7 Days of 1000 Words

During an AA meeting in 8th Grade, Dan Wallace (ahem, i mean "Mr.") told us that the best thing to do with your goals is to write them down & tell them to people. Well, my on again/off again goal over the last few years is to read 100 pages a day and write 1000 words (though, because i'm a total pussy, i make little deals with myself like 'today i'll write 1750 words and just read 25' or 'if i read 200 pages of comic books, that'll count for today)...

Today, Roman Numeral J reader(s), i invite you to join in a mini-verbal revolution & take on the 1000-4-7 challenge. You needn't start today (in case your today is tomorrow), but start. Write 1000 words, post it to the internet, stuff it away in your sock drawer, or send it off in a letter to yourself (or someone else), just write. My sense is (and i'm not sure i'm write) that the world can't be hurt by more people writing & expressing themselves and might very well be helped enormously by it.

For my own part, though i have a vague notion of writing more often on RNJ generally, i will publish the majority of each day's fodder here online over the course of the next week as an example. Some days it won't be pretty, as i'll be wanting to go to sleep and won't yet have written my daily quota, or 'won't have anything to say', but i think too often (and here, maybe, i'm preaching to my ENG 102 students as much as i am to myself) we look at writing as an end-result of "inspiration" or 'muse', but really, what it amounts to, is a habit.

A couple of personal ground rules, i guess, might be in order. First off, the "per day" limits run (for me only) from the time i wake up in the morning to when i fall asleep at night, so reading (my personal goal also includes the previously mentioned 100 pages of reading/day - which, really, wouldn't be a bad idea for you either, would it?) and writing done after midnight surely count if i'm still up. Any reading or writing done after first falling asleep, but having awakened in the middle of the night can go toward either day (though, assuming i succeed in my goal will generally be counted toward the next day, to get a head start). Also, no 'working ahead' or 'behind' is allowed, as in promising yourself on Tuesday that you'll catch up with the missing words tomorrow... If you miss a day, ok, just start over with the 7.

Let's see, new to the site is a link to Robert L. Gard's whisky endeavor. Rob is a friend of the blog & true expert in the field of all things of the brown booze (though, as far as i know, Rob has never been to the Dundee Dell, a shortcoming in the scotch field that, i think, maybe even living in Scotland, working at a distillery can't entirely overcome).

Ok, well, i started off with a bit of a head start for the day, so i will sign off here from my call to ball-points. Just a couple of final tips, don't word count too often lest you get bogged down in counting words, rather than writing. And, the biggest best piece of advice i can give is avoid worries about 'not having anything to write' just now. Even if you just write the same word 1000 days (i can almost guarantee you won't do this more than 1 time), some really famous poems have been comprised of just 1 word repeated over & over and in the act of such writing, you draw attention to the act of writing itself (think Michael Snow's Wavelength, but on paper)

Hail Hail, the gangs all here

Note: all page references refer to MAPH reader Fall 2005.


In “Ideology and the State” Louis Althusser uses the terms “interpellation” and “hailing” to refer to the everyday reproduction of subjects as individuals. Althusser uses the example of a police officer calling out, “Hey, you there!” to illustrate hailing as one aspect of interpellation. Franz Fanon, in “The Fact of Blackness,” uses a child’s hailing to begin an attempt to create a Hegelian scene of mutual recognition with white culture through various mediums (such as an exploration of Negro culture) which ultimately fails, but in his examination of Negro cultural texts he comes to a moment of interpellation and does find a moment of subjectivity within the boundaries of his own Negro culture.

Interpellation and hailing both refer to the act of becoming a subject, not temporally or as a causal relationship, but as “always-already” subjects. While Althusser frequently uses both terms together, without any distinction between them, hailing refers to a specific aspect of interpellation involving two unmediated subjects, one calling to the other, thereby making obvious the other’s subjectivity. There is no movement toward becoming a subject because “you and I are always already subjects, and as such constantly practice the rituals of ideological recognition” (Althusser 172). Both the hailer and the individual being hailed are already on equal footing as subjects and the interpellation serves simply to reaffirm that obviousness.

When Franz Fanon attempts to stage a similar scene of mutual recognition in “The Fact of Blackness” he uses a Hegelian-style dialectic to try to become an equal subject in the eyes of whiteness. Hegel’s “self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is it exists only in being acknowledged” (Hegel 111). Fanon goes through the steps of mutual recognition, using several different tools to try and achieve it, but at the beginning of the chapter he says “every ontology is made unattainable in a colonized and civilized society…the black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man” (Fanon 109-110). Fanon is ultimately unable to find subjectivity through the Hegelian dialectic because he cannot attain acknowledgement, as a black man. There can be no mutual recognition when his person constantly has to be qualified as a “black friend” or “the Negro doctor.” In order for either Hegel’s or Althusser’s version of attaining mutual recognition to work both of the individuals involved must be able to see themselves as alternate versions of the other, each as an equal subject, and Fanon’s encounter cannot come to that conclusion.

The very first line of Fanon’s chapter can be looked at as an instance of hailing. When the child says “Look, a Negro!” (109) there is no doubt who is being addressed, so according to Althusser he now “becomes a subject…because it was really him who was hailed (and not someone else)” (Althusser 174). And of course Fanon is a subject and always already was, but the instance of Fanon’s “hailing” is also vastly different from the way Althusser describes it. The content of the hailing is very different from Althusser’s “Hey, you” or “It’s me” and while there is no mention of hailing needing to take a specific form, the disparaging nature of the child’s hail makes the two subjects dissimilar. Furthermore, the hail comes from a child rather than a policeman or friend and the child is white, which further complicates the encounter. Because the two subjects involved are so different, each unable to view the other as an independent subject, no mutual recognition is possible.

When Fanon turns to Negro culture as a possible medium of mutual recognition he has already tried and discarded, among other things, reason as a mode of recognition. Fanon says he chooses this “method of regression” out of necessity and challenges “the white man to be more irrational than I” (Fanon 123). He previously had tried to gain recognition by working within the confines of white culture, appealing to science for justification for his equal status, but now admits to regressing and desires to meet as equals on this new plane. Fanon explores poetry, music and tribal practices as rich emotive rather than rational experiences in Negro culture and this attempt momentarily looks like it may work: “At last I had been recognized, I was no longer a zero” (129). But in the end this medium, too, failed. The inherent inequality shows itself when Negro culture is dismissed as “a stage of development” for white culture. The dominant culture then adapts Negro culture for its own claiming origins of “earth mystics” that are far superior to what they have and taking “a little human sustenance” from Negro culture when they “become too mechanized” (129). In the end mutual recognition is again impossible because Fanon has seen white culture co-opt the aspects of Negro culture that he had tried to use.

Both Althusser’s interpellation or hailing and Hegel’s mutual recognition have at the core the necessity for a subject to gain recognition from another subject. While Fanon was explicitly working, in “The Fact of Blackness” at producing a Hegelian scene of mutual recognition, his chapter also works to illustrate Althusser’s ideas. His reading through Negro cultural texts serves as a perfect example of interpellation. Each response to the various texts—“Yes, all those are my brothers…Eyah! The tom-tom chatters…Blood! Blood!” (123-125)—can be seen as a moment of Althusserian obviousness. In this way Fanon, while ultimately failing in his goal to find mutual recognition among white culture and coming to the conclusion of “Nothingness and Infinity,” does achieve mutual subjectivity with the texts of his own Negro culture.

superModernity

*Note: The following is taken (and only slightly adapted) from a seminar paper of mine for Fall 2008. It examines the idea of 'super-modernity' and fragmentary history... 

 ...as Marc Augé points out in his book, Non-Places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, this collecting of fragmentary histories into ‘history proper’ is what anthropological history (which he seems to equate with history generally) consists of. A modern historian, working within the confines of the social sciences, takes a collection (a sample) of personal histories and constructs a narrative from them. This narrative, then, becomes ‘recorded history’. Augé’s concept of ‘supermodernity’ (which operates as something like a ‘happier’ alternative to postmodernity), however, problematizes this ‘final narrative’ due to the fact that the time between history and the present becomes ever smaller. That is, ‘historical events’ need no longer be from 50, 25, or even 5 years ago, instead, the personal event can, in some sense, be aware of itself as historical event. Supermodernity, then, is the coming together of unfathomable numbers of historical events, so that, like in postmodernity, there can exist no over-arching historical narratives. Unlike this postmodern history, however, supermodern history does not dismiss the possibility of the existence of these narratives, these ‘truths’, but only acknowledges the impossibility (or perhaps merely extreme unlikeliness) of knowing them.

Whine Country

Yesterday afternoon, we drove out of San Francisco and into "wine country". That's in California.

Anyway, brooke shot a pretty cool (slightly nauseating) video of the Golden Gate Bridge that i thought i'd share... For more, check out my faceBook photos.

Exploring Masculinity

This morning i went to Menards to purchase a snow blower (the one i got is in fact called a 'snow thrower'). I'd been there yesterday as well (i'm becoming a regular regular) without much luck, but the associate assured me a shipment would be coming today. I hadn't fully decided whether to get the slightly less expensive wimpy looking blower or the really tough-ass gigantic blower that was only somewhat more expensive.

After 'talking shop' a bit with the sales associate, he assured me that i would be a complete fool to buy the little one. So, complete fool that i am, i bought the giant one, and attempted to put it in my car (which of course completely failed - i'm convinced that most of the R&D done for the Ford Taurus goes toward creating the appearance of as much space as possible, while absolutely minimizing the room through which to access said space).

So, i went back in and rented a pickup. Another associate & i loaded up the fairly heavy implement into the pickup bed, and i was driving around town in a truck, with a snowblower sliding around the back. On the ride home i realized i would be unloading the snowblower myself and i pictured myself alternately pulling it down and being crushed by it (in this scenario, i always imagined it somehow turning on by itself and slicing & dicing as it fell on top of me), or i saw myself standing in the truck bed, lowering the machine down with a great feat of strength (do i need to make a roll for that?), while throwing out my back.

I backed into the drive, still with no working plan and opened the garage. There was the answer, the extra door that i wasn't quite sure why i hadn't thrown away yet. I constructed a crude ramp (that's right, man use simple machine) and got the snowblower down & into the garage. I drove home, exceedingly happy with myself, but couldn't tell the story to anyone. I present it here as a chapter in my exploration of masculinity...

Question of the Day* (Category: Marxism)

Which came first, the chicken or the Egg McMuffin?

Sub-question #1 - Why is it that so often the first to bemoan the redistribution of wealth are so often the best at the redistribution of snow?

*Note: 'Question of the Day' is an occasional, tri-annual event here at Roman Numeral J, and may be canceled in future, without notice.

a direct transcription

of Comedy Central on 4 December 2008 (at least all that i could catch, there may be some holes) - 10:10pm CST-10:12pm CST

"the remarkable clean coal technology changes everything, take a look, this is america's clean coal technology.
I am green today, i chirp today, get verizon wireless america's most reliable 3G network. Yours is here.
Agent... hey... Got it. The ridiculously long lasting gum, stride sweet barry.
Douggy... Dougy i just bought you for a buck 99. Now i'm gonna do your wife, now i'm gonna do your mother now.
Why have you come to our planet...from us, it has begun, he is the only one who can save us. you can stop this. the day the earth stood still, rated PG-13. We live in troubling times, not just on the financial"

So, that's what going on these days... Does anyone else think we've had quite enough Punisher movies?