#epigenetic poetry

[marcogiovenale]

un articolo di andrea cortellessa su giovanni fontana. e domani, h. 18 circa, palazzo delle esposizioni: premio alla carriera

Andrea Cortellessa_ Con le cinque dita_ (art. su Giovanni Fontana)_ in Antinomie, 23 mag 2024 LINK sul sito: https://antinomie.it/index.php/2024/05/23/con-le-cinque-dita/ nella cartella stampa: https://mega.nz/file/G9NDRKZS#Ly6_mxM6GgNro-k6HUVh6M7LcJ59QdKhsq5KypwQolc indirizzo della cartella stampa Pagliarani 2024: https://tinyurl.com/pagliarani2024 Giovanni Fontana riceverà domani, 25 maggio, h.…

[ratoartist]

I walk myself up on the hill

No sun and yet no cloud to be seen

And I would be alone, if not for

The tree torn down the middle

She stands withered and folded

At war with herself

Broken branches strewn at her base

Composting into soil, she feeds on her own

My hands can trace the twisted bark

Circled rings count the years gone by

Runes that speak of secrets long lost

But remembered in the wood

I long for stories but the tree is silent

And briefly the thought crosses my mind

To turn her into fire and dance before the flames

A remnant of an age before words

And I suppose it is inevitable

That the earth will swallow whole

All my stories and secrets to feed another tree

And no one will remember how that tree fell

How she split down the middle

At war with herself

The never ending story

For those who visit up on the hill

[tarotbylibby]

for years I wondered what made her that way, loved her anyway, and now I understand. at least, I have a story I tell myself, something that makes it make sense.

I didn't know that understanding is not the same as forgiving maybe it could have been if the wrongs hadn't kept piling up if the sour sour sour chuff of her harvest were not quite so sour

in the shadow of the forest I unfolded, unfolded, and on and on, and there, finally, was the granite hunk of contempt that had been passed like an heirloom. mother-daughter-mother-daughter

mother mother daughter daughter. if there is contempt in the water, in the double helix in the carbohydrates and proteins and knitted into the blankets and spread on bread. then contempt is home.

[1introvertedsage]

I feel it. Changes at the epigenetic level. It's like - an internal machine with parts that move in and out of place. Shift, rotate, drop, some spin out of control and haven't stopped. It's more than alot. But it's all I've got.

Heart strings are real And they can be used as chaps. Giving the most painful back slaps. Or they can be braided And swung around like a hammock To support and soothe the heart.

Gone for a ride but here to subside More than a runaway bride. It was just pride. Who I Am can no longer be denied. And I don't want to fucking hide. All these tears I've cried. While they all kept up the lie And tried To destroy who I was inside.

But now it's time to pick a side. And I choose mine. It's about damn time. Like a well oiled machine, I'll shine. Just needed to free my mind. Leave it all behind. Forgiveness has been harder than I thought To find. But the help I get, Must be Divine. Letting me clear the line. Of all the bullshit and trauma That stained me like wine. Said I'd be fine. And more Love they applied. Even got a few more Spirit Guides. That's what really helps in my life. People are so...mmh But nature just is. It can't be denied, It doesn't need to lie. Is that such a bad way to live? If so tell me why?

~Ruby L.S.~

[writingislikepullingteeth]

Things from my notes app: 4/20/21

I feel like I’m living in the shadow of your death

that’s only magnified now that I know what really happened

you probably laid down on that same couch we used to sleep across from each other

Sleeping pills & muscle relaxers weighing heavy in your body

But you left a note

Blaming my mother and sister

I don’t think you meant it

I think you wanted to push them away,

so it would hurt less when you left.

But I still feel haunted

In the way I see your face in the mirror

But hear my mother’s voice from my mouth

I feel haunted by the echoes of pain you felt flooding my own veins

The same disorder we share, and the traumatic memory of our DNA

Where do you end as my father and myself as my identity begin?

How much of this is sickness?

How much of this is trauma?

How much of it is me?

How doomed am I to repeat these same mistakes?

[eatmangoesnekkid]

Stretch at least once a day. Twice a day, however, is incredible potency. Morning and night. Witnessing your muscles lengthen and release tension and your body open wider into new narratives of itself is epigenetic poetry. Stretch and let your body unwind decades and years like a love poem. -India Ame'ye, Author

[lascitasdelashoras]

Giovanni Fontana - Epigenetic Poetry

[chicago-geniza]

Considered my Statement Industrial Complex fury again and part of it is what many have mentioned--these orgs have nothing new to say, it's nebulous wordsmithing published not to take an active stand, but to avoid offending anybody, to produce and reproduce the rhetoric of "neutral humanism," what my friend called "poetry of the noble gesture," that hovers above historical context with aristocratic aspirations, that deals in the sweeping universals such sovereign "equanimity" demands. But mostly I think it is the artifice of naivete re: what Zionism and its enforcement entail, as a regime. The bleeding-heart platitudes about "being lied to," about "safety," about "epigenetic trauma" and "hate/revenge." It's insincere from the mouths of people who, until now, managed to say "Free Palestine." And I hate making it personal but if my relatives who were raised by a rabidly Zionist Orthodox patriarch and attended conservative Jewish day schools their whole lives could, as adults, come around to supporting a free Palestine without qualifications, without "but...", without projection of past antisemitic violence onto those who are subject to ongoing, institutionalized violence from the Jewish state, then you have no excuse! None! You are an adult, you are no longer a child deceived! Become a political subject and grow a political conscience. Grow a backbone. If not now, when?

[virtualmemoriespodcast]

Episode 566 - Christian Wiman

With his new book, ZERO AT THE BONE: Fifty Entries Against Despair (FSG), Christian Wiman fuses essay, poem, memoir and anthology in a singular work that explores how the act of writing a poem is a gesture of faith. We talk about the varieties of despair and joy, the question of whether the world is chaos or has order, and whether the relationship between art and life is a tension or an actual antipathy (as Henry James would have it). We also get into the urgency of mortality and the rare cancer that almost killed Christian on three separate occasions (including this year), the notion of having a calling and the difference between given and earned callings, who we're really trying to reach when we write a poem, whether Philip Larkin's Aubade is a poem of pure despair, how literature has taken the place of sacred texts, and what he's learned from teaching at Yale Divinity School. We also discuss The Void & how to tune it out, his thoughts on faith and Christ and how the incarnation of God in Jesus sacralizes the physical world, where poetry began for him, whether joy is passed down epigenetically like trauma (allegedly) is, what it's like having a Ninja Blender for a brain, coming around on poets in translation like Yehuda Amichai, the meaning of existence, and a lot more (I mean, if you can have a lot more after the meaning of existence). More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

[crazyskirtlady]

Rife

genetic symbiosis

becoming & knowing

ancestors fullfilling

chains & boons

unveiling perceptions

deeper & higher

[themysticalecologist]

It would take 31,710 years to count to one trillion, and yet EVERY DAY your body creates 2-3 trillion new cells. During DNA replication, a molecule called helicase spins our DNA as fast as a jet engine as it unwinds the double helix into two strands.

2-3 trillion chances to change

2-3 trillion chances to heal

2-3 trillion chances to grow

2-3 trillion chances to love

2-3 trillion chances to evolve

2-3 trillion chances to create

2-3 trillion chances to become

2-3 trillion chances to let go

2-3 trillion chances to move

2-3 trillion chances to give

2-3 trillion chances to remember

2-3 trillion chances to celebrate

2-3 trillion chances to manifest

2-3 trillion chances to transform

2-3 trillion chances to connect

2-3 trillion chances to worship

life’s divine magic is everywhere

[oneto]

I come from a family of those who have suffered dearly and obtusely.

Letters to Your Life

[lukegescheider]

#poetry #poem #rhymes #rhyme #poems #therealyou #behindthemask #thosewhominddontmatter #epigenetics #repressedtraits https://www.instagram.com/p/CBJAKNjBckE/?igshid=otaji24luldm

[1introvertedsage]

[garadinervi]

Giovanni Fontana. Epigenetic Poetry, Curated by Patrizio Peterlini, Centre International de Poésie "Marseille", Marseille, September 11 – December 20, 2020, on the occasion of Parallèles du Sud / Manifesta 13. Organized by Fondazione Bonotto (Molvena (VI)), CIPM (Marseille), and Alphabetville (Marseille)

[mitigatedchaos]

On Having “Whiteness”

(~2,200 words, 11 minutes)

Summary: A metaphysics of “Whiteness” has overtaken actual sociology in the Democrats’ popular consciousness - blinding them to racial interventions that might actually work and taking them off the table of political discussion.

-★★★-

Donald Moss - On Having Whiteness, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (emphasis mine)

Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has—a malignant, parasitic-like condition to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility. The condition is foundational, generating characteristic ways of being in one’s body, in one’s mind, and in one’s world. Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target nonwhite peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate. Effective treatment consists of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions. Such interventions can reasonably aim only to reshape Whiteness’s infiltrated appetites—to reduce their intensity, redistribute their aims, and occasionally turn those aims toward the work of reparation. When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

So both @arcticdementor [here] and @samueldays have linked me to this allegedly “peer-reviewed” article.  The Federalist has a bit more context, but it doesn’t really make the situation better.

Race Theory Problems

Obviously, this is a work of sloppy thinking.  The categorization of “white supremacy culture” or “whiteness” used by people like this is vague handwaving that describes being bad at management as “white supremacy culture,” and which in general labels universal human problems, like organizations being resource-constrained, or people being impatient, as somehow uniquely “white.” 

But this sort of article is really what I mean when I say that social justice’s approach to “whiteness” is about “spiritual contamination.” 

Samueldays called it “the ‘I’m not touching you’ of inciting race war,” and I may cover more of his response to it later.  Suffice it to say, it has the same general kind of problems as “stolen land” arguments (where an entire present population’s living area becomes undefined), unbounded “reparations” arguments where no amount of transfers by the designated oppressor are considered to clear the debt, and so on.

This is exactly the sort of material that conservatives are seeking to remove government funding for and prohibit from use in employment training.  This is the kind of material that the Trump Anti-CRT executive order prohibiting racial scapegoating was meant to cover.

Race Theory Definitions

This kind of stuff is, of course, not really defensible, so usually at this point people will argue that 1), “that’s not real critical race theory,” and then 2), “it’s just a few weirdos.”  For those, I would say...

1) If it’s not real “Critical Race Theory,” then what is it?

We can’t measure or disprove Moss’s proposed “Whiteness,” and this malevolent psychic entity said to “deform” white people obviously isn’t based on a comparison with other human populations or historical periods.  When it comes to “insatiable” appetites, one study argued that the Mongol invasions killed so many people that it showed up in the carbon record.

At best, it’s sloppy race science as practiced by an amateur, like twitter users idly speculating whether whites have ‘oppressor epigenetics’ - but with the veneer of official status.  And it has similar risks to proposing that there is such a thing as biologically-inherited class enemy status, and other collective intergenerational justice logic.

Presumably, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association is intended as a journal of science, or at least serious scholarship, and not of bad racist poetry with no rhyme or meter.

Moss provides a relatively pure example of whatever-this-is. I need to know what it’s called, so we can get rid of it.

Race Theory Prohibitions

2) If it’s just the product of a few race-obssessed weirdos, then it won’t hurt to get rid of it.  So get rid of it.

The actual text [PDF] of the Trump Anti-CRT order does not ban teaching about the Trail of Tears, or Jim Crow, and so on, and both of those topics were taught in school before this recent wave of whatever-this-is was popularized.

Trump’s order banned teaching that any race is inherently guilty or evil due to the actions of their ancestors, and the level of resistance to this has been bizarre.

These teachings don’t seem to provide gains in relatively objective metrics like underrepresented minority test scores (or at least that’s not something I’ve seen - and the continued opposition to standardized tests suggests proponents do not expect it to), so it’s unclear just what of value is going to be lost here. 

Collateral Damage

Samueldays wrote,

Because right now the conservatives talking about "critical race theory" as they fire in the direction of Moss et al. are very important in preventing another race war and you have a moral duty to help them aim, not throw smoke for Moss.

Right now Conservatives are assessing just how much stuff they’re going to have to rip out to make “standardized tests are racist” and “it’s impossible to be racist to white people” stop.  While this may not be the message that Liberals are intending to send, it is the message that many people are receiving.  (I discuss problems with both, and some alternatives to handle them better, in another post.)

Liberals need to get out in front of this.  Sooner is better.

If Conservatives think that they have to gut hostile work environment law in order to avoid their children being taught that they’re permanently morally contaminated by their race, and Liberals have no means to actually close race gaps within a 4-8 year period (and right now it’s slim pickings on that front), Conservatives are just going to gut hostile work environment law.

Aether

From their perspective, why not? 

Everything in the world is only six degrees of separation from something racist.  Anything in the world can be tied to something racist.  (So can anyone.)

But nowhere in this pervasive atmosphere of tying things to racism are there solutions.  There are guesses based on correlations.  Proposals.  But usually when you reach out to grab them, to really get a grip on whether it’s correlation or causation, they dissolve in your hands.  The few that do have any solidity to them are moderate in their success (such as Heckman’s involvement in the Reach Up & Learn study in Jamaica) - and don’t appear to be based on the same style of thinking as shown by Moss and others.

It isn’t just that trying to turn combating an invisible, non-measurable, unfalsifiable, parasitic psychic force into an actual political program would inevitably be oppressive and totalitarian.  It isn’t just that articles like Moss’s are an in-kind donation to the 2024 DeSantis Presidential campaign for that very reason.

It isn’t just that unfalsifiable Metaphysics of Whiteness content like White Privilege Theory has been found to lower sympathy for the poor, and that present diversity training doesn’t work...

Race Content Crowding

This stuff is crowding out legitimate scholarship.  I don’t just mean in terms of funding, tenure track positions, or high-flying magazine coverage - all limited by their nature.  I mean among the base.  I have been interrogating Democrats on Twitter for months, and not a single one has been able to cite a strongly-demonstrated intervention that’s being held back, or even a past one that was conclusively demonstrated to be effective.  They can often recite a list of racial grievances on cue.

Tucker Carlson could run boomer_update.exe on a list of every educational failure since the 1970s, and they would be reduced to sputtering accusations of racism against people who increasingly don’t care.  He could do this tomorrow.  The only thing that prevents this is Tucker Carlson’s conscience.

I discovered the Reach Up & Learn program through Glenn Loury - described as a ‘conservative.’ Scott Alexander, attacked by the New York Times crew, brought some success with multivitamins to my attention.  When I first heard about the Perry Preschool program, I believe it was from someone well to the right of him.

About the only one brought to my attention by the Democratic establishment constellation proper was lead removal, and the gains on that are probably getting tapped out.  The frame it was proposed in was not Critical Race Theorist, as this was likely in 2012. 

As it stands, I’m more likely to find something that works from someone the New York Times would disapprove of than someone they wouldn’t.  Or, as Wesley Yang wrote,

Reality has been contrarian for a while.

Succeed Early

Even if we suppose that Conservatives are inherently racist, Liberals have a duty to support interventions that work.  In fact, the more that Conservatives are a seething, undifferentiated mass of uniform racial hatred, the more important it is that Liberals stick to racial interventions that work, because nobody else is going to fix the problem if Liberals get it wrong.

It isn’t just a matter of resources per year.  It’s also a matter of time.

From Heckman’s website,

Although Perry did not produce long-run gains in IQ, it did create lasting improvements in character skills [...] which consequently improved a number of labor market outcomes and health behaviors as well as reduced criminal activity.

Even if we propose an unlimited amount of funding (which is not the case), people and politicians only have a limited amount of time and attention each year.  Newspapers only publish so many issues with so many pages each week.  Television programs only cover so many hours for so many viewers each day.  Even the dedicated can only read so many books in a year.

Even though the Perry intervention was imperfect, and the sample size was not as large as desirable, every second Democrat I talked to should have been able to answer the question “can you name an effective intervention?” with “what about Perry Preschool?”

Every year that we have entire cottage industries working on and popularizing contentious, ineffective, and backlash-provoking Metaphysics of Whiteness content, based on oversimplified oppressor/oppressed binaries, or theories in which power is held collectively by races as monolithic blobs (rather than modelling power as a network of relations between individuals, in which an individual of any background might be destroyed by the racialized relations in their environment), is another year we haven’t spent that energy on finding or implementing something that actually works.

This isn’t just an individual failure by Democrat voters, who typically have day jobs to focus on - it is a failure by the institutions who are supposed to inform and guide them.  This institutional failure likely contributed to the popularization of Metaphysics of Whiteness content in the first place.

Okay, now what?

Donald Moss is a crackpot.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable.  The idea that there is a psychic parasite of “Whiteness” is not a legitimate field of study; it’s parasociology.  The idea that “a sense of urgency” is “white supremacy culture” isn’t much better. [1]

We already tried isolating this content to obscure corners of academia, where individuals with high racial attachment could write about it.  It leaked out. 

We need to get this stuff out of the popular consciousness to make room for stuff that might actually work.  The best way to do that may be to cut off the source.  Since Donald Moss is a crackpot, perhaps it’s time we started treating him, and everyone else like him, as what they are.

People involved in Metaphysics of Whiteness content, like Donald Moss, need to be (figuratively) grabbed by the shoulder, and firmly, but politely, told to stop.  Society has been recklessly handing out race-colored glasses to the general population since around 2014, resulting in a rise in amateur race science, of which both right-wing Twitter users memeing about Italians and Metaphysics of Whiteness participants like Moss are examples.  If they do not stop, they must be stripped of institutional authority.  Metaphysics of Whiteness content is unfalsifiable and we should not be certifying it.

If institutions refuse to reduce the authority of Metaphysics of Whiteness practitioners, those institutions must have their accreditation penalized, and their government funding reduced or eliminated, just as if they insisted on producing study after study on magic or ESP which failed to yield results.  If they do not comply, they must be replaced.

It’s possible that Metaphysics of Whiteness content might have had some obscure, niche function in terms of the exploration of the idea space. 

However, as it has displaced popular knowledge of interventions that might work, and the attention given to them in the political system, Liberals should seek to surgically remove it, at the very least until some more effective interventions see the political light of day.

If not, Conservatives will attempt to remove it with a bludgeon.  "They described an entire race as ‘voracious, insatiable, and perverse,’ and here’s the citation for the exact page where they did that,” is perfect material with which to abolish entire departments.

-★★★-

[1] If we go a bit farther out, scholars of “Decolonization” argue that the field is wholly unconcerned with “settler futurity,” a phrase not much less ominous than describing “whiteness” as “incurable.”  It seems that their entire job should be to answer the very difficult questions they have decided not to.