Reflexivity

I wrote a while back about thin-slicing. I have nearly finished Gladwell’s book on rapid cognition. He spends a chapter discussing the face, linking the ability to discern emotional expression as akin to mind-reading: in his words, “the physiological basis of how we thin-slice other people” (213). Face recognition and object recognition are usually handled by two different parts of the brain, respectively the fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus (219), but more interesting to me are two things: the interplay between voluntary and involuntary facial muscle responses, and the evidence that simply making certain facial expressions generates corresponding physiological states.
All of us can control our expressions to varying degrees, but people exert this control only after our faces have involuntarily displayed our emotional reaction. He describes several examples, including a slow-motion microexpressions of Kato Kaelin looking like “a snarling dog” during the O.J. Simpson trial (211), the smirking double-agent, Harold “Kim” Philby (211-212), “I’m a bad guy” Bill Clinton (205-206), and a psychiatric patient, Mary (208-209), citing research from Paul Ekman, Silvan Tomkins, Wallace Friesen, and Robert Levenson (singly and in various combinations). “We can use our voluntary muscular system to try to suppress those involuntary responses. But, often, some little part of that suppressed emotion &emdash; such as the sense that I’m really unhappy even if I deny it &emdash; leaks out…Our voluntary expressive system is the way we intentionally signal our emotions. Bur our involuntary expressive system is in many ways even more important: it is the way we have been equipped by evolution to signal our authentic feelings” (210).
The above is based on a summary of research findings that there is a finite number of meaningful expressions and most, if not all, of these are intelligible &emdash; as in understood to express similar emotions &emdash; across cultures. These findings are gathered in a tool created by Ekman and Frisen called the Facial Action Coding System, now used by computer animators and applied in various kinds of psychological and social research (204-205).
The second point, more fascinating than the first (categorizing is cool, but inducing change is cooler), involves a claim by Ekman “that the information on our face is not just a signal of what is going on inside our mind. In a certain sense, it is what is going on inside our mind” (206, emphasis in original). They tested this claim rather ingeniously. Through some casual experimentation they discovered they could induce the physiological indicators of distress and anger: “As I do it [move specific facial muscles into particular facial expressions],” said Ekman, “I can’t disconnect from the [autonomic nervous] system. It’s very unpleasant, very unpleasant” (207). Two different teams of researchers documented that the pathway of internal emotion stimulus and facial emotional expression works both ways. “These findings may be hard to believe, because we take it as given that first we experience an emotion, and then we may &emdash; or may not &emdash; express that emotion on our face. We think of the face as the residue of emotion. What this research showed, though, is that the process works in the opposite direction as well. Emotion can also start on the face. The face is not a secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal partner in the emotional process” (208, emphasis in original).
Claims made by Gladwell are contested by Posner.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I’m observing a colleague teaching Cultural Codes of Communication. Homework for the first night included reading James Carey (foundational) and a series of questions, including what might be of interest for students to explore in this course. I’ve already snatched a quote from the Carey article for teaching this spring (!), and my brain is in high gear concerning my prospectus. Wow. Did I intuit that observing this class would provide some structure and motivation?!
I’ve also got the blog on my mind. As a mechanism for transmission – it (I) seek to disseminate information, but not really. I’ve always hoped it would be more dialogic than monologic. It is true that through the blog, I organize certain symbols in a more-or-less personal attempt to impose order on my experiences. Blogging has become – for me – a ritual that positions me to/with the world in a certain way. I’ve noted several times over the past year or so that a function of writing publicly as I do is to write myself into being. By projecting a certain performance of self, of identity, into the public sphere (invoking accountability among other things), the effect doubles back, enabling me to better live up to the ideals I espouse.
It isn’t as simple as that, though. The words I write, the symbols I use, become me – rather, I become the sign of the words (see p. 12, referencing Burke). Carey says, “We first produce the world by symbolic work and then take up residence in the world we have produced” (p. 16).
Finally, I better understand some of the unease about my blogging “real life” (as perceived, experienced, and interpreted by me), because my writing establishes a context which also positions those whom I mention in particular roles or even identities. It may be a matter of establishing a “history of order” on a minute, microsocial scale. For years, colleagues and I have debated the way my blogging “endow[s] significance, order, and meaning in the world by the agency of [my] own intellectual processes” (Carey, 13). We (or at least I) was confused with the positioning of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc. into roles relative to “the blog”: of being readers, nonreaders, commenters, noncommenters, advocates, and/or adversaries. That was a limited view.
I keep recalling a friend who said, “If I don’t read it, it’s not there.”
I am thinking, at this moment, that much of this kind of framing is with the transmission model of communication uppermost in mind. Surely I am taken with the ability to transmit my words across spacetime. Maybe the tension could be better explained through an overlay of the ritual lens? The transmission model is premised upon control as the goal of communication: control over distance and control over people. I resist the accusation of power-mongering, but ritually….what sharedness is at risk?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Getting teenage boys out of bed is some kinda maternal patience maker.
It finally did happen, and we headed out for breakfast in Kenmore Square, which “in the old days” (we were informed by a policeofficer) “was known for its nightlife.” (Someone highly recommended this area to us – now we know what era she belongs to!) After some exercise walking to the Busy Bee Diner, we snarfed breakfast (at lunchtime) before jumping on the sight-seeing trolley. While Austin napped (!), Christi and I learned that it was not Paul Revere who made the successful ride to warn of the British (nor was it William Dawes, another of the three who set out), rather Dr. Samuel Prescott was the only one of the three to reach Concord, enabling a successful defense.
The trolley ride combined contemporary culture and commercialism with a smattering of history. It kept us warm and we definitely saw more of Boston than we would have with the Freedom Trail Walk, which truly deserves a fresh summer day.
The Museum of Science was cool, even though we did miss the supposedly amazing Bodyworks 2. Who knew reservations were needed days in advance? Not us. (NOTE for better planning, next time.)
The infamous Just-in-Time joined us after all the exhibits and touristdom to play chauffer for a yummy dinner and Baskin-Robbins ice cream excursion to the far reaches of Newton. We were disappointed by the absence of mint chocolate chip but eggnog redeemed the evening. Jet Li successfully capped off the night: Fearless, based on the Chinese national hero, Hua Yuanjia.

Popularity: 1% [?]

We (ha! – first-timers) survived the “T” – Boston’s subway system.
“Just as the RICH TEA BISCUIT lives in HARMONY with the LUXURY CHOCOLATE FINGER, so should we all live in HARMONY together in the great assorted biscuit tin that we call LIFE.” ~ Edward Monkton”
We visited the Institute of Contemporary Art and thoroughly enjoyed the SuperVision special exhibition. I particularly enjoyed a work by Sigmar Polke, There is nothing more real than Pictures You Can’t Get Out of your Mind, depicting a honeycombed carbon atom; a neat infinity mirror of Czech glass, and the narration for a videoinstallation showing nighttime surveillance images of people trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border by Chantal Akerman. She describes “the politics of seeing &emdash; and being seen” (From the Other Side). Many of the works required more artistic sophistication than we possess to be properly appreciated, but most of them elicited a reaction of one kind or another.
Our bar and grille dinner on the waterfront was reminiscent of many a visit to Seattle and the other side of the family: fish and chips, burgers, chicken fingers. I tried to stretch Midwest tastes to mussels boiled with garlic and herbs. Not. (Oh well. Can’t blame a (bad) Aunt for trying!)
We finished the evening with dessert and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Fun, but longer than the Kracken’s tentacles!

Popularity: 1% [?]

In big ball bowling (as opposed to little ball bowling), Dastardly Dan scored his highest ever. Strong Minor Bridge bowled a double, a miss, and a turkey for 5 strikes in 6 turns. Christ-with-an-I became intimately familiar with Grace-Margaret (that unfortunately-yet-accurately-named remaining single pin). “>Shinobi shined, but those three young un’s only beat us oldies by six pins (446-440) when we bowled on the wii.
Prior to “our Japanese dinner” (at Teapot), a discussion about the differences between whiffling and snoring was held. I’m still wondering about an intermediary. Not so regarding the difference between waffling and fibbing. The fibblers left us way too soon! :-/

Popularity: 1% [?]

We were the only ones at the sunwheel but we confessed the crime like good Bacchanalites: from Kathamandu (Nepal), Arad (Romania), Siberia (Russia), Massachusetts and Vermont (USA). Eight of us, two who stayed wide awake all night (!), two who barely dozed, and the other four who did crap out for a few of the wee hours. The last crew left just after 4 am – the Bhutanese, Turks, and some Americans. The first to abandon us (circa 2 am) were the Columbians….somewhere in the middle we lost the other Nepalese, Chinese, French (?), Germans, and Australians (watch out for those dance moves! (If it isn’t obvious, they just keep me around cuz I’m good domestic help.)
Thanks, all, for another night to remember.

Popularity: 1% [?]

“Unlike many other habitants of the earth
we chose not to be born, live and die in the same town
and hang out with the same people
from birth to death,
so sooner or later we will move on and
who knows where we will be next.
We will be spread around in several continents,
hanging out with totally new people.”
Dr. Zeynep Delen
“Fidelity is a notion, that at its most abstract level implies a truthful connection to a source. Its original meaning dealt with loyalty and attentiveness to one’s duty to a lord or a king, in a broader sense than the related concept of fealty.”
The movie, High Fidelity, details one man’s existential process of developing “the quality of being faithful” in his life and relationships, playing on the metaphor of musical “accuracy with which an electronic system reproduces the sound or image of its input signal.”
While the birthday boy of honor declaimed, “This movie is not autobiographical!”, there were occasional resonances felt by at least some of the invited guests. ahem The movie capped an elegant evening of surprise, spirits, fancy dress, festive chatter, and a live woodwind duet.
As proclaimed by the primary event organizer, Dr. Zeynep Delen:

Hopefully tonight,
and all other days and nights like these will
forever stay with us. This plan came to life as
Anuj’s birthday party but it could be
for any of us for any other occasion. I don’t know about you, but
I have been thrilled to be a part of this Amherst crowd.
I am simply amazed how anything is really possible.
(Hey, this is really America! ”

Popularity: 1% [?]

“ Some weird performance shit. Candles. Take a shot = solidarity for glass. Yes, a real worm. Symbolic. Monte Alban 100% Agave MexicanTequila. Honey-roasted peanuts. Two types of cheese (pepperjack, cheddar?) candy worms, cracker, lime, salt, apples.” (Class notes, “Derrida & Butler”, 7 December 2006).
We graduated from wine to tequila. Attempts to generate shame (who did the reading?) have risen to new lows. The double bite of ideology iterates us in the ass, interpellating proper academic subjectivities.
I perceive an intersection of horizontal timespace trajectories coalescing in repetitive (synchronic) vertical time. Early debate about electoral strategy is one discursive template: boundaries were drawn between those advocating the old form and those promoting a new one. Do ‘we’ promote and support a straight white man for the next president or do we risk the challenges of ’selling’ a new (different) body? Does the body matter so much more than the words? Are any/all words ineffective if uttered from an other? Since the midterm elections, silence. The urgency has passed. Advocates for the old form were wrong, the most narrowly conservative candidates did not win anywhere. Promoters of the new form have not pressed the advantage.
Then, a storm: do we understand power? Who has it; who doesn’t? Why? More significantly, how are our respective powers used, to what ends and effects? The old form reasserts itself. Now bodies do not matter, only words. Threats and intimations of accusation ricochet from mouths alternatively iterated by gender(ed) performances, an undercurrent of national cultures is left unspoken, the hierarchy of US-based race and ethnic dis/privilege invoked. But it is all (so we are told) a tangent: bodies do not matter this much, only our facility with rhetoric.
We revisit our norms. It seems we must choose: either we continue the debate or we return to the standard academic form. It seemed the old form won? Compelling personal testimony (via email, “Re: Start reading!” 19 November 2006, emphasis added) delineated the parameters:
”This idea of “the job market” makes me want to pee myself… thinking about how I wasted valuable time in this PPC class telling stories about myself–attempting to convince others I’m witty, or sensitive, or intelligent–not to mention trying to evade my advisor’s Flying Love Pumas and other unspeakable Bakhtinian acts of defilement, instead of directly engaging the readings. My feelings after class are too often akin to the end of “The Graduate”: that was vibrant and exciting, but now what do I do? Or more specifically, will this help me get through my comps? Will this help me publish a paper, or get a job?”
With fear so firmly established, what else could be done except “engage the readings directly?” No counteroffensive was raised, although the challenge of actually doing the reading was issued. It seems to me the issue at question is the amount and degree of participation we are each willing to commit. New forms confront us with unfamiliar, less and/or unpredictable outcomes; old forms maintain parameters within which we navigate in order to control the extent of personal engagement. The shift from professorial riff to peer-guided interaction was stark, evidenced by my impressions upon entering the room after break (quote at top of entry).
Was it my imagination, or was resistance to this new form less than before? Perhaps we are not mutually fluent in its language, but are we beginning to collectively recognize it?
“Stop talking Romanian.”
“We can’t speak Russian.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Dr. Zeynep Delen was not offended by her dissertation committee during yesterday’s defense, which enabled the display of these strategies during the evening’s festivities. Nearly twenty undefensible folk showed up to bask in jealousy over her completion.
Congratulations,
Dr. Delen!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Charlie the Quilter complained about female chauvinism (“No, honey, you can’t help set the table”) trapping him in a stereotypical gender role. Sydney was not interested in being introduced to me until I was willing to be tied up “forever and ever.” (Karen suggested some folks might pay for the privilege of such bondage.) Sydney’s cousins are da bomb, although one was banned from the grown-up table and the other doesn’t know about real computers. George’s gardens have attracted fat squirrels and plump birds, including the sweetest wren I ever saw, while Jackie holds the longest tenure in kindergarten of anyone I know. Patsy’s flirtation with shaving her head was one of her milder contributions to the evening.
This group of friends and family blended personalities, energies, and interests in an extraordinary way. Everyone got busted &emdash; e.g., I was informed about my major in Sanskrit, who knew? &emdash; yet no one’s feelings were hurt. Rumor wants to suggest it was all a bluff, but discourse indicates otherwise.
{photos pending}

Popularity: 1% [?]