Reflexivity

This sentiment haunts The Jacket, a film about consciousness. Although no plausible physical mechanism is provided for time travel, we witness the lead character adapt proactively to the most improbable scenario: discovering himself in a future timespace in which he has already died. Instead of engaging a futile struggle to avoid what has been foreordained, Jack uses the forays into the future to identify, strategize, and act to change elements in his present that influence the unfolding of time for others. The physical fact of his own death cannot be undetermined, but the trajectories of others’ lives might be shifted just enough to lead to (at least potentially) more satisfactory, less painful unfoldings.
“I know the difference between reality and delusion,” Jack asserts. “I’m not delusional, the real events that have happened to me are crazy.” (”Quote” based on memory.)
The craziness of real events is a theme in the other film I saw last week, Children of Men. Although it seems too far-fetched to be believed that all women might become infertile more-or-less simultaneously, that “reality” serves as the backdrop for the dissolution of society in the face of events too dramatic (apparently) to be managed on the human scale. While viewing the movie, which depicts an escalation of immigrant-baiting and an intensifying police state in England, I kept thinking about institutional and interactional fallout from global warming. Given the existing gaps among socioeconomic classes &emdash; globally (between countries and regions) as well as internal to national populations &emdash; the spread of anomie seems quite likely. Such chaos can conceivably be countered by cumulative acts of individual and collective consciousness such as that demonstrated by Jack as he moves between wearing and not wearing the jacket, back-and-forth in timespace, discovering a way to maintain the continuity of his be-ing.
The combined image of possibility presented by juxtaposing the two movies reminds me of Shemaya, who recently gave me her take on global warming. “It’s dramatic change,” she said, “just like disability. You’re going along, having your life, and suddenly things change drastically.” Dramatic change requires adaptation and issues of survival. I agree with the parallel of the microsocial experience of disability with the macrosocial event of weather-disrupted institutional systems; the distinction of scale seems relevant. The challenges that confront the newly disabled to retain, maintain, and reconstruct a social world fit to live in are magnified by the scale of cooperation required to shift major global societal flows.

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Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) interviewed the late President Gerald Ford back in 2004. I remember Ford for pardoning Nixon, an act which incensed my father. My introduction to politics was seeing the movie, All the President’s Men, when I was thirteen. I don’t think I had seen too many movies yet, as I recall feeling quite grown up on the way to the theatre.
Ah, did you know that the identity of “Deep Throat” was made public last May? FBI agent W. Mark Felt. Slate argues that there’s a movie, Dick, that got the Watergate story more “right” by depicting the “essential banality” of Felt’s association with Woodward.
Returning to Ford, it is interesting that he says he would not have gone to war with Iraq, and also that he criticizes his own former staffers, Rumsfeld and Cheney. I’m most intrigued, however, by his admission of “an act of cowardice” in dropping Nelson A. Rockefeller as his Vice-Presidential running mate in his 1976 re-election campaign.
What is the difference between politics and counterintelligence?
Politics (2 selections): “social relations involving authority or power” (PrincetonWordnet) and/or “Politics is the process and method of making decisions for groups. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious” (wikipedia).
Counterintelligence (one selection): “intelligence activities concerned with identifying and counteracting the threat to security posed by hostile intelligence organizations or by individuals engaged in espionage or sabotage or subversion or terrorism” (answers.com).
My correlation? Counterintelligence is the work of political figures to ensure the security of their own power.

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This short video (sent by Steve, thanks) details some of the facts of Saddam Hussein’s official association with the US federal government as a CIA operative.
I view it for the first time having recently seen The Good Shepherd, a movie about the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency that is as depressing as one can imagine. Forget honor and all noble callings. The ethic instilled and operationalized is simple: trust no one. Ever. Those who aren’t malicious or playing both sides of the game (not enough adrenalin just playing for one?) will also let you down through naivete or sheer stubbornness.
Octavia Butler wrote in the Xenogenesis series that humanity’s Achilles heel is the need for hierarchy. Her science fiction saga takes seriously the notion that aliens could defeat us – not militarily (moot) but socially. I wonder if a concurrent need for intrigue hastens the spiral of violence that our governments cannot find the will to break.

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…but it is happening somewhere. Look carefully at the poster.
What is “it“?
To see more images, go to http://www.walker.ag, pick your language, then “work”, then Amnesty International. There are posters in China, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
Shared via email from David, thanks.

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Breaking the Silence: Fighters tell about Hebron” is an effort by former Israeli soldiers to describe the dehumanization they experienced through mandatory military service in Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem and other places, where they manned checkpoints, participated in patrols, and otherwise took part in the war.
(Paraphrased from Yehuda Shaul and Dotan Greenvald in the conference program booklet, Dialogue Under Occupation: The Discourse of Enactment, Transaction, Reaction, and Resolution, 2006, p. 9)

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You’re cooking Thanksgiving?!! Friends and family scoffed.
Yes.
Do they know what they’re in for?
No.
How will you fool them?
They’re foreigners.
Ah, they don’t the difference!
And so it was. I was “the man”, none of us were “unique snowflakes,” gender ambiguity ruled (although someone did refuse to toast balls), food and drink were consumed in grand proportion. There was a syllable contest, eastern European rivalries were pursued with vigor (e.g., Romanian jazz vs Hungarian show tunes), assistance offered optionally and authoritarian directives disseminated. (I had nothing to do with the basking of the turkey.) Dysfunctional violence was kept to a minimum (mere verbal harassment, a few hurled pickled veggies) but enacted so as to capture the full flavor of typical US holiday dynamics.
It turned out well that we couldn’t locate the football game. Instead, we watched Kontroll. It seems just as well that I have missed out on Budapest’s subway system both times I’ve been there. This debut film by Nimrod Antal is dubbed “the most popular movie in Hungary” by one who should know. David periodically commented, “Jumping in front of the subway is a popular form of committing suicide,” or “That happens everyday.” The still unanswered question: why are there no turnstiles?
By the way, gravy fixes everything.

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The One We’ve Got by His Balls accused us of a) not knowing what power is, b) not knowing that we don’t know, and c) certainly not being able to trace its definitions.
“Are you going to blog this class?” I said no. I lied. Sortof. I meant “no” at the time. Things change, although I am still not going to blog “the class.” I’m gonna blog me in the class. Hot damn it feels good to be able to measure my own progress in de-piousification! (Yeah yeah, it’s been a long time coming. FYI &emdash; it’s not about you!) I’m still as self-righteously intent on reproduction as I’ve ever been, however I am much clearer that I’m interested in the cultivation of skills rather than duplication of choices.
Durkheim on power: the result of multiple actors behaving consensually. Social justice language, which typically frames (all) interaction in the dichomotous terms of oppression based upon social identities, understands this power in terms of collusion. My own frame of group relations broadens the basis of collusion from stereotypes of identity to include the huge range of roles (socialized, resistive, psychological, interactional) that persons take up in groups. I’m in mind of those who argue that WAR (conflict) is the most sophisticated form of social cooperation.
The tricky art of critical discourse analysis offers a means by which to trace the patterns of cooperation/collusion in conflictual social interaction. Durkheim’s distinctions among force, authority, rule, and control add a framework for making sense of particular junctures in a group’s discourse when the moves of cooperation/collusion can be brought into view.
Force: going along with the general will rather than one’s personal/selfish will. “Durkheim, following distinctions made earlier by John Stuart Mill, used the idea of forced versus natural division of labour to illustrate an aspect of social power. The hierarchy of society is natural if individuals tend towards occupying the positions that they are best suited to. It is forced if there are barriers to people entering positions other than their abilities.” (Hierarchical power)
Authority: “the right to enforce obediance.” Authority is legitimized by law.
Rule: the functional harmonization of law and morality in society. Robert Merton says, “Functions are those observed consequences which make for the adaptation or adjustment of a given system, and dysfunctions, those observed consequences which lessen the adaptation or adjustment of the system. There is also the empirical possibility of nonfunctional consequences, which are simply irrelevant to the system under consideration.”
Control (gleaned from the wikipedia site on Durkheim): how social order is maintained (based upon Durkheim’s 1893 work The Division of Labor in Society). Control theory has grown from Durkheim’s study, Suicide, published in 1897. Control theory brings to mind Tuckman’s stages of group development.

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Tove wasted no time sending me a link to a newsletter with several articles about linguistic rights and a pdf with info about submersion – a subtractive educational methodology that has been studied extensively in regard to indigenous and minority students. Without doing more than a quick skim right now, the first thing that strikes me are questions about the definition and categorization of “indigenous” and “minority”.
Meanwhile, after reading about linguistic imperialism, Amanda sent a link to a blogpost on Sinhala Sign Language, used by the Deaf community in Sri Lanka. “Sinhala Sign Language (SSL) does not differentiate among “who?” “what?” and “how?” The sign for all three is simply shaking your fist.”* A lively discussion ensues after this concerning the ethics of introducing foreign signs to accomplish the functions these lexical items serve in English and American Sign Language (among others).
I suppose this is a smaller scale example of the Karnataka decision on English instruction in Kashmiri schools? Or perhaps it is an example of a different order – pidgenizing a language is a different change strategy than blatant replacement. The Karnataka decision is also opposed; obviously the question of mother tongue or English instruction is volatile. The debate has been going on for a while. A “map” of the language policy terrain was provided in 2002.
I’ll need to do more reading and thinking before I can wade further into this, but it is striking to me how politicized language is in this Indian state. I know that language is complicated throughout India (largest number of official languages of any country, right?) Why is the language contest so overt in this instance? What other factors have conspired to bring mother tongue, Kannada, and English into the academic and political limelight?
(FYI: A “fist” of one kind or another has shown up in three contexts within the last four days.)

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My new pal Stephen worked on Kimcoco Iamoto’s election to the Oahu Board of Education.
Post election radio and text interview (added 14 November 2006).

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I watched with dismay as the “peaceniks” broke off into a huddle after Fred Odisho’s presentation on “Discourse During Insurgency/Counterinsurgency: The Importance of Achieving Communication Superiority in Gaining the Support of the People.” In the front of the room was another huddle &emdash; all men, most of them big &emdash; talking with this Iraqi military officer. I joined the huddle up front. “You’ve got guts,” I said to Fred, “an army man coming to talk in a nest of peaceniks.” He gave me a wink, “Someone’s got to do it,” he said, “otherwise people only get what CNN gives them.”
I’m not convinced that the academics gathered here only get their news from CNN, but it was obvious to me that here was a split in the conference body. Ruth opened the questioning of Fred, his father Edward (“The Iraqi War: A Typical Example of Cultural and Linguistic Dis-course”), and Russell Zanca (audio report May 17) (“Losing Hearts and Minds in Iraq? Cultural Competence and War”) wondering how it is that people who are otherwise so smart could have made the mistakes detailed in this panel. Tove continued: ” are we as researchers, in some way supporting the occupiers to become “nice occupiers” through training in intercultural communication?”
I took her question seriously. I share her frustration. Every time I hear someone mention Iraqis killed because they didn’t understand English and thus couldn’t follow directions, I am reminded of similar tragic incidents with police and people who are deaf. One can’t “stop” or “raise your hands slowly” if you don’t hear the words. Tove invited me to join the gang for lunch…I hesitated over whom to join because I had already been engaged in banter with the Hawaiians. These were the guys I’d observed in “hypermasculine homoeroticism” with the Iraqis. NO! Not really, but it is a good line, isn’t it? (Not my line, alas, hence the quotation marks.) I told Ruth I was going “to infiltrate the enemy.”
The blatant gender division (five-on-five) was disrupted only by (husband) Robert in the peacenik huddle and the comment by a woman in the audience who had noted that the military might explicitly want not to promote intercultural understanding because such capability humanizes the enemy, making them harder to kill. In this regard, she suggested that intercultural training conducted by/for the military is actually quite subversive. Is this as simple as men vs women? I don’t think so, but gender is difficult to dismiss completely. Tove’s morning keynote addressed “Kurds in Turkey and in (Iraqi) Kurdistan &emdash; Comparison of Educational Linguistic Human Rights in Two Situations of Occupation.”
Perhaps it is not surprising that a champion of the Kurds might be drawn into conflict with champions of the Iraqis? The Hawai’ians, meanwhile, made identifications with the Iraqis on terms of literal occupation while recognizing the “legal brief” being constructed by Tove to present a case for the violation of Kurdish linguistic human rights. These political scientists, Kuhio, Keanu, Kalawai’a, and Stephen (I think he’s honorary, and an actual lawyer, of some kind, not above bribery), kept my pen flying as they discussed international law’s definitions of insurgency, occupation, sovereignty, genocide, and human rights.

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