i'm watching Jimmy Fallon's premiere episode as the new Late Night host. I gotta say, it's not terrible. Ever since David Demarco helped me realize that Jimmy Fallon sucks as a Saturday Night Live player because he cracks up & laughs during almost every skit he's in, i've assumed i hated the guy (Fallon, not Demarco) himself.
But i'm beginning to suspect that late night talk show host may be the perfect setting for Fallon's sputtery, clodding style. Assuming that his guests are entirely uninteresting, at least his awkward-ness might be somewhat distracting. Sure he's no Craig Ferguson, or David Letterman, or Conan O'Brien, or Jimmy Kimmel really & hey, that's a second Jimmy. That seems, perhaps, overkill.
Like any premiere episode, the lineup is very good. Robert DeNiro - funny, but made less so by Jimmy Fallon. Justin Timberlake - i'm waiting to see if there will be any nipple jokes. My guess is yes. And, possibly the only possible more interesting musical guest than Letterman had tonight (U2), Van Morrison.
Also, the 'lick for 10' bit was sort of funny. Not great, but fairly Letterman derivative (which is a place to start). So, as you might have guessed, tonight has been a 'late nite' night. Just thought i'd get an early review out there... Overall, the final word on Fallon's Late Night, not bad, but really, why aren't you watching Craig Ferguson.
After watching Obama's 'not-a-state-of-the-union-speech', i stuck around for Bobby Jindal's "Republican Response" and had a thought, as The Daily Show suggested, Jindal sounded like he thought he was addressing a class of 1st Graders, rather than the general American public.
Now, i've never been one not to talk about the American pubic as if they were pre-pubescent spoiledRotten children, but, seriously, when he followed up Obama's speech, the first serious (if a bit pie-in-the-sky) speech coming from the white House in at least a decade, Jindal just sounded embarrassing.
It's hard work, though, being the arbitor of all that is prescient & cool. The Daily Show takes at least a full day for news to filter down and while i'm sure there are blogs and other 'significant thinkers' satirically stating the state of the state for us, they aren't, i think, quite as sweet-ass-cool as i am.
In other news... I've got a sense of what my 'prelim areas' will be... Finally. So, evidently, people in my "situation" need to choose 3 'areas' that define their areas of knowledge so that they can then, in turn, sell those areas to future employing universities...
Anyway, i've 'recently' becomed obsessed with the idea of "the fragment" and until today i wasn't quite sure what i meant by that. I mean, i know that i want to think about ideas of the archive and the aphorism and 'the fragment', but so far i wasn't sure how to fit that into a (sort of) system of thought. But i think i've got it... (Prelim 'areas' consist of 3 categories of thought that overlap in your area).
The Fragment the two areas i've had pretty well sorted out until now are:
1. Fragmented Bodies - This is an area i've been interested in for some time. As a fundamental area, this is related to zombies, as well as 're-constructed bodies' (like Frankenstein stories & cyborgs) and dead, dying, and decomposing bodies (i'm thinking here of things like Brakhage's Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, or similar {ha})
2. Fragmented Cities - Looking, similarly, at decomposing cities, first and foremost through the lens of Urban Exploration, the practice of exploring (and to some extent explaining) industrial spaces that have been abandoned or remodeled. Additionally, the idea of 'fragmented spaces' comes into play (though i'm not sure what those spaces might be)... Places that are, essentially, altered (or 'othered'?) in their experience. Places like tourists sites might be a good place to start
finally, i've figured out a 3rd area that actually makes sense to these other areas and i connect it to particularly the Urban Explorers in area 2, through the idea of 'supermodernity' - which i've discussed before.
3. Fragmented Narratives - Looking at an updated 'narrative theory' that follow's up on Robert Bird's ideas of 'all is narrative' by looking at abstract art and postModern narrative, exploring the way 'time & narrative' is explored in things that might consider themselves 'non-narrative'.
So, i've done a good bit of writing 'outside the blog' today (this is the problem with telling people your goals, btw, you suddenly find you have people you have to justify yourself to {at least if you're a neurotic quiffler like me} and you sound less convincing than if you just assert things willy-nilly), but i felt this post was... prescient, today.
Yesterday (which we'll call Monday for the sake of argument), in a class about sovereignty & the distinction of man vs. animal vs. 'savage' Professor Peter Paik posed a question about the possibility of the end (or at least the beginning of the end) of the American economy, which is to say, and end to infinite growth of an economy based on the creation and purchase of endless amounts of stuff (i think of George Carlin whenever such a conversation arises). Today, our United States Senate passed a Stimulus Package amounting to over $800Billion of new spending and tax cuts. And the question naturally arises, "whabuwhey?" In talking to friends and others about 'the Recession' (by which i mean talking to my TV whenever Anderson Cooper comes on), they (he) often assures me that the Economy need only get 'back on track' and then everything will go back to normal. This is troubling to me, not only because, to me, everything kind of seems normal now, and the 'track' people seem to refer to as something to shoot for is undeniably unsustainable. It seems fundamentally logical to me that an economy cannot just continue to produce more shit for people to buy, even if, for a really long time, people continue to buy it, thereby securing their own jobs at companies and organizations that are producing different shit.
It simply makes no sense. And so, i would submit, a solution that is already really quite underway. Our economy (and really the global economy) is moving toward a 'service economy'. Now unlike things, the limitation on services you can buy is only limited by time (and so, somewhere down the road, this to must fail). But i think there is some importance here in basing most of our economy on selling ephemera. Watching Movies, Seeing Tourist Attractions, Drinking Whisky (i guess, technically, a thing, but it's really the effects i think most of us purchase)
Do you see where i'm going with this? I did, but the, umm, ephemera is making me want to sleep. Mostly, i wanted to wonder aloud why it's in the interests of media corporations to report recession so uniformly. Badbadbad financial news, 'Stay-Cations', 'here's how to best get the jobs that nobody is hiring for any longer, you Sad Sack'. On the most basic level, you keep tuning in to hear the latest worst news, (and really, what else are you doing at 2 in the afternoon?) but looking one corporate level up kind of unhinges that argument. News organizations are not in the business of increasing viewership... they're in the business of helping their parentOrg make money, and telling people there isn't going to be any money left come next Tuesday every Wednesday (the 'slow' news day) kind of inhibits folks from spending money on whatever it is they're selling, no?
Anyway, "i can't figure it all out tonight, sir. I'm just gonna hang with your daughter..."
Oh, and speaking of fiscal matters. If anyone dropped some money on the floor of Curtin Hall (1st Floor, by the Central Stairwell) today (Tuesday, around noon), let me know...
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'sWavelength, but on paper)
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.
*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.
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.
he's in, i've assumed i hated the guy (Fallon, not Demarco) himself.
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