Listics

Why indeed.

And this year’s center of ironic detachment turned out to be (long drumroll while all the underpaid, underfunded, disengaged folks in their birkenstocks and corduroy jackets get on the greyhound bus for the return trip to the University of Cornstarch)… the center for all that persuasively po-pomo detachment???

Zizek!

What would I do without the s lot?

Here’s one blogger’s reflection:

My thesis is that Zizek should be read as thinking in the
conjuncture. And, more specifically, this means that his theoretical
work needs to be read in terms of this process of emptying. In his (and
Hegel’s) language, it means that we take seriously the work of the
negative.

Such a thesis allows us to understand his key themes in terms of
this emptying out in order to produce a political space that can be
filled. Thus, the decline of symbolic efficiency or fact that the big
Other doesn’t exist reminds us that anything is possible. Similarly,
Zizek’s emphasis on subjective destitution, correlative to the
non-existence of the big Other, eliminates any stake and/or stain that
might attach a subject to existing relations or to a future already
filled. At the same time, Zizek’s emphasis on responsibility, on a
willingness to go to the limit, indicates the political element of the
action of taking a stand in an empty place, a radical and risky move
insofar as it is not guaranteed in advance.

The careful reader will discern the similarities between this epistemological and political turn with the lost wax casting process.

If I hadn’t been on a tear about the talented and engaged second wave feminists totally blowing their entry into the blogosphere with their totally 1995 web site, I wouldn’t have tracked down this broken link from a Gloria Steinem interview, to discover Participate!  Participate has a premise that I normally wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole… engage people through socially aware movies.  How weird is that?  But check it out.  here are four public interest campaigns they have running:

1 in 3 women is subject to abuse. This can and must end. Take action now to stop sexual harassment and domestic violence! Click Here.

A campaign to reduce our dependence on oil. Click Here.

Infotainment or courageous, hard news? Compel the media to get back to reporting in the public interest! Click Here.

Winning should be the only challenge! Click here.

After winning the Watership Down prize for honest answers in the quiz (below) it came to my attention that there was a double-ironic-whammy associated therewith — to wit:  RageBoy, from whose blog I followed the link to the quiz wherein it was determined that MY book is Watership Down… RageBoy, a year and a half ago, developed a book proposal based on talking rabbits and all.  He called it "Water Shit Down!!"

Have you ever noticed how those double exclamation points look like little bunny eyes and ears?  See…  !!

My youth seems to have asumed a constant distance from the present with the result that the upper boundary of those times gets larger as the years go by.  When I was a kid the phrase "authenticity of experience" was bandied about enough for it to be burned into my consciousness.  Authenticity of Experience  assumed a dominant place in a value structure that was built on a minimalist frame, a frame trussed up by things like "do no harm," and "it’s all good."

To the extent that a lot of that is puerile bullshit, I think I understand AKMA’s reaction to the offhanded use of the word "authentic" to describe musical performances that are not necessarily so.  Oddly, I think the intellectual rigor with which he frames his objection diminishes its force.  Not that I think imperfection or lack of rigor is necessary for authenticity, but rather that I think the concept itself deserves a lot more attention than we’ve given it.

Tom Matrullo dropped some tantalizing crumbs along the way.  As I stumble along toward an understanding of what makes "authentic" real, I’ll be referring back to these heavy thinkists.

Meanwhile, here’s a tidbit that turned up that seems to have some value.  From "Constructing Authenticity in Rock," by Allan Moore:

This brief discussion (1) takes as its starting position the refusal of
two assumptions upon which the current discourse of authenticity
appears founded, and which have led to countless fruitless discussions.
(2) The first assumption is that authenticity is inscribed in music.
The implication here is that any listener hearing the voice of Bruce
Springsteen, let us say, will immediately perceive the truth of his
expression. On the contrary, it appears to me that authenticity is a
value which must be constructed. It is only once a particular audience
has learnt to interpret the particular non-verbal sounds that
Springsteen makes as indicative of his honesty, and has learnt to value
that expression, that authenticity can be attributed to him. This
assumption perhaps needs little attack these days.

The second assumption is more recalcitrant: it is that authenticity can
be ascribed to a certain performance, and this assumption is held not
only within the discipline of music. Again, however, this has led to
much pointless debate about whether a particular performance can
legitimately be read as authentic (’true to its origins’) or not.
Rather than ask what it is that is being authenticated, in this brief
paper I ask who. I believe that this furnishes a more useful model for
investigation of musical authenticity. Although my examples here deal
exclusively with rock music, I believe the model to be employable in
other fields.

The Burninator.

With a little help from our friends…

Michelle Goodrich put the logo together at Mandarin Design in a table layout.  Chris Locke captured it as a graphic image using one of the tools he’ll talk about next week.  Frank Paynter stole it because it looks cool and posted it right here on this blog!

Next week, I’ll assemble responses to this question and I’ll serialize them here and at Doc Searls IT Garage.  Meanwhile, I think a little Bo Diddley background music is called for.  And if anyone can find the Doors, the Yardbirds, or the Stones doing this same tune… well, it would be a community service to post the .mp3

How do you blog, how do you blog, how do you blog…

Over at Madame Levy’s estrogen outlet store, PingLee speaks. 

We all know that the madame herself is among the best and brightesta.  How wonderful, how comforting, to find that the talent is there in the next generation.  Of course PingLee isn’t the first LeslieDaughter we’ve heard from over there.  There’s a whole basketball team of them.