A Place in Space: February 2005 Archives

"I was really impressed with your latest blog posting. Lots of self
discovery going on there."

"How do admissions of psychological/emotional vulnerability contribute to getting people to move to action? It's very easy for people to say, "Ah ha! I knew it wasn't about the department; she's having personal problems and using the department as a scapegoat."

Probably this is what Stephen's been on my case about - does acknowledging the personal (what he has been defining as "private" and labeling "psychological") move people to action? ? Perhaps not, but maybe it depends on what kind of ìactionî is desiredÖ

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've actually had a few wild perceptions of being potentially able to alter reality - especially time - (and no, I wasn't under any influence), but they always seem ... out of ken. Not real. But here I am reading Mattelart for Paula's class, and he quotes McLuhan...

Participants and actors ìseek to program events rather than to watch themÖthese ëeffectsí appear before their ëcauses.í At instant speeds the cause and effect are at least simultaneousÖ.this dimensionÖ naturally suggests Ö the need to anticipate events hopefully rather than to participate in them fatalisticallyî (1974, in Mattelart p. 125-126).

ah, now I get it! Slow processing time, and I needed a few repetitions of the feedback in different ways. :-)

It seems there are actually TWO aspects of me emailing Michael about the overenrollment policy to which folks reacted. One aspect is how I did it - based upon what anonymous characterized as my "misunderstanding". I have some historical insight into this now (below). The other aspect though, the one which may (?) have lasting repercussions, is the fact that I emailed him at all.

dilemma! So, we have this grad student meeting and one thing we don't discuss collectively is whether or not, and if so, what exactly, to tell Michael (and/or any of the committees) about it!

As "representatives", do we have an obligation to report something (rather than nothing)? Does the job responsibility (especially of the Graduate Studies Committee Rep) privilege a loyalty (for lack of a better word) to the grad students or a shared, mutual obligation both to graduate students and to faculty/administration?

The three representatives are "left" with a decision to make about what to convey. Do we make this decision among ourselves? Hold off until the next meeting (March 25)? Assume that the "silence" on this topic means there is nothing yet to share?

According to Lippmann, if other human beings' behavior "crosses" mine, is "dependent" upon me, or is "interesting" to me, then that's a rough definition of the boundaries of "public affairs" about which one may have "public opinions" (29).

Lippmann's summary of reasons why people wind up with disparate pictures of events, issues, etc that require some kind of decision-making seems relevant. Why do "the pictures in peopleís heads" lack correspondence with "the world outside?" We all have limited access to facts through ìartificial censorship, the limitations of social contact, the comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs, the distortion arising because events have to be compressed into very short messages, the difficulty of making a small vocabulary express a complicated world, and finally the fear of facing those facts which would seem to threaten the established routine of [peopleís] livesî (30).

(btw - 15 (!) people attended the comm grad stduent meeting yesterday but you'll have to wait for the minutes to find out what's what.)

Stephen has been arguing, I'm starting to think, for a blog composed of or otherwise enacting representative Public Opinions, while I have been arguing for a site for the expression of representational public opinions.

At least our debate has been carried out in public (apparently -?- generating an impression that one or both of us is "really mad"?)

Explanation seems warranted. I expanded upon my possibly cryptic response to anonymous about object/subjects of study and consent during a continuing debate with Stephen about Reflexivity's potential to become a collaborative, shared blog (involving more authors).

(Apologies in advance for a) comment spam, I can't seem to get them deleted and b) a lot of "overlap" in the earlier posts of "everything" going on - it took a while before I started trying to categorize.(

These links take you to few of my ruminations on what Reflexivity "is" for me, and some of the issues/problems I've tried to take on, such as

problems of epistemology,

ethics

co-construction of role enactments and what they mean.

OK, so history repeats itself, right? This is what I thought reading the last section of Mattelart's chapter 2 (p. 48-52). How to reach a wider public than those I already have regular contact with? Newspapers, serial stories, and feuilletons were used to do it in the mid-19th century, blogs may be one of the 21st's equivalents. I have to say I am drawn to Cesar de Paepe and his notion of public service:

Aha! A reference for something I've been struggling to explain: "logical confusions we find ourselves trapped within (like flies in a fly bottle).

If I'd read this about three years ago maybe I'd not have dug myself in so deep! No doubt the "therapeutic discourse" runs through and out of me.

Before I get on with that though, I found characterizations of Briankle and Stephen that seemed to good not to share:

Briankle: ìno one in the Heideggerian inheritance has any time for information exchange.î (17)

Stephen: ìA cheerful sense of the weirdness of all attempts at communication offers a far saner way to think and liveî (30).

Well. A friend teased me yesterday, "How goes the war, General?" And I was feeling quite optimistic because I had just gleaned some info about how things "used to be". Also, Phee's comment about the shock and dismay of reading "an attitude of suspicion and antagonism" was helpful. I will reiterate again that I was reporting what I'd heard. Then I woke up to the comment by "anonymous", who certainly reflects more than just his/her own opinion. I'm sure anonymous is absolutely correct that I am "in" my "report", as noted, with "an unavoidable effect on the things that we observe". (I've been thinking I should have taken a journalism class as this has the feel of investigative reporting....with qualifications. I'm not out to get anyone and I don't have a specific desired outcome in mind beyond surviving questioning departmental norms as I've experienced them.)

There have always been at least two student discourses in the department since I've been here, which could be roughly glossed as a generally satisfied one and a generally dissatisfied one, sometimes engaged by the same individual and sometimes "located" more strongly, respectively, in certain people and not others. I've been exposed to both, and have been frustrated that there hasn't seemed to be an outlet or avenue for addressing the disaffections on a systematic basis. There are avenues for addressing individual complaints or concerns, which sometimes "work" and sometimes don't. However, I learned yesterday that there used to be a mechanism for systematic concerns that may just need our recognition to be reinvigorated.

Na na na na boo boo! You're just as tragic as me and you want to be remembered just as much! (No one performs like you do intending to be forgotten.) Obviously you haven't taken a peek at the pic under "Seriously" (on Reflexivity's Main Page) for a while. Please do, and imagine me blowing you a raspberry.

"I don't think you should send any more emails, its bad for your health."
"Please do! Take on some more issues!"
"You're going to crash this whole department and next year they won't hire any of us back!"
"Kudos!"
"It's not good for you to stick your neck out by yourself."

Wow.

I missed it! Off to a great start! :-) Rumor has it, though, that Paula was warm and friendly (counter to scuttlebutt about a certain degree of inaccessibility).

Our Aussie colleague missed it too - I didn't hear from her yesterday, so I hope that means she's en route. Does anyone know?

I know several of you said "hello" to me and I apologize for being so immersed in my own drama of proposal deadline that I wasn't expressive of it being good to see you again. It is good to see you again and I'm looking forward to some passionate engagement about the differences between liberal, marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theories of comm and media theory. Do you know how to tell the differences among them? I am pretty sure that I don't - at least not as often as I'd like (and no where near the ideal of "always").