinction of Man, the latter being a product of the ‘Anthropomorphic machine’. This disjunction (along with many others examples) has stigmatized the language of science as the deconstruction of essentialism. Yet a view of the ‘open’ is perhaps science confirming essentialism- an essence Agamben calls ‘bare-life’.

Captivation in bare-life is illustrated in the perpetual routine of a bee, and man’s profound boredom in a train station; for in this state, man forfeits the narcissism of purposefulness, “the deactivation of possibility” (67) and is equated to the existence of an insect. A bee does not come into the world with the idea “I am an important component to the homeostasis of the environment.” The purpose and behavior of a bee as a pollinator, and as instinctive survival is a scientific inference. Likewise, the biological explanation for man’s behavior can equally bee seen as reactions to primitive needs for survival. Yet science can not satisfy the question of purpose. The idea of man having a purpose, greater than any other organism, is but a product of the “anthropomorphic machine”. In this light, technology, language, human effort becomes actions without purpose, like a bee that drinks honey though his abdomen has been removed. Science is thus, the animalization of the human, and consequently the humanization of animal.

It seems this interpretation has taken a nihilist spin, and whether that is a good thing or bad is questionable. But I suppose a better question is: am I even making any sense. It seems, only a Taoist can appreciate the paths in her travels of hyper-paradoxes.

What the fuzz:

2006-10-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

A scentific study Spirituality and Religion

Spirituality and Religion: Unfuzzing the Fuzzy

That must have been a pretty rusty Gillette blade the Society of Scientific Study for Religion was using to ‘unfuzz’ the definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’; especially since by the end of the study, the definitions remain obscured.

There are a number of things that simply just don’t work when trying to simplify complicated ideas. ‘Empirical studies’ that involve the surveying of public opinion through a simple binary system of consent and dissent, is nothing more but the negation of diverse opinions and emotions inherent in the complexity of ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’. The establishment of a ‘common’ definition is almost like a type of scientific hegemony.

The contradiction these tests pose is perhaps most evident when listing the ‘goal’ to de-polarize (institutional) religion and spirituality as ‘bad’ and ‘good’ respectively. Yet ironically, the entire study is dependant on the categorization of emotions and opinions, even people in to social statuses, creating a mosaic, rather than a spectrum of understanding. A stark example is the ‘danger’ of SnR mental health workers that may impose their ‘liberal’ beliefs on patients as mentioned on page 15. As if the 27 returned surveys represented the entire body of the Mental Health profession, the assumption that an SnR attitude poses a ‘danger’ only reverses the polarities of ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’, rather than subverting polarities.

The study is soaked with examples of the limitations science has to ‘unfuzz fuzzy terms’. My ‘favourite’ example is the content category key on page 9: a legend of 14 sentenced-stringed categories, each epitomizing the participants abstract ideas of the ‘Sacred’. Category 5: Hope, is treated like a bird in a cage, isolated in one category, as if all the other definitions lacked this crucial ‘emotion’, which I find hard to believe. But nothing beats category 14: Uncodable. I imagine someone writing a poem about Jesus, and having the iambic pentameter translated as a syntax error.

The only attention I’d give the Society of SSR’s, is to view their efforts as a reflection of a technological culture attempting to translate the esoteric language of spirituality and religion, to an objective numeric domination represented as ‘facts’. Aside from this, I see nothing fruitful in S of SSR’s attempts; to butcher a Habermas quotation, ‘nothing rises from a de-sublimated meaning, or a deconstructed form; an emancipatory effect does not follow’.

Ignoble Noble:

2006-09-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Religion of Technology needs a Reformation

Like the devastation of ‘pre-americas’, it won’t take long until a neutral cyberspace is colonized and exploited for its goods. Or that’s what I get out of Noble’s ‘text’ “The Religion of Technology” anyways. I can’t help but hear “The White Man’s Burden” booming in the background of Noble’s hagiographies, narrated through dates and hanging quotations.

According to Nobles text, it seems whatever potential salvation technology can offer is delivered entirely on Christian terms, and that the rise of ‘practical arts’ as spiritual enlightenment is only conceivable within a Eurocentric world. Noble’s text is a chronicle of important technological developments inspired by a spiritual pursuit towards transcendence, omitting of course the intrinsically mystic and mathematical designs of Islamic Arts, and other contributors outside of America and Europe, like Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, an imortant figuer in establishing Algebra. Only briefly is there mention of Hiroshima, but not as the city of the world’s most technological advance country, but victim to the apocolyptic zeal of millenarianism.

(But of coures, in Nobles defense, since the Japanese have no souls, their Yen doesn’t let them ride the mechanical messiah.)

Not only is Noble’s ‘narrative’ completely eurocentric, it is entirely phallocentiric. But I suppose the two are interchangable. Yet, not ignorant to his 21thcentury audience, he attempts to address this issue as a pithy appendix note in the end of the book entitled: “A Masculine Millennium: A note on Technology and Gender.” However, he provides no alternative perspective on the blatant phallocentric approach to technology, but only confirms the predominant sexism as he list misogynisitc moments in history, as if his own text void of a female name, save for Eve here and there, did not provide blatant enough evidence of a gendered discourse. Even the meagre concluding paragraph of the ‘appendix’ that attempts to provide some hope for equality, is a quotation lifted from another source; there is nothing in his own words that show any bias agianst the patriachy of dialogue.

As you guessed, I’m a ‘bit’ disappointed in the first reading, and hope the others in the course will broaden our horizon of prejudice. I’m hoping that $80 course kit will put Noble to work, pushing the parameters of the discousre towards more interdisplinary perspectives.

greetings.

2006-09-12T00:55:00.000-07:00

It's kind of ironic for an author of a zine titled "Machine's Don't Love You" to enrol in a class called "Spirituality and Technology". My understanding of ‘spirituality’ and ‘technology’ as separate discourses is pathetically minimal, almost blasphemous. The tone of my ‘wow’ doesn’t fluctuate when contemplating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the reception of a cell phone. They are both equal mysteries to me.

I suppose the allure of polarized subjects violently brought together by academics, metaphysicians, and the occasional marginalized artists got me in. Oh the things we find alluring in academia. Or perhaps this class is my attempt to redeem myself of my anti-tech and semi atheist bias. Who know, come next summer I could be building a Buddhist sex machine in my basement. It should be good times.

post for 4210

2006-09-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

testing testing
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end post.