Another Belated Welcome

Until I figure out how to customize my LiveJournal design to add more links -- see the sidebar on the right -- I keep having to take some off in order to add others. That makes for tough choices. I read far more blogs on an every-third-day basis than I can presently list. Adding Jonathan Sterne, however, is a no-brainer.

In addition to offering me loads of good advice over the years -- and indicating his willingness to give still more -- he has done an astonishing amount of wonderful scholarship in communication studies and found the time to do the sort of "para-academic" work I favor. And he plays a vicious bass too!

Jonathan is proof that you can meet a true friend at an academic conference, astonishing as that claim may seem. He and his partner Carrie stayed with us in Vallejo twice and became intimate friends with our noble gray beast Tibbs. Not only that, they accompanied me to the laundromat! This introduction is all by way of saying that you should check out Jonathan's relatively new blog. The current entry links to my recent description of the Bad Subjects reading, as well as Kim's comments on it, so you can derive the pleasures of internet incest to boot.

Misrecognition. . . or is it?

So I was reading through back entries in Jonathan's blog, which I pitched in my previous entry, and I come across a description of the debate about Tom Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America that has been playing out in the comments section of Michael Bérubé's blog.

Since I've interviewed Frank twice -- I even asked him what he thought of Bérubé -- and once spent delightful hours with him in Seatle, you'd think that I would feel some sort of "purchase" on the exchange. But I feel strangely detached from the conversation, even though I chimed in at one point.

Jonathan segües from a discussion of Frank's book to a shout-out:

As a side note, the above debate on Michael’s site led me to another academic who blogs – Catherine Liu. Hers is both interesting and one of the coolest-looking academic blogs I’ve seen. Not like I have time to redesign this thing right now. Extra points for Liu: she’s interested in machines, and she teaches in my old undergrad department: Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, for which I still have fond memories.

I think, cool, and go check out the blog in question.

Her writing is forceful, unapologetic. Down the left sidebar are images of books by people I've drunk beer, smoked, and watched rock concerts with. Really cool, I think, making a note to myself that this is an example of an academic blog that doesn't read as merely "academic."

And then it hits me. I've spent that last fifteen minutes reading this stuff as if it were foreign to my way of life, as if it were a "not me" I wanted to connect with. But if this isn't "me," what am I?

It must mean something that one of my recurrent fantasies is of me being an "ordinary" 9-to-5 worker stumbling across some university press title at Borders and then bringing it home to read for pleasure. I know, I know: if that's my "imaginary relation" to my "real conditions of existence," then there must be something seriously wrong with my self-understanding.

I've been reading about positive visualization techniques. Perhaps the first step for me would be for me to imagine myself living the life I'm actually living. Unfortunately, the way I feel right now, I'm not sure I have the powers of imagination to pull that task off.

Time to cue up "Freak Scene".

More Jimmy Carter

Here's another example of post-Presidential Jimmy Carter's good work, an opinion on the political hurricane threatening to hit Florida in November. It's really striking how clearly his voice comes through in his prose. I found it soothing as an elementary-school student. Now I rely on it for wisdom that others are too afraid or too self-absorbed to dispense:

The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair. . . Some basic international requirements for a fair election are missing in Florida.

And in a number of other states as well, I'd warrant.

In a news story about the Carter Center's report, one of Florida's Republican Congressmen, Mark Foley, is quoted responding angrily to it in an interview with CNN: "They're alleging somehow we're a third world nation in our ability to handle ballots." Yes, Mark, that's precisely what they are alleging.

Who knows? If your friends in the state government get their shit together, Florida might still have a chance of edging Venezuela on the clean elections meter. Somehow, though, I suspect that your party's leadership has other priorities, like making people around the world express shock and awe at our willingness to liberate them at any price.