Professor Peevish

First off, tomorrow looks to be pretty enjoyable. The reading from Smart Mobs is Chapter Four, "The Era of Sentient Things," some of which dovetails in interesting ways with one of the in-class presentations, on David Brin's Salon.com piece, "Three Cheers for the Surveillance Society." The next presentation is Nick Rombes' "Professor DVD" which is short, but packs a lot of punch and ties in to a number of discussions we have had all along about how the availability of information on digital networks alters the credentializing role of professional criticism.

I was "expecting" to see short essays from several of you on the blog this week (remember those diagnostics you never got around to?), and there are in fact several outstanding writing assignments from some of you. I want to stress now as the term winds down that it is crucial that everybody hand in all the assigned work from the class if they expect to receive a passing grade in the course. I will not be accepting late work after next Tuesday, because at that point I have to devote myself to grading final papers.

Everybody in our little community can easily do well in the course, and I want you to do well, but you simply must do the work to do well.

Since a couple of you have attended the last classes only sporadically, I'm blogging this to all in the hopes that everybody will see the entry here or that in the spirit of civic mindedness you knock some sense into slack classmates if you stumble into any of them on campus over the course of the week. Questions, problems, comments contact me or talk to me after class or schedule an appointment to talk to me.

Tomorrow

Actually, I'm thinking there won't be a student presentation tomorrow. If I'm wrong about that, and you are planning to deliver one, please let everybody know asap so we can find and read the paper you mean to present on. Otherwise, it looks like we'll be catching up on Smart Mobs. We can devote a section of class to Chapter One, and then the next section to Chapter Two. It would be great if everybody came to class with a claim from the text that they were willing to defend as the thesis of each of these chapters, and at least one problem or perplexity they found in each chapter. In order to be sure everybody has a chance to do their presentations in class we may need to double up next week. Anyone who isn't clear about presentations or other assignments due to this point should talk to me tomorrow or e-mail me. See you all tomorrow.

Up For Next Class

We'll be talking about Chapter One of Smart Mobs, so be sure to remember we're switching from the Lunenfeld volume to the Rheingold book. We've got two in-class presentations coming up, one on Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, and the other on James Boyle's essay, "Enclosing the Genome." Also, be sure to read "The Four Habits of Argumentative Writing," and be prepared to ask me what I mean by it, because my expectations for the final paper will be defined by the guidelines you'll find there and we should talk about them in the weeks to come as you begin to think about what you'll be writing next. Looks like another jam-packed Tuesday morning coming up.

Tomorrow

There's a huge amount happening tomorrow so hold on to your hats. In-class presentations on two of my favorite essays in the world: Wilde's Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. Links available elsewhere on the blog, so scoop them up and read them. I suspect it will take more than one class to work our way through these pieces. The Hyptertext as Collage essay from DD will start us off. I have papers to hand back and discuss, plus we'll need to get back our bearings in general. Fun/intriguing stuff on the blog to play around with as well. There's lots to talk about, so see you bright and early.

Back in the Saddle Again

Howdy, all. Taura, I have you down for an in-class presentation Tuesday, but I cannot remember what you'll be talking about. Can you let us all know again, and possibly post a link to the text online? We'll also be talking about Wilde's Soul of Man Under Socialism, so be sure to look over that piece again before you arrive. We'll also discuss George P. Landow's essay, “Hypertext as Collage-Writing,” from The Digital Dialectic. I'm still missing one mid-term paper that needs to get handed in to me, preferably via e-mail asap. If you have questions, comments, recriminations, etc. you know how to reach me. Enjoy the last bits of the break, see you all soon.

Hm.

Maybe when we return to class from break at the end of the month we can turn our attention briefly to issues of exponentially recursive dissemination and ponzi schemes and other assorted annoyances that propagate with special virulence on digital networks.

I'll be teaching a couple of courses at SFAI next fall

So, you know, tell your friends, warn your friends, or what have you...

English Composition A: "Ranting, Raving, Writing"

This is a course in argumentative reading and writing, which means for me a course in expository writing and critical thinking. But the works we will be reading together are anything but exemplary argumentative texts. Our texts rant and rave, they are brimming with rage, dripping with corrosive humor, suffused with ecstasies. In ranting and raving arguments are pushed into a kind of crisis, and in them rhetoric becomes a kind of poetry.

What does it tell us about argument in general to observe it in extremis like this? How can we read transcendent texts critically, in ways that clarify their stakes without dismissing their force, and enable us to communicate intelligibly to others the reactions they inspire in us and the meanings we find in them?

Anonymous, “Fuck the South”
Plato, Symposium
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”
Fiodr Dostoievski, “Notes From the Underground”
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
William Burroughs, “Immortality”
Film, Network. Dir: Sidney Lumet
Valerie Solanas, The SCUM Manifesto
Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Gary Indiana, “Reproduction”
Diane Dimassa, Hothead Paisan
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
Cintra Wilson, “Statement of Intent”


Critical Theory A: "Critique, Subjection, Prostheses"

The potted description in the catalogue says that "[t]he Critical Theory sequence develops students¹ facility in understanding and assessing theoretical models such as psychoanalysis, historical and dialectical materialism, structuralism and semiotics which extend their understanding of the visual image, the written word, and cultural phenomena."

My reading list begins with the very basic post-Emersonian turn against Platonic philosophy (in Europe post-Nietzschean philosophies, in America pragmatisms) and so Richard Rorty's “Hope in Place of Knowledge” provides the broad situation, then we shift into ideologiekritik, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, into culture and ideology, Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying,” Roland Barthes, Mythologies, and then use Louis Althusser's, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” to take us from ideology into subjection. For subjection we read from Michel Foucault's, History of Sexuality, Part One, then Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments” and Judith Butler, “The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary,” turning then to Franz Fanon's, Black Skin, White Masks, and then read Gayatri Spivak's, “History.” There we turn into "prostheses," techocriticism and technopolitical discourses, Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Marshall McLuhan, “Understanding Media,” Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” sections of Hannah Arendt's magisterial, The Human Condition, and then conclude with Donna Haraway's, “Manifesto for Cyborgs.”

Progress Report

Howdy, all. I've just returned from New York where I gave a talk on Peer-to-Peer Network Culture to a conference of advocates for a Basic Income Guarantee. It was a great meeting, but I've spent a whole lot of time in airplanes (no games of Simon Says with the pilots, I'm happy to report) and am a bit wiped out. So, I'm sorry I haven't kept up with the blog very well, and I realize I have a few e-mails in my inbox to respond to. Never fear, I'll get around to everything.

For tomorrow, the crucial thing, of course, is that your papers are due. I'll get those graded and back to you, along with presentation papers you've handed in, when we all return from the Spring Break later in the month.

Also, be sure to read Oscar Wilde's wonderful, hilarious (in my opinion) rant "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," for which we'll have an in-class presentation, and also Florion Brody's "The Medium Is the Memory," from The Digital Dialectic anthology. Big day coming up, but a big break afterwards in which to recuperate. Reading over the blog from the last few days, things are looking pretty good -- keep up the conversation and I'll see you all tomorrow.

Til Tuesday

(How depressing is it that I'm probably the only reader of this blog playing out the "Voices Carry" video in my head now...) Okay, all, for tomorrow we are talking about William Mitchell's short piece "Replacing Place" -- but be sure to read Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky)'s Material Memories as well, and to bring along your Lev Manovich from last week, too. There will be a couple of in-class presentations tomorrow.

Also, I mean to force you to talk about your papers in class since you aren't doing it here for the most part. Come prepared to tell me which essay you are writing about and have a nice short clear thesis statement in mind you might want to argue for (fear commitment? don't worry, I won't hold you to anything -- but you need a point of departure and that's that). Attendance isn't optional, and having something in hand to work with for the paper is also non-optional. The paper's due a week from tomorrow and I want everybody to do well. Please come in a talkin' mood, even if you need to be juiced to get there.

Political Blogs As News Source

Interesting tracking of political blogs by Chris Bowers over at MyDD:

Using the blogad traffic rankings as my source (since these involve money, as far as I am concerned no other ranking system matters), I have produced a list of the fifty most trafficked partisan, political blogs that can be considered part of a larger leftist or rightist network…. As a whole, these blogs receive more traffic than the websites of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News combined. By the 2008 election, blogs might become the number one online source of news for Americans. The rankings are in the extended entry.

Hell's Bells

Where is everybody this week?

Upcoming Papers

So, has anybody decided yet which of the essays they mean to write their papers on from The Digital Dialectic? Are people leaning toward essays we've already covered in class or essays we haven't gotten around to yet? Anybody thinking yet what sort of thesis they may want to support in their papers? Anybody have questions about what I mean by a "thesis"? Remember to click on the Four Habits for Argumentative Writing link for more of a sense of what I am looking for in general terms from a paper. Don't hesitate to work through your papers on the blog together -- we don't meet often enough in a weekly class for me to give you useful detailed feedback over the whole writing process. Some of that has to happen here or via e-mail.

Up Next

For tomorrow, don't forget to read the Erkki Huhtamo essay from the Digital Dialectic, and the Lev Manovich piece available online here. L'Affaire Propagannon continues to rage on, and so we can talk some more about blogracking if you like, but I'd also be interested to hear what else you may have stumbled onto in the blogosphere this week. If there is time I would like to return briefly to the Katherine Hayles piece as well -- so if you have comments or questions that weren't addressed last week, you may have another shot at it. See you tomorrow morning.

Ted Hitler Weighs in on Propagannon and Blogracking

[via Crooks and Liars]Scroll down to "Gannon/Guckert on the Daily Show." So good and so good for you.

Creative Commons

Well, we've talked about it for so long now it's started to seem like the comedy of the commons. I'm satisfied at last that everybody's had a chance to figure out the issues and express their preferences, and so I've added a CC License to our blog. Yesterday, there were five votes each for a License insisting on attribution and noncommercial use for any works based on original material created by us here. There was one vote for a License insisting that derivative works also have a License permitting the same terms as our own, and there were no votes at all for restricting derivative works to verbatim copies. In the spirit of democracy, then, the License I tacked onto the blog insists just on the first two and that's that. Click on the icon to see the License itself.

"Recent Comments"

Since it is easy to lose track of ongoing conversational threads, as new posts scroll older stuff off the screen rather quickly with a team as big as ours (even with so few of you actually posting -- hint hint) I'd really like to have some kind of indication of "Recent Comments" visible high up in the sidebar so you can see who is responding to what as it happens. But I can't figure out how to do it. Does anybody have the skills for that? Help me out.

Reminder

For tomorrow: Brook is, if I remember correctly, going to give the first of our in-class presentations on an essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron called "The California Ideology." It is available in more than one version online, but here's a link to one of the versions in case you haven't looked it over already and want to find it. I can't guarantee that this is the same version Brook will be taking as his point of departure. Since we're going to devote some of the class to a discussion of the piece everybody should at least give the thing a looksee.

Also, we will be discussing the Katherine Hayles essay from The Digital Dialectic. I think it's an important essay, so I'm looking forward to hearing your comments on it.

I'd also like to take a vote on the issue of which Creative Commons license we want to tack onto our blog -- if any (here's a link to a page that summarizes the options).

In our blog roundup early on I'll be interested to hear what you guys think of the Blogracking issue, how it relates to Folksonomy and some of the other topics we raised last time round, and I wouldn't mind getting your impressions of this piece I found on Social Design Notes, about online activism.

Many of you still haven't posted anything to the blog at all, by the way. What's up with that? See you tomorrow.

Blogracking

Interesting post over on kos this afternoon, inspired by l'Affaire Propagannon, about how blogging might transform muckracking investigative journalism -- and there's even a lovely neologism, blogracking, to describe the new phenomenon.

Next Up

For tomorrow be sure to have read Carol Giglliotti's short essay, “The Ethical Life of the Digital Aesthetic,” from The Digital Dialectic. Also, we should return to the Benjamin a bit, and tease at some of the stuff that has been coming up here in the blog. I'll also want to talk about the things you've found in your surfing... Is anybody following the folksonomy discussion on Many2Many, for example?

I'm very happy to see blog participation rising here, but many of you are still shying away from posting. Don't put it to the last minute, let's see some more aphorisms and discussions. Also, everybody should be thinking a bit about the general subject area and time frame when they'll want to do their in-class presentations. Browse the titles in the Virtual Reader from the Syllabus, or talk to me about your interests and we'll come up with something that works. Definitely, I'd like to see some presentations happening over the next few weeks, otherwise I'll get nervous we won't be able to fit everybody in. See you all tomorrow.

Another Log on the Fire

While we're tossing out tidbits of Benjamin, I'll toss this one out too, in the hopes that people will think about it more closely for some more discussion Tuesday as well...

With [the work of the photographer] Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurences, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a special kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer; he feels challenged by them in a new way. At the same time picture magazines begin to put up signposts for him, right ones and wrong ones, no matter. For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. The directives which captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.

Now, there are many immediate perplexities that this passage calls to my mind. Why suggest that the political significance of evidenciary photography is "hidden"? Isn't it quite obvious and palpable actually? What is the force of the imagery of "free-floating" contemplation, which to me seems to call up the same immateriality of the imagery of the aura? Why doesn't it "matter" whether the "sign-posts" proposed by picture magazines are right or wrong? Why focus attention there if it doesn't matter?

But delving deeper, clearly there is some very contemporary sounding media criticism coming out of this comment on sign-posting and captions and images. The conjunction of image and text here is a multimedia insight, and the point about sign-posting makes me think of media criticism that distinguishes the manipulation of a "broadcast model" of content distribution from various networked, peer-to-peer models. It's easy to see how hypertext and open source break down what Foucault calls the "author-function" produced by traditional print publication, and then we have peer-to-peer breaking down *author*ized distributions of information... Does Benjamin's thesis about aura cast light on these developments? His final point that the actual "sequence" of frames that produces the illusion/representation of a moving image is itself an expression of the *same* kind of textual signposting that would direct our interpretations of "static" images blows my mind a bit, and I still don't know what to do with that idea. Are hypertext and tagging and wikis disintegrating or expressing this sign-posting function of textuality? I'd be interested to hear more from you on Tuesday.

In the meantime, get some aphorisms up folks. And remember to check out the sites on our blogroll and to link to interest things you find in them and elsewhere, and to blog about your impressions. I want to see more life in this space.