Thursday, January 20, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
from the last five words of a Lawana Blackwell quote, taken out of context
Life could compensate for it.
Friday, December 3, 2010
my introduction
Honestly, not only would I never have started this (non)book if my grade hadn't required it, but I probably wouldn't have kept writing in (on?) it, either (though I will admit that the jury's still out on whether or not I'll keep updating from now on). But having put in the effort already, it's maybe more than a little cool to be able to go back and see some of the things I've been thinking over the past several (very long, very arduous, very frustrating) weeks. When I go back and look at my entries from the beginning, it's kind of fun to re-discover some of the ones I'd forgotten about--especially the instances where I linked to articles or videos or other outside sources so that I can see my entries both as out-of-context aphorisms and within their original setting. The best part of having put together this (non)book (or should I say, actually putting it together throughout the semester instead of as a rush job the week before it was due...that's a bit unusual for me), however, is that I can see the defining themes of my senior fall. Critical theory is viewing culture as literature, right? And here I am, able to see the past three months of my life as though it were literature, too.
As best I can tell with my highly-tuned analyzing-themes-in-literature English major spidey senses, there seem to have been three main motifs running through my life this semester. The first of these--and probably the one that stands out the most, thanks to the massive amount of bubbling, suppressed anger associated with it--is my ever-growing frustration with sexism. I grew up with a professor of Women's Studies and Gender Inequality in the Workplace for a father, I took a class on gender oppression my freshman year, I experienced that oppression firsthand a year and a half ago when I was living in Morocco (and, using the most liberal definition of the term, was technically sexually assaulted on no less than two separate occasions while doing so, which is a weird thought), but only now am I actually feeling the insurmountable challenges that stand in the way of a truly gender-equal society. I don't know if it's that I never cared before or just that I never bothered to pay attention, but now it feels like I wake up on a daily basis and want to scream with the frustration of knowing I'll only ever make $0.75 to ever dollar a man makes, of seeing my little sister define her entire sense of self-worth based on her relationship with her long-distance boyfriend, of watching episodes of TV shows and being unable to ignore the blatantly subliminal sexism (I swear that term makes sense to me) they tout but being unable to say anything without alienating myself from my less feminist-minded friends. If nothing else, I think my (non)book captures this frustration pretty perfectly.
The second theme--which, appropriately enough, runs through not just this semester, but most of my life, as well--is language. I've had language on my mind lately moreso than usual, what with my Watson proposal early in the semester and my now-fallen-to-the-wayside plans for linguistics grad school which followed (well, fallen to the wayside for now, not forever). Even if they may not always function well as aphorisms, it's hard for me to turn down just about anything related to language, so just about any fact I came across ended up here.
The third and final--and perhaps least significant--theme is that of humor. When I started this (non)book, I could hardly imagine what sort of quote might come under the heading of "significant" for me; the only types of quotes I've ever bothered to write down were funny things that people (usually professors) said. I've included a few of those, though considerably less than I would have expected (I suspect because the frustrations of this semester have made me rather blind to humor over the past few months). Even if they may not function well as aphorisms, I think they're important--perhaps precisely because of this semester's frustrations. If I'd just ranted for three months about the inequalities of gender and the plight of women, this would have been a pretty dismal blog (scratch that--(non)book) indeed. It's important to include the humorous quotes--it's important for me to notice the humorous quotes in my life--just to mitigate the effects of frustration.
And now, for a note on form: I'm not going to print this out. I know I was supposed to, but I'm not going to do it. Because unlike Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, my poor little commonplace (non)book could certainly not withstand a transposition to another form--and I would absolutely argue that digital and print are two very different forms. My (non)book would lose far too much if I were to print it out and put it in paper form. For one, it wouldn't be in color (no way am I springing to pay for color printing in Case), and I like the effect of my book background on my (non)book blog. Second, the entries that contain videos would, for the most part, no longer exist. Third, the links--which, as I discussed, enable my entries to be viewed in or out of context, essentially providing them with two different meanings--would no longer function, and, in fact, would not even be visible as links. Fourth, my commentary, which is placed as comments on the entries, would be awkwardly stapled to the page of the original entry instead of seamlessly incorporated into the structure of the blog. And fifth and finally, the feel of the (non)book itself would be irrevocably altered. In digital form, the (non)book is mine--only I can post to it, and I post whatever I want, whatever has meaning to me, just as anyone would in a paper commonplace book. But being as it is, out on the internet, my commonplace (non)book is commonplace in every sense of the word: it is common, just like any of the other millions of blogs in the world, but it is also commonplace in the sense of universal. The idea of a commonplace book is that whatever quotes that appeal to me could, and should, very well resonate with someone else, though potentially in a different way. In paper form, however, a commonplace book is the sole property of whoever keeps it; it seems unlikely that it would ever be shared. On the internet, however, my (non)book is universal to the extent that anyone--no, seriously, literally anyone in the whole world, barring whatever countries have decided to censor Blogspot--can read it (at least in theory; being that I've never publicized the address, it's far less likely in practice). I'm the only one who can post, but anyone with a Google account can comment. To print out the (non)book would be to cut it out from the web in which I deliberately initially placed and grew it. In some ways, removing it from the internet by turning it into a printed form would be almost the same as tearing a single page from someone else's commonplace book. Most of the entries would survive, yes; but they would be isolated and not at all in the context that I intended them (ie, to be viewed both in and out of context).
So I guess I'm done?
As best I can tell with my highly-tuned analyzing-themes-in-literature English major spidey senses, there seem to have been three main motifs running through my life this semester. The first of these--and probably the one that stands out the most, thanks to the massive amount of bubbling, suppressed anger associated with it--is my ever-growing frustration with sexism. I grew up with a professor of Women's Studies and Gender Inequality in the Workplace for a father, I took a class on gender oppression my freshman year, I experienced that oppression firsthand a year and a half ago when I was living in Morocco (and, using the most liberal definition of the term, was technically sexually assaulted on no less than two separate occasions while doing so, which is a weird thought), but only now am I actually feeling the insurmountable challenges that stand in the way of a truly gender-equal society. I don't know if it's that I never cared before or just that I never bothered to pay attention, but now it feels like I wake up on a daily basis and want to scream with the frustration of knowing I'll only ever make $0.75 to ever dollar a man makes, of seeing my little sister define her entire sense of self-worth based on her relationship with her long-distance boyfriend, of watching episodes of TV shows and being unable to ignore the blatantly subliminal sexism (I swear that term makes sense to me) they tout but being unable to say anything without alienating myself from my less feminist-minded friends. If nothing else, I think my (non)book captures this frustration pretty perfectly.
The second theme--which, appropriately enough, runs through not just this semester, but most of my life, as well--is language. I've had language on my mind lately moreso than usual, what with my Watson proposal early in the semester and my now-fallen-to-the-wayside plans for linguistics grad school which followed (well, fallen to the wayside for now, not forever). Even if they may not always function well as aphorisms, it's hard for me to turn down just about anything related to language, so just about any fact I came across ended up here.
The third and final--and perhaps least significant--theme is that of humor. When I started this (non)book, I could hardly imagine what sort of quote might come under the heading of "significant" for me; the only types of quotes I've ever bothered to write down were funny things that people (usually professors) said. I've included a few of those, though considerably less than I would have expected (I suspect because the frustrations of this semester have made me rather blind to humor over the past few months). Even if they may not function well as aphorisms, I think they're important--perhaps precisely because of this semester's frustrations. If I'd just ranted for three months about the inequalities of gender and the plight of women, this would have been a pretty dismal blog (scratch that--(non)book) indeed. It's important to include the humorous quotes--it's important for me to notice the humorous quotes in my life--just to mitigate the effects of frustration.
And now, for a note on form: I'm not going to print this out. I know I was supposed to, but I'm not going to do it. Because unlike Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, my poor little commonplace (non)book could certainly not withstand a transposition to another form--and I would absolutely argue that digital and print are two very different forms. My (non)book would lose far too much if I were to print it out and put it in paper form. For one, it wouldn't be in color (no way am I springing to pay for color printing in Case), and I like the effect of my book background on my (non)book blog. Second, the entries that contain videos would, for the most part, no longer exist. Third, the links--which, as I discussed, enable my entries to be viewed in or out of context, essentially providing them with two different meanings--would no longer function, and, in fact, would not even be visible as links. Fourth, my commentary, which is placed as comments on the entries, would be awkwardly stapled to the page of the original entry instead of seamlessly incorporated into the structure of the blog. And fifth and finally, the feel of the (non)book itself would be irrevocably altered. In digital form, the (non)book is mine--only I can post to it, and I post whatever I want, whatever has meaning to me, just as anyone would in a paper commonplace book. But being as it is, out on the internet, my commonplace (non)book is commonplace in every sense of the word: it is common, just like any of the other millions of blogs in the world, but it is also commonplace in the sense of universal. The idea of a commonplace book is that whatever quotes that appeal to me could, and should, very well resonate with someone else, though potentially in a different way. In paper form, however, a commonplace book is the sole property of whoever keeps it; it seems unlikely that it would ever be shared. On the internet, however, my (non)book is universal to the extent that anyone--no, seriously, literally anyone in the whole world, barring whatever countries have decided to censor Blogspot--can read it (at least in theory; being that I've never publicized the address, it's far less likely in practice). I'm the only one who can post, but anyone with a Google account can comment. To print out the (non)book would be to cut it out from the web in which I deliberately initially placed and grew it. In some ways, removing it from the internet by turning it into a printed form would be almost the same as tearing a single page from someone else's commonplace book. Most of the entries would survive, yes; but they would be isolated and not at all in the context that I intended them (ie, to be viewed both in and out of context).
So I guess I'm done?
Thursday, December 2, 2010
from Wikipedia
When asked by atheistic journalist Robert Sherman about the equal citizenship and patriotism of American atheists, Sherman reports that Bush answered, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
from the (almost certainly underage) woman sitting next to me in class
I like the Palace because it's just like the Jug, but not crowded.
Sent from my iPhone
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