#and if we are acknowledging privilege dynamics to such an extent you could at least acknowledge

[wild-at-mind]

I'm still cranky about the advice column where a pair of friends drifted apart due to pandemic + the writing in friend having had a baby, which resulted in the writing in friend not being able to be there for the other friend as during bereavement as much as they should have been. The writing in friend was white and the other friend was black so the advice columnist did a lot of privilege dynamics talk, but completely failed to acknowledge how much work a new baby is a single time.

[whitehotharlots]

Privilege Theory is popular because it is conservative

Privilege theory, as a formal academic thing, has been around at least since 1989, when Peggy McIntosh published the now-seminal essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Even within academic cultural studies, however, privilege theory was pretty niche until about a decade ago--it’s not what you’d call intellectually sound (McIntosh’s essay contains zero citations), and its limitations as an analytical frame are pretty obvious. I went through a cultural studies-heavy PhD program in the early twenty teens and I only heard it mentioned a handful of times. If you didn’t get a humanities degree, odds are it didn’t enter your purview until 2015 or thereabouts.

This poses an obvious question: how could an obscure and not particularly groundbreaking academic concept become so ubiquitous so quickly? How did such a niche (and, frankly, weird and alienating) understanding of racial relations become so de rigeur that companies that still utilize slave labor and still produce skin whitening cream are now all but mandated to release statements denouncing it? 

Simply put, the rapid ascent of privilege theory is due to the fact that privilege theory is fundamentally conservative. Not in cultural sense, no. But if we understand conservatism as an approach to politics that seeks first and foremost to maintain existing power structures, then privilege theory is the cultural studies equivalent of phrenology or Austrian economics. 

This realization poses a second, much darker question: how did a concept as regressive and unhelpful as privilege become the foundational worldview among people who style themselves as progressives, people whose basic self-understanding is grounded in a belief that they are working to address injustice? Let’s dig into this:

First, let’s go down a well-worn path and establish the worthlessness of privilege as an analytical lens. We’ll start with two basic observations: 1) on the whole, white people have an easier time existing within these United States than non-white people, and 2) systemic racism exists, at least to the extent that non-white people face hurdles that make it harder for them to achieve safety and material success.

I think a large majority of Americans would agree with both of these statements--somewhere in the ballpark of 80%, including many people you and I would agree are straight-up racists. They are obvious and undeniable, the equivalent to saying “politicians are corrupt” or “good things are good and bad things are bad.” Nothing about them is difficult or groundbreaking.

As simplistic as these statements may be, privilege theory attempts to make them the primary foreground of all understandings of social systems and human interaction. Hence the focus on an acknowledgement of privilege as the ends and means of social justice. We must keep admitting to privilege, keep announcing our awareness, again and again and again, vigilance is everything, there is nothing beyond awareness.

Of course, acknowledging the existence of inequities does nothing to actually address those inequities. Awareness can serve as an important (though not necessarily indispensable) precondition for change, but does not lead to change in and of itself. 

I’ve been saying this for years but the point still stands: those who advocate for privilege theory almost never articulate how awareness by itself will bring about change. Even in the most generous hypothetical situation, where all human interaction is prefaced by a formal enunciation of the raced-based power dynamics presently at play, this acknowledgement doesn’t actually change anything. There is never a Step Two. 

Now, some people have suggested Step Twos. But suggestions are usually ignored, and on the rare occasions they are addressed they are dismissed without fail, often on grounds that are incredibly specious and dishonest. To hit upon another well-worn point, let’s look at the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. The majority of Sanders’ liberal critics admit that the senator’s record on racial justice is impeccable, and that his platform would have done substantially more to materially address racial inequities than that being proffered by any of his opponents. That’s all agreed upon, yet we are told that none of that actually matters. 

Sanders dropped out of the race nearly 3 months ago, yet just this past week The New York Times published yet another hit piece explaining that while his policies would have benefitted black people, the fact that he strayed from arbitrarily invoked rhetorical standards meant he was just too problematic to support.  

The piece was written by Sidney Ember, a Wall Street hack who cites anonymous finance and health insurance lobbyists to argue that financial regulation is racist. Ember, like most other neoliberals, has been struggling to reconcile her vague support for recent protests with the fact that she is paid to lie about people who have tried to fix things. Now that people are forcefully demanding change, the Times have re-deployed her to explain why change is actually bad even though it’s good.  

How does one pivot from celebrating the fact that black people will not be receiving universal healthcare to mourning racially disproportionate COVID death rates? They equivocate. They lean even harder on rhetorical purity, dismissing a focus on policy as a priori blind to race. Bernie never said “white privilege.” Well, okay, he did, but he didn’t say it in the right tone or often enough, and that’s what the problem was. Citing Ember:

Yet amid a national movement for racial justice that took hold after high-profile killings of black men and women, there is also an acknowledgment among some progressives that their discussion of racism, including from their standard-bearer, did not seem to meet or anticipate the forcefulness of these protests.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar who pioneered the concept of intersectionality to describe how various forms of discrimination can overlap, said that Mr. Sanders struggled with the reality that talking forcefully about racial injustice has traditionally alienated white voters — especially the working-class white voters he was aiming to win over. But that is where thinking of class as a “colorblind experience” limits white progressives. “Class cannot help you see the specific contours of race disparity,” she said.

Many other institutions, she noted, have now gone further faster than the party that is the political base of most African-American voters. “You basically have a moment where every corporation worth its salt is saying something about structural racism and anti-blackness, and that stuff is even outdistancing what candidates in the Democratic Party were actually saying,” she said.

Crenshaw’s point here is that the empty, utterly immaterial statements of support coming from multinational corporations are more substantial and important than policy proposals that would have actually addressed racial inequities. This is astounding. A full throated embrace of entropy as praxis. 

Crenshaw started out the primary as a Warren supporter but threw her endorsement to Bernie once the race had narrowed to two viable candidates. This fact is not mentioned, nor does Ember feel the need to touch upon any of Biden’s dozens of rhetorical missteps regarding race (you might remember that he kicked off his presidential run with a rambling story about the time he toughed it out with a black ne'er do well named Corn Pop, or his more recent assertion that if you don’t vote for him, “you ain’t black.”). The statement here--not the implication: the direct and undeniable statement--is that tone and posturing are more important than material proposals, and that concerns regarding tone and posturing should only be raised in order to delegitimize those who have dared to proffer proposals that might actually change things for the better. 

The ascendence of privilege theory marks the triumph of selective indignation, the ruling class and their media lackeys having been granted the power to dismiss any and all proposals for material change according to standards that are too nonsensical to be enforced in any fair or consistent manner. The concept has immense utility for those who wish to perpetuate the status quo. And that, more than anything, is why it’s gotten so successful so quickly. But still… why have people fallen for something so obviously craven and regressive? Why are so few decent people able to summon even the smallest critique against it? 

We can answer this by taking a clear look at what privilege actually entails. And this is where things get really, really grim:

What are the material effects of privilege, at least as they are imagined by those who believe the concept to be something that must be sussed out and eradicated? A privileged person gets to live their life with the expectation that they will face no undue hurdles to success and fulfillment because of their identity markers, that they will not be subject to constant surveillance and/or made to suffer grave consequences for minor or arbitrary offenses, and that police will not be able to murder them at will. The effects of “privilege” are what we might have once called “freedom” or “dignity.” Until very recently, progressives regarded these effects not as problematic, but as a humane baseline, a standard that all decent people should fight to provide to all of our fellow citizens. 

Here we find the utility in the use of the specific term “privilege.” Similar to how austerity-minded politicians refer to social security as an “entitlement,” conflating dignity and privilege gives it the sense of something undeserved and unearned--things that no one, let alone members of racially advantaged groups, could expect for themselves unless they were blinded by selfishness and coddled by an insufficiently cruel social structure. The problem isn’t therefore that humans are being selectively brutalized. Brutality is the baseline, the natural order, the unavoidable constant that has not been engineered into our society but simply is what society is and will always be. The problem, instead, is that some people are being exempted from some forms of brutalization. The problem is that pain does not stretch far enough.

We are a nation that worships cruelty and authority. All Americans, regardless of gender or race, are united in being litigious tattletales who take joy in hurting one another, who will never run out of ways to rationalize their own cruelty even as they decry the cruelty of others. We are taught from birth that human life has no value, that material success is morally self-validating, and that those who suffer deserve to suffer. This is our real cultural brokenness: a deep, foundational hatred of one another and of ourselves. It transcends all identity markers. It stains us all. And it’s why we’ve all run headlong into a regressive and idiotic understanding of race at a time when we desperately need to unite and help one another. 

[sepublic]

I saw you were wondering why rivals like Mrs. Blight and Boscha’s mom would want their kids to be friends, I was thinking they were more frenemy rivals. Like they knew it would look good to be friends cuz they were at the top of the pack but they’d also constantly make backhanded compliments, act nice to their face and talk smack behind their back like “After me, I totally think you’re the prettiest girl in school. You know, cuz you’re always SECOND to me anyway.”

           That makes a lot of sense with what we see from Odalia- It IS worth noting that according to Amity, she and Alador work with Boscha and Skara’s parents. While we don’t know the exact nature of this ‘work’, if they’re cooperative members of a team or competing employees… The fact that Odalia wants to one-up Boscha’s mother with her own daughter, is not out of the question! Just, the concept of Odalia and Boscha’s mom recognizing that together, they’ll achieve more than they could do alone… But at the same time, being motivated do better than the other! Perhaps that’s why the two hung out; By being constantly reminded of the other’s accomplishments, and constantly put together, the two would always be on-edge and looking for ways to outdo the other and become the best!

           Given Odalia’s revealed personality, that seems like the overly-intense sort of thing she’d do to herself. And given Boscha’s competitiveness, I wouldn’t be shocked if some of that came from her mother. Though, it’s worth noting that Boscha herself, at least based on what we see… She didn’t seem particularly interested in competing with Amity! Because throughout their interactions prior to Boscha’s bullying of Willow creating a split, Boscha seemed pretty happy with being ‘second-in-command’ to Amity… Amity would always be able to shut her up whenever she wanted, and Boscha herself seemed to be actively looking up to her!

           Especially given how much Amity brings up the name ‘Blight’, the implication seems to be that her friendship with Boscha is a privilege she’s extending… Which again, indicates a major difference in power, one that Boscha never contests! She’s Amity’s lieutenant back when the Blight girl was captain, and only stepped up when Amity left the team…

           Of course, maybe the girls WERE competing when it came to Grudgby! And when Amity stepped down, Boscha saw that as an act of grace on her part, that led to the girl deciding she had no reason to compete with Amity anymore, now that she was at the top of what really mattered to her; Grudgby! It’s worth noting that Boscha doesn’t seem to think much of her mother in their one interaction, and is even able to tell her no; Which suggests that even if her mom wants Boscha to compete with Amity, Boscha doesn’t really see the point and is content with just being ‘friends’ with her!

           I’ll have to wonder how this dynamic will change in the future, though… Will Boscha realize her mother was right, or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge this? Will it even matter, since Grudgby is the only thing Boscha cares about being good at, and Amity had already, through her own volition of good will, given Boscha to the glory of being team captain? So even if there IS ill will between the two regarding Willow and Luz, Boscha has no reason to hate Amity as a competitor, because Amity is no longer competing with her in the one thing that does matter to her, and anyhow she already stepped down willingly… Which could’ve endeared Boscha to her, perhaps!

          Boscha IS someone who, while condescending, is fine with letting others exist otherwise up until her personal position at the top is jeopardized… Did Boscha not care about Amity having a higher social standing, because she saw herself as ‘better’ in Grudgby, even if her team captain role only came from Amity herself, and was technically never ‘won’ from her? Did she even care about competing with Amity at all to begin with, given how she doesn’t seem to think much of her mother?

          And now that Amity has cut ties with her, is Boscha going to try to one-up her, only to realize that the only place they COULD compete is in academics –since Amity isn’t touching Grudgby anymore- and is she really going to put in the effort for that, especially since it might distract her from other things? And for all we know, maybe Boscha always DID see her and Amity as rivals, and vice-versa… But it was to an actually friendly extent, and not adversarial like her mother and Odalia.

          So while there was room for competition, neither girl prioritized it to the point where it influenced their interactions outside of their ‘battles’… Especially if Boscha conceded Amity as being the ‘victor’, while still intending to ‘supplant’ her, but not having any actual spite within her motives- Because as messed-up as she is, she’s still reasonable to an extent! Although maybe not anymore… Maybe Boscha saw Amity as both a rival, but someone she looked up to as well; Someone to eventually do better than, but otherwise a neat person and a friend!

           I can only speculate. Boscha is low-key a fascinating character to me, even if she IS just short of a background character, because she’s recurring, has had a past with Amity that likely influenced the two of them… And similarly, what we’ve seen and heard of her mother, coupled with what this show has to say about kids and the influences of their homelife, leaves a lot to wonder about!

          Perhaps Dana intentionally left it open to interpretation, to leave room for headcanons (especially since she professed being a fan and theorizer of cartoons herself in the past), or she’s already so busy with so much OTHER stuff that it wasn’t really something she had the time nor incentive to think much on… Which is fair, because while Boscha IS interesting to me, she is, as I said, not a major character.

          It’s worth noting that Season 2 is still being written (though the crew IS working on the ending), and Dana alluded to the possibility of a Season 3 if the ratings were good enough… Which could mean that she DOES have plans to expand on Boscha’s character, if she were given the actual screentime and opportunity to do so! But until then, nothing is set in stone, hence the term “I like to think”…! Writing for a show can be weird because you have to consider if it’ll get greenlit for another season, if you’ll have to end it earlier than expected, and that involves becoming wary of setting up plot threads that won’t be followed upon in the case of a sudden cancellation.

           (There’s another possibility I’ve considered as to why Odalia wanted Amity and Boscha to be friends, but I’ll save that for another post coming soon. Maybe she just wants to keep track of her rival’s life through Amity and Boscha, as if interacting with her in the workplace wasn’t already enough!)

[komaeda161]

Now I realize we’ve been at this for some time already, but at the risk of derailing the dialogue you initiated, and may I just say how thrilled I am that you did, Karkat, I would just like qualify my entire analysis of your “Alternian culture” by saying that in contrast with life on Beforus, while your people may have been engaged in violent, lethal class struggle for millions of sweeps, by no means does this imply that the Beforan way of life was entirely without problematic elements, perhaps even more disturbing and insidious for their lack of acknowledgement and open discussion, particularly as a consequence of what in my view were widely and dismayingly unexamined systemic social injustices resulting from the entrenched power dynamics in play, dynamics strikingly similar to those of your planet’s markedly more bellicose iteration, which has only served to fully vindicate my hypothesis that such a hierarchy is really predicated on intrinsic dysfunction, and failure to shift all the usual narratives and undiagnosed problems into an open, judgment-free discourse through which problematic issues are constructively channeled into more intelligently problematized avenues of discussion. Now before I continue, it is only decent of me to warn you about certain triggers that are surely ahead in this essay. I mean conversation. Triggers include but likely will not be limited to class oppression, culling culture and violence against grubs, lusus abuse, complementary and analogous hate speech, pail filling, slurries and other concupiscent fluids, lifespan shaming, ableist slurs, prolix dissertation… Actually, maybe it would be easier for you to list your triggers, and I’ll do my best to avoid those topics, or navigate them more delicately, if at all possible? Great. It sounds like you don’t have any triggers, at least none that you know about. I’ll proceed with caution nevertheless. Just please let me know if you start feeling triggered by anything I’m saying, and we can take a brief time-out while you summon your moirail to help pacify you, assuming you have one. Not that I’m presuming you do, But I heard that you did, is that correct? If not, I apologize. I further apologize if your orientation precludes the possibility, as a pale aromantic, panquadrant demiromantic, something in the gray palesexual department or such, and hopefully you are not triggered by such presumptuous concillianormative language. It wouldn’t be the first time I was guilty of such an inexcusable microaggression, and I am not so oblivious to my own romantic privilege to believe it will be the last time either. I’m glad I brought up the subject of unexamined privilege, because it dovetails beautifully with the point I was about to make regarding beforan society and its savage umbral potentiality which later manifested through the kind of Alternian brutality you are all too familiar with. Those in the higher echelons of the hemospectrum such as the ceruleans, or “blue bloods” (careful, being loose with such terminology is opening the floodgates to a whole host of toxic signist language and hemophobic slurs), when addressing the challenges faced by those lower on the spectrum, such as the midhues or in particular warm castes like umbers, ochres, or “rust bloods” (another slur, highly problematic, deeply offensive and triggering terminology, strongly imploring you steer clear of this term), they would be well advised to check their cerulean privilege, particularly before dismissing hardships or marginalizing claims of oppression, which can be difficult for them to identify or empathize with from their advantageous position within the beforan//Alternian power structures. And some may argue that in our peaceful “utopian” culture that we have freed ourselves from injustice and disparities in privilege in a post-scarcity economy, largely equal rights distributed across the hemospectrum, and therefore exist in a “post-spectral world” (laugh out loud), and therefore there is no need to champion important social causes and there is nothing left to debate, but really nothing could be further from the truth. You just need to educate yourself and carefully investigate the longstanding power dynamics in play. For instance, a seemingly “harmless” remark from a cisblooded cerulean toward an umber or God forbid a burgundy or yes even a warm-identifying physically-cooler caste, about their very long term future plans such as on the order of centuries, then this may prove to be a very hurtful microagression due to the fact that lowhues cannot possibly live that long themselves, and the more priviliged caste could easily outlive dozens of generations of midhues or hundreds of generations of BUOYs (burgundy-umber-ochre-yellowgreens, note please avoid describing the lattermost as “lime bloods” as it has historically been used as an especially vicious epithet). Such remarks can further trigger painful reminders of how cooler castes, to some extent OJAs, but CIPs and Royal-Vs in particular, have been able to use their tremendous lifespans over the millenia to gain a stranglehold over the social order, have been able to completely dictate our societal evolution by ensuring only their cultural agendas and narratives receive the dialogue’s air supply, assuring the codification of those resultant ideals and deciding what “normalcy” entails, and sadly these absolutes become internalized across the full spectral range, even within those of most compromised privilege, and so you begin to see the cyclical nature of the dysfunction and the resulting inertia against positive change and raising awareness of the most underproblematized issues, which I think we can agree, is pretty problematic. And really, it’s everyone’s business to examine their privilege, even burgundies, who may be subject to the pitfall of believing incorrectly there are none on the scale beneath them whom they enjoy certain privileges over, which off-spectrum trolls will never know, such as those identifying as otherbloods or caste-multiples, “polyblooded”, any who hemoglobically ID as having a caste which manifests nowhere (as yet known) in anyone physically, or for that matter offspecs who physically do possess such a blood type, or “mutants” (VERY problematic term, highly triggering to some, be warned), such as you and I, Karkat. but this puts us both in a situation which to our knowledge uniquely allows us to understand and empathize with tragically underprivileged and unempowered groups across all scuttles of life, thus affording us both what I like to call a “uniquely underprivileged privilege”, which, yes, is a kind of privilege we should both strive to check as well, whenever we can. This same uniquely underprivileged perspective as I’m sure you know was disadvantaged upon my post-scratch iteration as well, and while I have no doubt you justifiably came to revere that figure of your planet’s rich history and your personal lineage, and while his goals of peace, equality, and a truly spectrablind society, I’m afraid I personally have trouble condoning his methods. I don’t like to use the term “problematic” lightly, but, well, his tactics were nothing if not massively problematic, to say the least, employing violent uprising to effect change, and emblazoning his mark upon history and his faithful followers with the salty flourish of a single rude, shouted swear word, it’s not to my taste even though he is who I would have grown up to be in another life. but no, I prefer to effect social change through rational, honest discourse and contributing to ongoing dialogues, focusing on what should be the real goals, through keen adherence to the discipline of Problematics, ensuring that we stay focused on successfully problematizing a wide range of direly undercomplicated social dilemmas. It’s nice to see we agree on so much. Maybe we are not so unalike, despite our drastically different upbringings. Anyway, as I was saying, the story of your ancestor, and more importantly my exhaustive list of misgivings with his approach to social change, is quite a long and elaborate one, but it actually fits brilliantly within the larger mosaic which captures the broad strokes of my post. I mean our discussion. Trigger warnings for the following content include: ancestor bashing, faith shaming, loud swearing, torture, burn wounds, ship sinking… again, seriously, just let me know if you begin to feel triggered by anything, even slightly. We’ll pause and see if we can really explore those issues, and identify exactly how I may have invalidated your struggles. Without further ado, the story is as follows:

[beatriceeagle]

I think my TV meta ask reported an error so I'm going to repeat my questions, feel free to ignore any of them! 1) I love Looking for Alaska the book, and whilst I'm not worried about the TV show as an adaptation, I am worried about it being good... should I watch it? 2) Are you excited for Bojack Season 6? 3) How do you feel about Agents of Shield as a TV show that's constantly changing? I'll never forget their pivot in season 1! 4) SPORTS NIGHT! Why do I love Dan Rydell so much?

I don’t think I could love a meta ask more unless it included Farscape. This is phenomenal.

1

The highlight is that the Looking for Alaska adaptation is good and you should watch it. To get deeper, without getting spoilery, I’ve heard a lot of people say that it improves upon the book, which I don’t exactly agree with. What Looking for Alaska is is a very smart adaptation.

Basically, Looking for Alaska, the book, pulls off a thematic trick using its limited point of view. Miles spends the first two-thirds of the book wildly idealizing Alaska, and often very much in the dark about the exact specifics of her relationship with Jake, but also with Takumi and even the Colonel. Then when the turn comes, that becomes the point: Miles might have loved Alaska, but the Alaska in his head was never the real Alaska, and that means that he can never really understand what happened.

We spend a lot of time hearing Miles’ very precocious, pretentious narration, and also Alaska’s precocious, pretentious dialogue, and a lot of that has seeped into the culture as being the book, as if there’s no deconstruction happening. But there is! Miles is a little bit self-deluding, and Alaska is almost always putting on a front, and neither of their words can ever be fully trusted. This is a book about a guy who never really knew a girl.

The writers of the series, I think, wisely realized that that dynamic was going to be incredibly difficult to replicate on-screen. No matter what they did, viewers were going to get an objective look at Alaska, and the time constraints of television (ironically, the fact that they had to fill out more time) meant that they would have to go outside of Miles’ perspective. So they ditched that idea entirely, and instead dedicated themselves to expanding wherever they possibly could. We get so much more Alaska than the book gives us. She is more real than she possibly could have been in the pages, because we get to see her, not Miles’ view of her. But we also get much, much more of the Colonel, more of Sara, more of Takumi and Lara, more of the Eagle and the Old Man. And it’s wonderful! Some of the show’s most incredible scenes are between characters who are neither Miles nor Alaska.

But it does undercut the theme, somewhat. (Especially when combined with some other adaptation decisions that I won’t get into, because they are spoilery.) Looking for Alaska, the series, gives up some thematic impact in favor of a great deal of character richness, and it’s absolutely the right call for the series, given its format, and given the context in which it was released. But it was a trade, and I think it should be acknowledged.

(The other thing the show does that I think is necessary from an adaptation standpoint, but makes for a kind of weird viewing experience, is that it adds a whole plotline to the middle of the series that doesn’t exist in the book. I do think that this was necessary, because there’s not a lot of structure to the middle of Looking for Alaska, and while that’s fine for a book, a series needs a plot with some kind of forward momentum to hang itself on. But the problem is that the inevitable arc of the book means that this new plotline has nowhere to go, and it ends up just sort of fizzling out, once the book plot takes over.)

Anyway: Looking for Alaska. Very good show, very good music, exceptional performance from Denny Love. Definitely check it out if you loved the book.

2

I am very excited for BoJack season 6! I’m just waiting to watch it with my sister. I have hope that, since this is a planned final season, it’ll give the writers space to move the characters forward, and actually give people like Diane some measure of peace, and people like BoJack some measure of atonement.

3

I think that being the kind of show that was a different show every season was the smartest choice that Agents of SHIELD ever made. (The least smartest choice that Agents of SHIELD ever made was “Fitz and Simmons can never be together for more than six episodes at a time,” even if it has led to several individually successful story arcs.) It makes the show infinitely adaptable, so for instance, if they kill off their lead character thinking that the show is ending, and then suddenly get renewed for two (!!!) more seasons, it’s very easy for them to bring the actor back without walking back the story they’ve told; the show is capable of going to almost any place or time, and pulling on almost any trope of sci-fi or fantasy.

It also makes the show really interesting. One of the problems with season one of Agents of SHIELD was that the MCU is this giant world, full of lots of different settings and genres, and in comparison, AoS felt bland. The genre it was taking on (sci-fi procedural) isn’t inherently boring, but it wasn’t a particularly fresh take on the idea, and the visual trappings of the setting were incredibly sterile. But post-Hydra reveal—and especially post-season four—AoS is like the MCU in a microcosm. It can be anything! It can do a season in the future, a season in space, a season in a computer simulation. It can do pulpy action and messy comedy and gorgeous, lyrical sci-fi.

And also, it manages to do something that’s incredibly difficult (even The Good Place didn’t quite manage to get the hang of it until literally just this last episode) which is to rewrite the characters’ realities over and over without losing track of their character progressions. So, for instance, Fitz has been regular Fitz, and then he’s had his entire reality rewritten by the Framework and become the Doctor, and then he married Jemma and died, and then we reset to cryo!Fitz. And throughout all of that, the show has always been very clear about where the current Fitz is emotionally, and how all of the past and alternate versions of him affect his mental state—but also how he is distinct from any past or alternate versions of himself. And they do this while carrying on actual physical trauma from season 2; if you pay attention, Fitz still briefly loses words when he gets stressed. (As someone who takes a medication that makes me forget words easily, this is my ACTUAL FAVORITE THING on television.) The end result is that you actually know more about Fitz from seeing his reality rewritten so many times—and he still has a coherent character arc.

Of course the downside of this constant shifting is that sometimes AoS will find something that really works for it, and then leave it behind. Like, over the course of seasons three to six, they built up a lot of texture and a deep bench of characters to the space setting, and I would probably say, at this point, that Space AoS is my favorite version of AoS. But the latter half of season six ditched that setting almost entirely, and it’s not clear to what extent we’ll be going back there at all for season seven. Similarly, Fitz’s character arc remains coherent, but I’m not sure the current version of it is my favorite version of it.

But at the end of the day, I think that’s a fair trade for a show that’ll change Daisy’s name halfway through and stick with it, you know?

4

Well, I don’t know why you love Dan Rydell, but after putting a great deal of thought into this over many years, I can tell you why I love Dan Rydell: He is, setting aside some baseline Sorkin patronization, a legitimately great guy, going through a legitimately tough time.

Like, in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of people who have it a lot worse than Dan Rydell, but one of the cool things about Sports Night is that the narrative is genuinely engaged with that fact: It’s aware of Dan’s privilege, and it makes Dan aware of his privilege, in a way that future Sorkin properties never really manage to do. Think of “The Apology”: “No rich white guy ever got anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks.” Think of Bobbi Bernstein, a woman who Dan calls crazy until she proves that she was right. Think of “The Quality of Mercy at 29K,” an episode that’s basically all about turning Dan’s privilege inside out.

What makes Dan likeable is that the show is aware of his privilege, it points his privilege out to him, and he learns. When Isaac calls him out, he’s immediately contrite. When he sees someone in need in his office, he overcomes his immediate reaction and tries to help. And when he realizes his error with Bobbi, he grants her an immediate, complete, and sincere apology.

The thing is, Dan wants so desperately to be a good guy, and it’s just really hard not to like someone who is trying so hard. He’s incredibly good to his friends, and honestly, I think the turning point is “Mary Pat Shelby.” You give Dan and Natalie’s scene in “Mary Pat Shelby” to a halfway decent actor, and how do you not come out of that scene loving Dan? This incredibly unselfish, incredibly well-pitched moment where, while everyone else is freaking out and trying to get something out of Natalie, Dan just says, “No, I’m not going to tell you what to do, I’m just going to tell you that I am behind you a million percent.” How do you not love that person?

But the other thing is that Josh Charles is not a halfway decent actor, Josh Charles is a phenomenal actor, so actually the turning point isn’t “Mary Pat Shelby.” It’s the speech in “The Apology.” The speech in “The Apology” isn’t  Sorkin’s best writing—“high as a paper kite” is a choice—and honestly, that scene is a lot to ask any actor to take on. Performed competently, it would be kind of embarrassing.

Charles fucking impales himself on that monologue. He leaves blood and guts on the anchor desk. And he somehow does it without overacting? It is a very subtle, precisely-balanced act of self-dismemberment.

What I’m saying is that right from the very beginning, Dan opens himself up to the viewer, and we see all his vulnerabilities, all the ugly, painful pieces of him that make him. And because Charles is a really, really good actor, it’s all very believable, and it’s all very magnetic—you’re drawn to it. And he does it all while being so likeable, and so good.

So of course people love Dan Rydell. He’s generous, he learns and apologizes, he tries incredibly hard, he’s got level 25 charisma, and he’s an open book of emotion—not to the people in his life, but to the viewer.

(Hey, while you’re here, have a link to an amazing Dan Rydell vid!)

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine! (Yes, I still have a migraine.)

[spamzineglasgow]

SPAM Digest #1 (Sept 2018)

A quick list of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling.

 ‘Human Sacrifice’, by Alexandra Molotkow, Real Life Mag 

A brief moral genealogy of reality TV spectatorship sketched through the short life of The Anna Nicole Show (2002-2004); Moloktow reflects on the hatred of the talentless and contempt for the desperate as a ultimate re-inscription of class dynamics; on the erotic appeal of the fallen beauty; on how the lines between compassion and cruelty come blurred, when those between life and entertainment seem to be disappearing.

‘Reality television remade spectatorship in the likeness of a relationship: You loved your favorite contestants like friends and hated your least favorite like enemies — the thrill of a reality villain was the permission to hate a “real” person and not just a character in fiction.’

‘What many of us are looking for, at least sometimes, is a quick hit of relatability, the ambient sense that other people exist. This isn’t necessarily bad. It cuts to the chase of what we so often ask of art, and people are just as interesting as anything they might produce — a personality itself can be read as a work of art, producing the same range of joys and intriguing discomforts. But real and imagined people demand different moral configurations, and observing a life as theater can create a narrative riptide on reality.’

D.B

‘Andrew Pekler charts imagined sounds on interactive atlas, Phantom Islands’, by Scott Wilson, Fact Mag

It was actually an ex-navy friend who recommended this article to me, and the nautical vibes seemed appropriate, given our current SPAM theme is CRUISE LINER. Wilson’s article glosses a recent project by Berlin-based sound artist Andrew Pekler: an ‘interactive online map called Phantom Islands, which combines the histories of islands that were once found on nautical maps with speculative sounds from each of the 27 locations’. These ‘Phantom Islands’, as Pekler puts it, were charted through history by ocean explorers, but their actual existence ‘has never been ultimately verified’.  

For anyone intrigued by ethnomusicology (soundscapes are here selected with an ethnographer’s ear and knowledge of island history), object-oriented ‘art’ (one could argue Pekler’s project enacts a form of tuning to nonhuman scales, scapes and ontologies) or simply wanting to play around with a synesthetically satisfying map, Phantom Islands is definitely worth your time.

There’s something seductive and ultimately metamodern about this project: its oscillation between fact and fiction; a New Aesthetic, intermedial playfulness and sincere commitment to probing the strange aporia of these places. A sort of sonic psychocartography, combining the analogue ‘hardware’ of the map with the interactive, ‘soft’ subtleties of scroll, click, veer and zoom. It recalls childhood afternoons consumed by the thalassic, open-world vistas of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002), where every cel-shaded island was mapped out on a gridded ‘Great Sea’, sparkling with unique music, sidequests, enemies and secret items. Browsing The Wind Waker’s world, or (in Cruise Mode), the clean white grids of Pekler’s map, you find yourself phasing in and out of the mirage-like isles of geologic and mythical history. I’m made nostalgic for the days when the internet was envisioned as a sort of frontier, this sprawling terrain to be ‘surfed’.

As well as pleasure, there’s a profound melancholy to the project: it doesn’t steer us towards the dramatic sublime but rather encourages an introspective, ‘slow’ experience of personal discovery, a glide over several haecceities. Maybe it’s because, as Malachy Tallack puts it in his 2016 book The Undiscovered Islands, ‘Islands [...] are perfect metaphors for other worlds and afterlives. They are separate and yet connected; they are distant and yet tangible. The sea of death is cluttered with imaginary islands’. I’ve never thought of webpages or online archives as islands until now, but something about that sense of myth or fiction pervading the ‘real’ of the present is oddly comforting. The narrative vignettes and sound clips which accompany the islands of Pekler’s map give the reassurance of presence, even in the space of speculation, in the lack of evidential presence. If, as Tallack puts it, ‘invention’ arises from our desire to fill a ‘terrifying’ absence, then ‘sometimes that desire gives us back the absences we sought to fill’. It seems to me he could be describing a phenomenology of the open internet, the para-reality of endless text and images still sloshing and jostling against the smooth interface of Web 2.0. The haunted archives of yesteryear, preserved on some ad-riddled, lost domain. The splintered archipelagos of our virtual identities, the desiring production of feedback loops.

As a form of ‘interactive’ geography, Phantom Islands reminds us that our conceptions of ‘world’, Other or ipseity itself are bound to slippage, the ambient addictions of browsing a set of imagined striations. Best to enjoy that, while we (physically) still can.  

The Phantom Islands project: http://andrewpekler.com/phantom-islands/

M.S.

‘Funks of Ambivalence: On Flarf’, by Andrew Epstein, LA Review of Books

Flarf’s controversy is no secret within the poetry world. What started as protest poetry, in the manner of pirate radio - a way of ‘hacking’ the internet by mining and reassembling its linguistic fragments - soon sank in a cesspool of suspicion about plagiarism, appropriation and writerly privilege. Well, not exactly ‘sank’, because sank implies a kind of closure, when actually flarf still floats around - the poetic plastic that won’t quite biodegrade, even in these times of lyric revival.

Having recently published, Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture (2016), Epstein is well-versed in tracing how poetic form variously attempts to render, illumine or escape the experiential debris of daily life. Here reviewing a recent anthology, published by Edge Books in 2017 (Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf), Epstein maps out the emergence of flarf in the context of both the poetry establishment and the internet’s structural history, honing in on the use of search engines and data trawling as modes of playful aesthetic resistance. He quotes Gary Sullivan (a founding flarfer), who describes ‘flarf’ as both a neologism for ‘a kind of corrosive, cute, or cloying, awfulness’ and verb, meaning ‘to bring out the inherent awfulness, etc., of some pre-existing text’.

A good review perhaps brings something extra to the text it feeds on, and Epstein succeeds in supplementing Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf’s lack in the critical department. As Epstein puts it, the anthology is ‘completely devoid of scholarly apparatus’. What might be ‘more a bid for canonization, an enshrinement of a now-defunct avant-garde’ nevertheless requires a bit of aesthetic and political contextualisation, which Epstein’s piece usefully gestures towards. As post-internet poets, self-identified or otherwise, we’re all guilty of getting a little too flarfy at times, fooling around with discursive detritus online. It’s commentary like Epstein’s that sets all this appropriation in its necessary social contexts - from gender to race, ethnicity, class and sexuality.

Epstein’s upshot is that the ‘antics’ of flarf retain the potential for cultural resistance, but that flarf should not be considered solely in a dematerialised junkspace of recycled ‘play’. Rather, we should be reading flarf alongside certain contemporary poets (Epstein names a few), who digest its playful ‘tactics’ for a more substantial sociopolitical aesthetics, and what’s more acknowledge the extent to which flarf has become the condition of all information dissemination, both online and IRL. As he puts it, paraphrasing Man Ray’s chiastic assessment of Dada’s survival: ‘Flarf cannot live in America. All America is Flarf, and will not tolerate a rival’. In an era of reality-breakdown and disorientating news dissemination, conducted over the famously elliptical medium of Twitter, presided upon by the US President himself, this seems about right.   

M.S.

‘The Irrelevant and the Contemporary’ by DannyPenny, The New Enquiry

‘Post-Internet Poetry Comes of Age’, by Kenneth Goldsmith, The New Yorker

So why is post-internet poetry #trending?

Over the past few years, the art world has been throwing around the term “post-Internet” to describe the practices of artists who use the Web as the basis for their work but don’t make a big deal about it. For these artists, unlike those of previous generations, the Web is just another medium, like painting or sculpture. We’re beginning to see a similar turn in poetry.

Is it fair to say that successful post-internet poems should not merely “update confessional poetry for the age of mass surveillance"? That Poems that want to mirror or deconstruct the experience of living on the internet need a poetics that address that experience on a structural and material rather than semantic level? What is the result of such poetry? Poems that are "boring to be around"? Or poems that are at once organic and mechanical, personal and, in a sense, objective? Why is it that a mining, massaging, and reworking of found online texts into something personal appears to be fuelling some of the more adventurous poetry being written today? See what Kenneth Goldsmith and Danny Penny have to say.

M.P.

[slackbastard]

Antifa is liberalism, feminism is cancer, and I’m a monkey’s uncle

My first reaction on reading Marianne Garneau's essay 'Antifa is liberalism' (Ritual, April 11, 2018) was: lolwut. The second was to be reminded of Ward Churchill's essay 'Pacifism As Pathology': in particular, his being at pains to distinguish between, on the one hand, examining pacifism as pathology and, on the other, arguing in favour of the notion that pacifism is pathology. [1] On further reflection -- and leaving aside the fact that I think the weaknesses in Garneau's claims are reasonably apparent and that similar kinds of arguments have been made previously -- I thought I may as well write a more considered response. [2]

To begin with, it's obviously useful to examine the meaning both of antifa and of fascism. While 'fascism' is left undefined and largely unexamined, for Garneau 'antifa', as well as being a species of liberalism, is also a political strategy: 'direct physical and verbal confrontation with extreme right groups, in person and online'. [3] This strategy, they argue, has radical pretensions which 'ironically' places it at odds with liberalism (the strategy of direct confrontation with extreme right groups violates liberal principles of freedom of speech and assembly). Nonetheless, antifa is liberal(ism) in the sense that it's founded upon a liberal understanding of society as 'a collection of individuals' and -- glossing Hobbes, Locke and Rawls -- 'society is simply an amalgamation of the private preferences and behaviors of private citizens'. This liberal conception of society is opposed to one which 'looks at how society is structured, and to whose benefit' and takes 'stock of societal institutions and their functioning, to examine how this deploys relationships of power between different social groups'. This perspective, argues Garneau, is critical to understanding contemporary society, and is absent from the 'antifa' worldview. In summary, 'antifa is liberalism' because the underlying philosophical and political assumptions which govern its practice are liberal.

Is this an accurate description? Does antifa 'draw our attention away from systemic problems and towards individual behavior'? Does it individualise racism and fail to understand or to address its systemic nature? Does it devote too much attention to countering the Alt-Right on  college campuses and 'outing' closeted fascists who occupy public office? Maybe; maybe not: it's difficult to know given that the author doesn't examine in any detail any particular anti-fascist group or project, or identify the liberal villain lurking at the heart of their praxis. By my reckoning, however, I don't think that the argument can be sustained, at least not if the handful of longer-term antifa projects in the US -- which list includes NYC Antifa, Rose City Antifa, and The TORCH Network -- are the object of scrutiny. In fact, I would argue that the opposite is the case, that the collectives which have assembled around these projects are: armed with a structural analysis of racism, fascism and white supremacy; committed to locating contemporary political developments within their social and historical contexts and, by doing so, relating fascism and the far-right to broader social structures; prepared to acknowledge the limitations of antifa as a revolutionary and liberatory praxis; nevertheless insistent on taking fascism seriously, and acting in order to contains its growth.

I would further suggest that understanding contemporary anti-fascism in the United States, North America and elsewhere requires some understanding of its history. [4] And while the definitive account of this history is yet to be written, there are traces, and these traces tend to undermine Garneau's argument. Take, for example, the emergence of 'Anti-Racist Action' in the late 1980s. In its origins, it involved a small group of young people in Minneapolis deciding to fight back against the attempted infiltration of the punk and skinhead community by neo-Nazi and white supremacist elements. This project eventually expanded to include folks in other cities and from other cultural and political communities. [5] In any event, the 'existential' nature of this threat was not abstract but concrete -- as is often the case when there's an increase in fascist political activity. This is an important point which I think is missing from Garneau's account.

To return to the subject of the relationship between anti-fascism, liberalism and radical politics, on one level I'm not overly-concerned if anti-fascism is understood as being one or the other: the more pressing question is 'is it effective'? To answer this question requires an understanding of the goals of anti-fascism beyond 'opposing fascism'. One of the chief complaints 'Antifa is liberalism' makes has to do with the inefficacy of antifa. Punching nazis in the face, disrupting speeches by Alt-Right demagogues and exposing neo-Nazi and white supremacist individuals in uniform and in public office, we are informed, do not bring about the destruction of systemic forms of race- and class-based domination and exploitation, transform college campuses into welcoming spaces for trans and/or undocumented students, or counter state policies that impoverish and marginalise the general population. Such claims are not new, and this line of argument is not unique. [6] In this context, these supposed failures could more simply be read as the product of a misunderstanding of the goals of anti-fascism. If so, then a more relevant question for those committed to egalitarian social change would be: to what extent does anti-fascism contribute to or retard the development of such a political project? In which context, I think the following is apt:

To theorize is simply to try to understand what we are doing. We are all theorists whenever we honestly discuss what has happened, distinguish between the significant and the irrelevant, see through fallacious explanations, recognize what worked and what didn’t, consider how something might be done better next time. Radical theorizing is simply talking or writing to more people about more general issues in more abstract (i.e. more widely applicable) terms. Even those who claim to reject theory theorize — they merely do so more unconsciously and capriciously, and thus more inaccurately.

Theory without particulars is empty, but particulars without theory are blind. Practice tests theory, but theory also inspires new practice.

Radical theory has nothing to respect and nothing to lose. It criticizes itself along with everything else. It is not a doctrine to be accepted on faith, but a tentative generalization that people must constantly test and correct for themselves, a practical simplification indispensable for dealing with the complexities of reality.

But hopefully not an oversimplification. Any theory can turn into an ideology, become rigidified into a dogma, be twisted to hierarchical ends. A sophisticated ideology may be relatively accurate in certain respects; what differentiates it from theory is that it lacks a dynamic relation to practice. Theory is when you have ideas; ideology is when ideas have you. “Seek simplicity, and distrust it.”

One final point.

Garneau claims that: 'In general, antifa treats white supremacy as a matter of inner beliefs rather than of the structure of society that grants arbitrary privilege to white people, ensures the white working class’s compliance with the capitalist system of exploitation, and further represses and disciplines the part of the class that isn’t white.' I don't think this is correct. On the one hand, many who involve themselves in anti-fascist organising do so from a left perspective which is critical of the role of racism in dividing workers and derailing class struggle, and whose opposition to fascism and the far right is partly derived from a commitment to furthering this struggle. On the other hand, the understanding of white supremacy and its political function is in general, I would suggest, more along the lines of that advanced by antifa blogs such as Three Way Fight:

Three Way Fight is a blog that promotes revolutionary anti-fascist analysis, strategy, and activism. Unlike liberal anti-fascists, we believe that "defending democracy" is an illusion, as long as that "democracy" is based on a socio-economic order that exploits and oppresses human beings. Global capitalism and the related structures of patriarchy, heterosexism, racial and national oppression represent the main source of violence and human suffering in the world today. Far right supremacism and terrorism grow out of this system and cannot be eradicated as long as it remains in place.

At the same time, unlike many on the revolutionary left, we believe that fascists and other far rightists aren't simply tools of the ruling class. They can also form an autonomous political force that clashes with the established order in real ways, or even seeks to overthrow global capitalism and replace it with a radically different oppressive system. We believe the greatest threat from fascism in this period is its ability to exploit popular grievances and its potential to rally mass support away from any liberatory anti-capitalist vision.

Perhaps the chief difference in perspectives here is the considered belief that 'fascism' is not reducible to the political effect of a social structure; that individuals, properly organised, can in fact assume the status of a 'vested institutional interest'. As such, fascism poses a threat to the 'organs of working class power' that Garneau and other leftists would like to develop, one which is not reducible to and should not be mistaken for the 'Confederate flag-waving, hate-spewing racists' that Garneau believes constitutes the limits of antifa understanding, and a threat which requires a more serious and nuanced analysis than on offer in Ritual. In any case, the last word belongs to Mark Bray:

The only long-term solution to the fascist menace is to undermine its pillars of strength in society grounded not only in white supremacy but also in ableism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, nationalism, transphobia, class rule, and many others. This long-term goal points to the tensions that exist in defining anti-fascism, because at a certain point destroying fascism is really about promoting a revolutionary socialist alternative (in my opinion one that is antiauthoritarian and nonhierarchical) to a world of crisis, poverty, famine, and war that breeds fascist reaction ...

Undoubtedly street blockades and other forms of confrontational opposition can be very useful against any political opponent, but once far-right formations have manged to broadcast their xenophobic, dystopian platforms, it is incumbent upon us to drown the out with even better alternatives to the austerity and incompetence of the governing parties of the Right and Left.

On its own, militant anti-fascism is necessary but not sufficient to build a new world in the shell of the old.

[1] See also : This Nonviolent Stuff′ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, Charles E. Cobb, Duke University Press, 2015; The Failure of Nonviolence, Peter Gelderloos, Left Bank Books, 2015; ‘How nonviolence is misrepresented’, Brian Martin (Gandhi Marg, Vol.30, No.2, July-September 2008). [2] See, for example, 'Fascism/Antifascism' by Jean Barrot (Gilles Dauvé) and numerous other, related materials on libcom. [3] On fascism in the US, see : 'Neofascism in the White House', John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, Vol.68, No.11, April 2017 ('Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but with historically distinct features specific to the political economy and culture of the United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century'). [4] Recent titles of relevance include: Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Mark Bray, Melville House, 2017 and Militant Anti-Fascism: A Hundred Years of Resistance, Mala Testa, AK Press, 2015. See also : Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action, Freedom Press, 2012; 'Red Action – Left Wing Political Pariah: Some Observations Regarding Ideological Apostasy and the Discourse of Proletarian Resistance', Mark Hayes (published as Chapter 12 in Against the Grain: The British far left from 1956, Evan Smith and Matthew Worley, eds, Manchester University Press, 2014). Two journal articles of particular relevance are ''A Good Deal of Disorder' or The Anarchists & Anti-Fascism In The UK', M. Testa, Anarchist Studies, Vol.25, No.2, 2017 [PDF] and 'Anti-Fascism and Prefigurative Ethics', Benjamin Franks, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Vol.8, No.1, Summer 2014 [PDF]. [5] See : Solecast 44 w/ Mic Crenshaw on The Anti-Racist Action Network & Radical Politics (June 15, 2017). Mic's account of the origins of ARA, and his reflections on the differences between anti-fascist organising then and now, can also be usefully read alongside ‘How British Police Shut Down the Original UK Antifa’ (James Poulter, Vice, March 12, 2018). [6] See : On Contact: Antifa with Mark Bray (RT America, September 30, 2017). BRAY: Well you know anti-fascists are not trying to organize an armed uprising; they're trying to stop small- and medium-sized fascist groups before they advance ... See also : ‘The Cult of Violence Always Kills the Left’, Chris Hedges, truthdig, April 16, 2018.

[pope-francis-quotes]

17th January >> (RomeReports.com) Pope Francis´ full speech at the Pontificial Catholic University of Chile: Grand Chancellor, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, My Brothers Bishops, President Dr Ignacio Sánchez, Distinguished University Authorities, Dear Professors and Administrators, Dear Students, I thank the President for his words of welcome on behalf of all present. The history of this university is in a some sense woven into the history of Chile. Thousands of men and women who were educated here have made significant contributions to the development of the nation. I would like especially to mention Saint Albert Hurtado, who began his studies here a century ago. His life is a clear testimony to how intelligence, academic excellence and professionalism, when joined to faith, justice and charity, far from weakening, attain a prophetic power capable of opening horizons and pointing the way, especially for those on the margins of society. In this regard, I would like to take up your words, dear President, when you said: “We have important challenges for our country that have to do with peaceful coexistence as a nation and the ability to progress as a community”. 1. Peaceful coexistence as a nation To speak of challenges is to acknowledge that situations have reached the point where they need to be rethought. What was hitherto an element of unity and cohesion now calls for new responses. The accelerated pace and a sense of disorientation before new processes and changes in our societies call for a serene but urgent reflection that is neither naïve nor utopian, much less arbitrary. This has nothing to do with curbing the growth of knowledge, but rather with making the University a privileged space for “putting into practice the grammar of dialogue, which shapes encounter”. For “true wisdom [is] the fruit of reflection, dialogue and generous encounter between persons”. Peaceful coexistence as a nation is possible, not least to the extent that we can generate educational processes that are also transformative, inclusive and meant to favour such coexistence. Educating for peaceful coexistence does not mean simply attaching values to the work of education, but rather establishing a dynamic of coexistence internal to the very system of education itself. It is not so much a question of content but of teaching how to think and reason in an integrated way. What was traditionally called forma mentis. To achieve this, it is necessary to develop what might be called an “integrating literacy” capable of encompassing the processes of change now taking place in our societies. This literacy process requires working simultaneously to integrate the different languages that constitute us as persons. That is to say, an education (literacy) that integrates and harmonizes intellect (the head), affections (the heart) and activity (the hands). This will offer students a growth that is harmonious not only at the personal level, but also at the level of society. We urgently need to create spaces where fragmentation is not the guiding principle, even for thinking. To do this, it is necessary to teach how to reflect on what we are feeling and doing; to feel what we are thinking and doing; to do what we are thinking and feeling. An interplay of capacities at the service of the person and society. Literacy, based on the integration of the distinct languages that shape us, will engage students in their own educational process, a process that will prepare them to face the challenges of the immediate future. The “divorce” of fields of learning from languages, and illiteracy with regard to integrating the distinct dimensions of life, bring only fragmentation and social breakdown. In this “liquid” society or “society of lightness”, as various thinkers have termed it, those points of reference that people use to build themselves individually and socially are disappearing. It seems that the new meeting place of today is the “cloud”, which is characterized by instability since everything evaporates and thus loses consistency. This lack of consistency may be one of the reasons for the loss of a consciousness of the importance of public life, which requires a minimum ability to transcend private interests (living longer and better) in order to build upon foundations that reveal that crucial dimension of our life which is “us”. Without that consciousness, but especially without that feeling and consequently without that experience, it is very difficult to build the nation. As a result, the only thing that appears to be important and valid is what pertains to the individual, and all else becomes irrelevant. A culture of this sort has lost its memory, lost the bonds that support it and make its life possible. Without the “us” of a people, of a family and of a nation, but also the “us” of the future, of our children and of tomorrow, without the “us” of a city that transcends “me” and is richer than individual interests, life will be not only increasingly fragmented, but also more conflictual and violent. The university, in this context, is challenged to generate within its own precincts new processes that can overcome every fragmentation of knowledge and stimulate a true universitas. 2. Progressing as a community Hence, the second key element for this House of Studies: the ability to progress as a community. I was pleased to learn of the evangelizing outreach and the joyful vitality of your university chaplaincy, which is a sign of a young, lively Church that “goes forth”. The missions that take place each year in different parts of the country are an impressive and enriching reality. With these, you are able to broaden your outlook and encounter different situations that, along with regular events, keep you on the move. “Missionaries” are never equal to the mission; they learn to be sensitive to God’s pace through their encounter with all sorts of people. Such experiences cannot remain isolated from the life of the university. The classic methods of research are experiencing certain limits, more so when it is a question of a culture such as ours, which stimulates direct and immediate participation by all. Present-day culture demands new forms that are more inclusive of all those who make up social and hence educational realities. We see, then, the importance of broadening the concept of the educating community. The challenge for this community is to not isolate itself from modes of knowledge, or, for that matter, to develop a body of knowledge with minimal concern about those for whom it is intended. It is vital that the acquisition of knowledge lead to an interplay between the university classroom and the wisdom of the peoples who make up this richly blessed land. That wisdom is full of intuitions and perceptions that cannot be overlooked when we think of Chile. An enriching synergy will thus come about between scientific rigour and popular insight; the close interplay of these two parts will prevent a divorce between reason and action, between thinking and feeling, between knowing and living, between profession and service. Knowledge must always sense that it is at the service of life, and must confront it directly in order to keep progressing. Hence, the educational community cannot be reduced to classrooms and libraries but must be continually challenged to participation. This dialogue can only take place on the basis of an episteme capable of “thinking in the plural”, that is, conscious of the interdisciplinary and interdependent nature of learning. “In this sense, it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions. They are not merely one minority among others, but should be the principal dialogue partners, especially when large projects affecting their land are proposed”. The educational community can enjoy an endless number of possibilities and potentialities if it allows itself to be enriched and challenged by all who are part of the educational enterprise. This requires an increased concern for quality and integration. The service that the university offers must always aim for quality and excellence in the service of national coexistence. In this way, we could say that the university becomes a laboratory for the future of the country, insofar as it succeeds in embodying the life and progress of the people, and can overcome every antagonistic and elitist approach to learning. An ancient cabalistic tradition says that evil originates in the rift produced in the human being by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge thus gained the upper hand over creation, subjecting it to its own designs and desires.[6] This will always be a subtle temptation in every academic setting: to reduce creation to certain interpretative models that deprive it of the very Mystery that has moved whole generations to seek what is just, good, beautiful and true. Whenever a “professor”, by virtue of his wisdom, becomes a “teacher”, he is then capable of awakening wonderment in our students. Wonderment at the world and at an entire universe waiting to be discovered! In our day, the mission entrusted to you is prophetic. You are challenged to generate processes that enlighten contemporary culture by proposing a renewed humanism that eschews every form of reductionism. This prophetic role demanded of us prompts us to seek out ever new spaces for dialogue rather than confrontation, spaces of encounter rather than division, paths of friendly disagreement that allow for respectful differences between persons joined in a sincere effort to advance as a community towards a renewed national coexistence. If you ask for this, I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit will guide your steps, so that this House will continue to bear fruit for the good of the Chilean people and for the glory of God. I thank you once again for this meeting, and I ask you to remember to pray for me. RomeReports.com

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

What are your favorite episodes of gossip girl? And why are they your favorites? I love your blog btw!

ahhh i wanted to like, do a really thoughtful response to this, so i sat on it for a while. i'm thinking i'll just give you the ones off the top of my head, and whenever i think of more i'll add them! i have episodes that i love and are kind of the heart of the show, to me, and then i have episodes that i really really like, so making a list like this feels complicated, LKHDFLKG. more under the cut! <3

to begin with, i actually do have a favourite gg episode! it's 2x06. like if i could only ever watch one episode of gg for the rest of my life, it'd be that one. it has everything i vibe with! jenny being happy! blairena fight + conflict resolution! dan and nate becoming friends after a series of mishaps that are extremely ridiculous! chuck brooding while he watches dan and nate flirt with each other! like this episode was written for me. there's no other way to say it.

i loved 2x07 as a follow-up to this, but the portrayal of chuck in this one was very.... what's the right word. like if you like chuck you'll like it, kind of thing, i think. but i loved dan navigating being nate's friend, figuring out boundaries, talking to serena about nate, etc. and i loved the van der bass family drama, and eric giving lily a talk on how to be a mom. like - it's sad, and i know it's sad - but it's also real, you know?

i also really like 3x09 - i'm guessing you sent me this ask after seeing the tags on that post i reblogged. i know this is not a popular fandom opinion but i actually really liked the danlivessa triad & hoped (naively) that they would become a polycule. in fact, i made the mistake of watching 3x09 for the first time right before a 2 hour lecture and i could think of nothing else but that polycule, i even wrote a fic about the three of them (which canon very cheerfully demolished with 3x10, RIP). but that polycule aside, i loved the blairena conversation in there. this is one of those episodes where you can really truly ABSOLUTELY see why blair and serena are best friends, and how much they love each other. also!!!! all the jenny and eric cotillion drama was fascinating. like - there was a Lot happening this episode and i loved it.

@mysteriesofloves has spoken on 1x04 here - i fully agree with everything she's said so i'm not going to write my own explanation. it's an episode with so much heart!!

i adore 4x16 mostly because sometimes, when uni work gets too overwhelming, i find blair in that episode extremely relatable. that's my shallow reason KLHFDLKGKL. nads has this meta here, but for me it's not even the dair of it all, it's just the thing of like- being a perfectionist! being ambitious!!! and then biting off more than you can chew and needing to admit that you fucked up - this is something i struggle with irl with tasks / duties / responsibilites, so this is kinda a comfort episode for me in that sense!

i also like 2x21 mostly because everyone is being a disaster and cyrus is just being the best! he wants things to go well! and nobody intends to cause drama, it just happens. serena's whole "dan i think i got married to some random guy!" really sends me, like, the whole episode has this vibe of surreality which is interesting to watch.

oh, i cannot neglect to mention 2x18. i love so much about that episode. the serenessa arc is so funny (there is flirting! i mean. of course there is.) nate & vanessa's fight + conflict resolution!!! blair realising that her actions have consequences & that she needs to be more mindful of that /that there are things her privilege cannot shield her from!! ngl i was really hoping that the narrative of the show would develop blair's character from there, give her some of that sweet sweet character growth.

i also, uh. i was trying to think of how i could tell you which s1 episodes i like, but the truth is the first half of s1 - i think from e01 to e12 or e13 - was just so perfect. like it really set the tone for the show, told us who these kids were, and what their messy world was like. it was so strongly done and i think for me at least, that's probably a big part of what made me actually watch the rest of the show! i wasn't planning on it. i had 40 min to kill one day and thought, why not watch the pilot of gossip girl just to kill time. clearly, as you can see, that is not what happened.

honourable mentions go to 1x09, because we really see what blair, serena & nate were like, pre-series, and 1x03, because i think that episode did a really good job at like - showing that blair was hurting serena because she was hurt while at the same time not excusing blair's actions but ALSO it's the first proper glimpse we get into blair & serena's dynamic as a whole. i also love 1x12 because we get derena talking about privilege + serena acknowledging/ understanding what that really means to some extent (the writers did them so dirty, like, they resolved this conflict already) and we ALSO get blairnessa friendship! i really wish blair & vanessa had been allies, they're both so determined in such similar ways.

the s4 dair arc esp from 4x10 to i think 4x17 (? or 4x16?) is a lot of fun. when it comes to s5, i liked 5x13 the first time i watched it (idk how it'll hold up on rewatch), 5x15, 5x16 and 5x21 (despicable b my beloved!!)

s6 sucks, but if you watch the last 5 or so minutes of 6x10 you will see nate eye-fucking dan at the derena wedding, which just goes to show that sometimes your niche gay otp CAN be canon.......people just haven't recognised it yet.

[inloveamateursatbest]

I really will stop soon. But yes, the thing is the wounds and tropes that the Tates came with, evil stepmother, no fool like an old fool, wayward younger daughter, intelligent almost Hamlet like older son, those festered away and blew up onscreen. The drama the Whites came with was much lesser to an extent, then they dropped it all and went down a totally unfamiliar route. I wish we had more Lawrence/Rob for example. More of Chrissie, the young mother, who just wanted to escape the privilege 1/2

More of the business side of things (I still don’t SEE how the Whites are millionaires, they’re hardly wheeler dealers, it’s almost in passing that they are). The Tates had an empire at HF and it was seen onscreen. I agree about Noah’s humanity. I think that also comes from Moira. But separately, now you mention it, his connection and status in the village is more than Rob’s. Sarah was never a huge character. But Noah has TWO icons as parents. I just wish the Tate side was more acknowledged. 2/2Anyway, the point I’m trying to make (sorry, I will get to it) is that being a ‘Tate’ doesn’t make Noah left out or a black sheep, like being a 'Livesey’ did to Aaron. It makes him the product of something huge in the village. The last remaining son of a dynasty. With the Dingles, he’s just one of a crowd, but with the Tate name he is literally the last of them. It’s a huge deal. I hope if you do do rewatch, you’ll see what I mean and maybe when I search the Noah Tate tag it won’t be so barren! 

completely agree about the whites. i feel like sometimes the route is so unfamiliar even the writers don’t know it, and that’s a lot of the problem with them. and we’ve never been shown at all how they have their fortune, always just told. we know that they sell agricultural machinery, we know chrissie has a chain of salons (she used to at least) but we never even seen them sat in the office anymore, let alone working (a bit like the boys and the scrapyard tbh, bless. always skiving off)

lawrence/rob was such a fantastic dynamic!! there was soooo much that could have been done with the whites when they first showed up. i really like early lachlan for instance, he was a fun snarky teen, but then well…

now now, mentioning noah and moira is just cruel nonnie. i actually watched the scenes after holly dies when noah gives moira the card he made yesterday (was looking for screenshots for a noah aesthetic, unfortunately the name dingle is featured in all the panels for that sorry nonnie :P) and i was crying. that child is so sweet and caring, it breaks my heart.

again, i don’t really know about sarah, but that is a very interesting point. and no other case in the village can be like aaron changing from livesy to dingle, there was so much weight in that name change. i feel that with noah, the jumping around with the surnames is just another example at the lack of stability throughout his life (and it’s a shame that’s not brought up more in relation to liv now that they live together tbh). 

[mstrauch-blog]

blind spots

From course syllabus: “Growth in culture awareness is highly dependent on the student’s ability to critically examine his/her own worldviews and biases. This also includes being accept, validate and work to understand others’ positions, even if you vehemently disagree. This critical examination can only be fostered in an atmosphere of profound safety, trust, and respect for everyone’s views and attempts to critically examine those views. We are all works in progress”

 My ‘Multicultural Therapy’ class professor is black, married, gay and the proud mother of a one-year old.  She's putting out her identity and viewpoint right up front.  That's cool.  And, perhaps, this is how she can show us that she’s the best person to be teaching a multicultural class. 

And…I wonder though if she would seem them as biases.  In other words, by saying I’m white and high SES (although I’m not, I’m now divorced and my SES has changed, although still higher than many.)  Anyway, my color and SES seem to mean, in the eyes of some including my teacher, that I’m de facto part of the problem just by my very existence.  I’m humble enough and self-reflexive enough to be OK with this.  I get where it’s coming from and actually agree to a large extent.  By saying these things I’m admitting I have biases, some unconscious.  I’m asked without being directly asked to admit that I have them.  I’m sure I do.  And DrMW assumes my blind spots and biases are ugly and even damaging to others.  I don’t want to be hurting or damaging to others!  So of course I’m motivated by a desire to be a person who does care about not being hurtful to others.  That’s a value I hold dear as I’m sure many of her students do. 

 But I’m brainstorming here on whether we should question or open a conversation around this idea of bias/privilege/blind spots.  Because no one who isn’t of at least some oppressed minority should ever be teaching (DrMW’s message in our first session that the previous teacher of the course, an Argentinian immigrant woman of high education and SES, didn’t really know what she was talking about, was clear and pointed).    

 But is it not also DrMW’s job to “continue opportunities to question what you know and assume.”  We are taught to practice and respect an ongoing process and dedication to self-reflexivity in our practice as therapists.  We are taught this in every class, be it theory or research.  Will we be taught it in this class I wonder?  If as a privileged white person I have to think through myself, my identity, my positions, my blind spots, my assumptions in this way, then why not you?  Why do some people get a permanent pass on thinking to this level about themselves because their skin is a certain color?   And we give her the space to do this because she’s black and queer.  We give her a pass that we don’t get.  She gets to be herself, be open and feisty about her opinions.  We do not.  

 Part of me feels it’s not fair to ask the students to question what they know and assume without being willing to do the same yourself.  It doesn’t feel fair to walk into the classroom as a teacher with the attitude that you’re there, you got hired, because you have The Answer.  How can real discussion and learning take place in that environment?  It becomes an “expert” model, which ironically is something we’re encouraged to reflect upon carefully as training clinicians---do we want to practice therapy methods that position the therapist as the expert?  And if you do, you better realize you are.  The idea is, basically, how can you be the expert on anyone’s life?  Anyway, DrMW is the expert and the One Who Knows and we are to be deferential and accept her truth as the truth.  It feels like we’re positioned in her eyes as the ignorant, over-privileged, white students (despite our age, training, life experience, efforts to know ourselves, etc) in direct proportion to how well we’re able to tow her party line in class.  Maybe she won’t take it so far as to base our grades on that…although I don’t know.  

 DrMW is a cool person.  She is very strong in herself, which is awesome and I love it.  She’s been fighting the good fight for years, on the ground in her own life and in her community advocating for space in our culture, communities and relationships for her and people like her with non-mainstream identities.  She is rebelling against a million status quos with passion and zeal.  She talked about how she’s a rebel, always.  (I am too as is evidenced by this writing!)  And yet I wonder how much of her life choice are positioned in defense/offense against others’ positions.  She’s living her identity, successfully.  She’s higher SES, highly educated, married and a mother---all markers of privilege.  She’s arrived in the life of her choosing and in a big way and I think that’s wonderful.  It makes me proud to be an American.  Yet her life’s work is to rant about how people aren’t getting the space to do those things.  She sees the negative, but what about the positive?  However imperfect, are not we ignorant, over-privileged white people starting to get it, a little?  Aren’t your efforts paying off, a little?  Can this open up hearts instead, even if a white person, for example, words something in a way that’s not-quite-right?      

 OK.  Looking on what I’ve written so far it concerns me that I’m making all these assumptions about her when I don’t know her.  My thoughts are based on her words in one class!  And it scares me even more than that that I may be right in much of it.  She may be so rigid in believing what is right and wrong that she’s not able to see past to any other way of seeing the world---at least the worlds of anyone heterosexual and white which feel by their very existence to be uncomfortable to her.  Differing viewpoints or opinions become so much more than just…opinions.  It becomes easy, even the easiest path, to see others’ opinions as a personal attack on who she is and what she believes in.  Her life and identity may be keyed into the level of acceptance she perceives she’s receiving from those around her.  Could it be that when someone unlike her says or does something that sounds unaccepting (or, god forbid, even IS) could become loaded and reactive very quickly.  The tenor of the class is already loaded just one class in!  And she has set that tone by her own choice and doing.  I feel uncomfortable with the idea of challenging or reframing anything she says, even mildly and with cautious language.  To speak up and honor my own desires and ways of learning would take courage.  It’d take willingness on my part to make an enemy of yet another teacher who I respect and enjoy as a person and would like to get to know better.  And this to me is a point of sadness; and missed opportunity to create and foster radical acceptance rather than cold avoidance. 

 OK.  So I guess I need to reframe my own thinking about being a student in this class as questioning what I think I “know” and listening open-mindedly to what she what she believes she “knows.” and assumes.  I need to try to focus on me, in other words.  It’s an important personal value of mine to be continually questioning my own assumptions.  And if I must do this on my own, like with this kind of writing outside of class, so be it.  No need for me to be annoyed or angry about that, just let it be what it is.  

 I’m always sensitive, due to my personality and background, to unequal power relationships and one up/one down dynamics.  I often push back on those to my own detriment, refusing to play power games and preferring to conduct myself respectfully with others but insisting on an equal footing.  We are, after all, just people. So it’s loaded for me how much power it feels like she gets over us through her position as the professor, in addition to all I’ve written about.  She gets tremendous power over us as we are the ignorant white people.  I would argue she gets more power than a white, hetero professor would.  She gets to shut us down just by being in the room; and that’s powerful.  And she knows it.  And she’s not interested in adjusting for it, or acknowledging it.  Interestingly, we have a white, hetero, high SES teacher in another class who took it upon himself to acknowledge the power differential and discuss it openly with us in the first class.  I thought this was great.  It set a tenor of openness in the room that we all benefit from.  He did it to because in our work with clients, ethically it’s our responsibility to be aware of, understand and adjust for the power differential between therapist and client.  His job is to teach us how to be ethical, mindful therapists. 

 I would like to ask DrMW lots of things.  I’m curious!  Such as: How are you continuing to question what you know and assume?  Do you think you have blind spots and in what areas?  (We all have them, I believe this strongly.)  Do you believe you have any privilege in your own life and what do you think about it?  And then… Is this last question offensive?  Why?  What do you believe about the motives of the person asking it and how quickly to you jump to that conclusion?  Are you able to give anyone the benefit of the doubt that they might not be as “racist” as they sound, for example?  If you do give benefit of doubt, then with whom and when do you give it?  With whom and when do you not give it, and why?  What does a civil, open-minded (or at least open-hearted, curious) discourse with someone “racist” feel for you?  Is there a way that it could feel less that way for you?  Is it OK to walk away from a conversation feeing bad? 

 It’s as if there’s room to start a conversation or share opinions even if they’re radically different, if you give room to share an opinion that might be “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobic,” by the very act of allowing things to be even be spoken, there’s a visceral fear on the part of her and others in her camp that we open the door to losing everything that they (and me!) have worked for.  There’s a clinging to the space that’s been created for other identities for dear life, or feel like we are especially post Trump election.  What we may be failing to consider, however, is that perhaps by the very act of opening up a conversation may be the very thing that solidifies that space over time (it doesn’t have to be agreeable just civil at a basic human level; where you state your opinion and others have room to state theirs) may.  There is great agreement, I believe, across the hearts of Americans of all creed and color that we can live and let live.  We can be who we are and let others be who they are.  This is repetitive, but what we fail to consider is that the very act of allowing others to speak their mind dissipates tension…it may be the only thing that allows us to move forward and create even more space for alternative identities—all of them from redneck, evangelist hunter to lesbian black woman.  This is the great hope and promise of America and why I love this country despite it all.