birthday wrap-up
A small note:
By far, my favorite of the several birthday greetings I received was from Jeff Rice, via Facebook:
Birthday? Birthday?
Get back to your reading!
Eerily accurate, given that despite my best efforts to stay a week ahead of the game in 7007, I’ve fallen behind so that now I’m right on schedule. Well, maybe one day ahead, but it will take a Herculean effort to crunch Foucault into five days and get back into a clearer space.
Later, I’ll write something on Rice’s Rhetoric of Cool maybe something in response to Nietzsche (whose name I can now spell without looking it up) and Maffesoli. Also, I’m thinking of starting a film blog. More on that later, too, perhaps.
rice on "the post-hype society"
An interesting post (and comments following) on Rice’s blog about technological hype and what we do about it. I’ve contributed some comments there, so no need to comment further here, but if you haven’t read it, check it out.
blog blog
So, I recently missed Foolscap’s first blogday, bad blogger that I am. A lifetime of therapy and counseling, I’m sure, awaits.
So, why do we mark blogdays anyway? Or blog birthdays, if you prefer, but my own preference is for “blogday”. We don’t mark the days we first learned to read (ReadDay?) or write (WriteDay?), perhaps because we tend to think of those events as more procedural and evolutionary: I know I couldn’t tell you what day I first knew how to read. (Although an aunt did get me a trophy for being the best reader in my kindergarten class for my birthday one year.) I point to these two “events” rather than one’s first word or first steps because they seem more integral to the way I use my blog–almost said the way blogs are used, but of course not all blogs are used the same way–in fact, we might even recall my own recent deliberations for how to use my blog.
I’ve not been writing here as much as I would like, esp. given the things I’ve been reading of late. I still owe the much promised responses to Rice, Derrida, Lakoff/Turner, and now I can add the Gorgias and the Sophist and Debra Hawhee’s book as well. In part, one reason I’ve avoided doing the page-by-page note posts is because I’m sort of more interested in thinking through these texts as applications, or maybe as rhetorical lessons, than simply as a collection of notes and bon mots. Of course, when I come to use these texts eventually, Ill need that citation mode, but I’m much more interested at present in seeing how I might link together Lakoff/Turner, Derrida, and Kant . . . or Rice and Derrida and Hawhee (which is sort of where my brain is at right now).
So, in other news, I’m coordinating a panel submission for RSA that will involve myself, Jessica Rivait, Kim Lacey, and Jared Grogan–no blogger he. When things are assembled, I’ll put up the preamble to the panel for general assessment–and on that note, anyone have any advice about good texts on celebrity, ethos, and media(tion). This isn’t the Lennon project again, (though it could work) but a new approach (for me at least) to questions of pop rhetoric.
My goal for the ucoming semester: One post a week if time allows; the 1020 course has a pretty rigorous online component so I want to be sure I keep on the ball with that.
Anyone know if I can set my MacBook’s delete key to work like the PC’s delete key with using the “Function” button?
eine kleine shoutout
A quick hit today to welcome Clay Walker’s blog to the blogroll.
Hi Clay!
metamoment
I’ve decided that–while I still like the blog being primarily a space for textual reflection and theoretical workouts–I should on occasion devote more time to writing about personal things. Of course, that phrasing suggests theory etc. is not personal and that it’s just something I do, not part of who I am. Which is silly: I’m a theorist. Or, at least, aspire to be so.
So, faithful reader(s), why the decision? Well, the blog I read most attentively is Yellow Dog, and although Jeff’s theory/pedagogy/discipline/profession posts are always great, I often enjoy the little slivers of personal info that find their way to the blog. Again–the t/p/d/p2 stuff is, I’m sure, “personal” to Jeff as well. But I like those moments, and they’ve been echoed in certain ways by Collin’s recent Barthesian ”Summer of Personal Reflection” theme on his blog (until recent undisclosed events have made it difficult for C to blog), and the floating webmemes like “7/8 random things” that encourage bloggers toward similar “personal” scenes of invention.
So I’m introducing the new, semiregular feature called the “metamoment” which is devoted just to those scenes where the object is solely or primarily myself–again, with the caveat of the personal/professional divide being one of those dichotomies that Derrida warns against (and Ulmer and others have tried to deconstruct or work against through mystorical invention). This decision also finds its roots in last week’s chat with Jessica–one topic was whether, in the process of professionalization, one feels some sense of “authentic self” slipping way. For me, no–I’ve always been into theory and abstraction, and the professionalizaton merely gives me an appropriate database to draw from in expanding those interests. But one way to destablize that risk of losing authentic selfhood–ill-defined, true, and troubled as well by questions of essential/discursive subjectivity–might be to offer–against the usual concerns of theory, rhetoric, pedagogy that dominate the blog–insights into myself. And, to show I’ve been reading Jeff’s book (why I still kiss ass when he’s at a new university, I don’t know, haha.) to juxtapose (personal and theory) and commutate (blog becoming site of personality rather than theory).
I’m nearly done with both Jeff’s book and Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You, which by chance I’ve found myself reading along one another. There are echoes btw the two, and when time comes to write about that, I’ll try to address the two together . Also, I have yet to do the full Derrida post (where in god’s name to start?) and the post of Lackoff/Turner (easier to start, but not much to say). Also like to do one in response to the aforementioned music post from Jeff’s blog. I guess that prompts something else: “Metamoment” will be category for those such posts, whereas category “meta” will remain the category for blogging about blogging. So I guess that makes this a metametamoment?
Lastly, a cry for help. Very generously, my mater has decided to purchase a laptop for my upcoming birthday. I’ve pretty much decided on a PC (sorry, my Mac-lovin’ pals) ‘cos I’m a glutton for punishment, if you believe the recurring Mac vs. PC ad campaign. But most new PCs I’ve checked out have the new Windows Vista OS, and I dunno much about it–I’ve heard the folks at Microsoft are still having a lot of problems with proggies not running on it and such, so I’m hesitant to choose a Vista-based PC if that’s the case. So, here’s my cry: if you know aught about Vista, pro or con, drop a line or two; or, if you want to plead your case on Steve Jobs’ behalf and convince me to come over to Mac, take that up. Why not? I’ve already abandoned lit studies for rhetoric, right? I’ll just do whatever you kooky folks tell me to do.
Next time on . . .
Usually when I leave these posts, half of the topics never materialize. Really, they serve more for my purposes to remember things. Suckaz.
- epistemic machines
- rhetoric=pedagogy. Or the other way ’round
- CBS SEP wrapup
- Lakoff/Turner
- More on Derrida
Ob, btw, the current tag line is from Of Grammatology, if anyone was wondering.