phenomenology: December 2005 Archives

The Korean acupuncturists wanted me to come back for a second treatment so I did. An indulgence. "Your chi is depleted," said Mrs. Kim, "Your spirit is wandering. We need to help it come back."

I received more moxa in the same places, needles in the same and several more new sites, and an extravagant, custom blend of medicinal tea. I asked for the names of the "more than twenty" goodies placed in neat piles on a tissue paper before being bundled up for brewing. Instead, Mrs. Kim told me what each one is for:

Both of them are a trip. Separately and together. Austin took us on the scenic route to Waid's for breakfast that just happened to take us by GameStop where the new release of DOA 4 awaited. :-) I really enjoyed watching him play last night, shifting between female and male characters and winning every single game. He explained a lot to me. Very interesting discourse involved with gaming. I asked Alec last night about whether he felt himself thinking in the ways of the games during his real life. "It doesn't make me violent, if that's what you mean." No, that wasn't where I was going. (Obviously he's aware of that interpretation.) He's articulate and concise: you don't solve problems in real-life like you do in the game. I know. What I meant was, there are parts of the games - especially the commercial elements - that are quite optimistic. They point toward possibilities. Austin acknowledged this: some things are just cool, but part of what makes them cool is that they demonstrate potential.

Little Brother calls during bowling (affection flows back). Blood brother suffers. Parental pathology is passed on. I dream randomly.

SEMP subjected me to the most intensive grilling I’ve yet received over the Informed Consent form for Reflexivity. :-) The beginning point was this “favorite sentence”:

The guidelines used for selecting material have to do with intrasubjectively-perceived salience in the moment,…

The individual words make sense, but what do I mean by stringing them together in this way? Most simply, what I mean is, “I decide”. Yet the consent form puts limits on this power. The different choices people make concerning their own consent establish certain conditions that I commit to operate within – each individual’s decision contributes to a structure of accountability for me. Why do I need to be accountable to others in this way? Why not just rely on my own personal integrity? Because any kind of integrity requires a supporting structure and I’ve had no other. The academic language adds (hypothetically) a precision that seeks to specify the rationale justifying the choices I make.

I’m quizzed about “public” and “private”. “There’s no such thing as privacy,” says Jesus Evil Kachina. Intersubjectivity theorists (whoever these might be, smile) agree: we all mutually co-construct each other through acts of calling (instead of/in addition to "mission", also identity: interpellation). In commonsense terms, one could say we do this through culture (norms, values, etc).

“I don’t know if I want to be a blog! “ A log? A bog? “It sounds like a glob.!” A lob?

You can pick your nose.

Put that in your blog and smoke it!

~ SEMP

Jesus Evil Kachina tested me. Do you want world peace? I do. Are you at peace with yourself? Getting there. The last eight days, yes. Thank you.

While driving, I talked with Shemaya about gut feelings and the trick of learning to distinguish between the “gut” that’s reactive defensiveness and the “gut” that’s intuitive guidance. She explained “the enteric brain” to me (note especially the section on The Third Neurotransmitter: serotonin), which I hadn’t heard about before. We agreed it’s probably connected (somehow) to the biochemical pathways in the mind that channel consciousness.

This ethnography, subtitled Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool, is amazing. In addition to superb analysis that grounds complicated theory with real day-to-day living, there are bits that might relate to my study on interpreters in the European Parliament. An obvious connection is with RP, Received Pronounciation, also known as posh (p. 14).

The author, Jacqueline Nassy Brown (who will give a talk at UMass in Feb), is interviewed (briefly) on the BBC radio program Thinking Allowed (interview starts about 8 1/2 minutes in). In the book, she provides a two-page summary of phenomenology that's quite useful (p. 9-10). Interestingly, she distances herself from it as representative of her own epistemology, stating "my point is not to endorse ... but to lay the groundwork for one of the arguments that follows..." (p. 11).

Her argument is fascinating, involving the ways "people make sense of place-as-matter, a practice that includes reading landscapes and acting on the view that place acts, that it shapes human consciousness" (p. 11).

Broadly, Brown's argument is situated to engage the question of "how we might theorize the local in view of increased scholarly attention to transnational processes of racial formation" (p. 5).

Cosette "just a finance person" mentioned this quote the other day and I couldn't quite recall it, but look! She posted it in her blog:

"I am "the overeducated in pursuit of the unknowable." - Solow (1997) paraphrasing Oscar Wilde. Why didn't they tell me that in the beginning?!"

Yet now we know, and we still don't stop!

politically incorrect glad tidings to all!

White Trash Xmas

The Fringe City promo after it is much better. Clever sequence. "...everything here is theoretical, every motive may be ulterior....this is the undefined medium between before and after, just as far from never as forever..."

shared via email from my favorite anonymous spiritual (!) guide. :-)

"Being bodies that learn language
thereby becoming wordlings
humans are
the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal
inventor of the negative
separated from our natural condition
by instruments of our own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy
acquiring foreknowledge of death
and rotten with perfection"

Also by Kenneth Burke. Check out the cool plaques too.

This piece by Guy Debord (1967) is wicked dense stuff, but it lays out its logic regarding "Society of the Spectacle" in a compelling and articulate way.

I find Baudrillard depressing, but his thought is useful, nonetheless. Here's a peek, "Spectacle, Currency, Bits -- Baudrillard, Postmodernism, and Power.

A friend is adjusting to the news of a MS diagnosis. Life's randomness, in the face. :-/ Seems to me there's been a lot of that going around, or maybe I've just become more sensitized? Less in my own bubble? Here's a "hero", one of those incomparable persons who becomes extraordinary in the face of something that scares most people quite a bit: David Krolich.