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vectorgallery · 7 years

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Friday, 6 October 2017

CvltStars: JJ Brine Vector Gallery 2017

http://www.cvltstars.com/2017/10/lets-all-welcome-crown-prince-of-hell.html?m=1

Let’s all welcome The Crown Prince of Hell JJ Brine, the most important artist of our time.

CULTWAVE:

JJ, so much has happened since we last interviewed you in 2013. That’s 2017 AD by your time, and from what I understand it is now 2030 AD. I won't ask you to rehash thirteen years of programming the creation of time and space.

JJ BRINE

/*\

Brad Bleak:

Congratulations on signing your new lease! From what I understand this will be the fifth Vector space, correct?

JJ BRINE :

Yes, it's VECTOR 5.0 -- VECTOR V.

CULTWAVE :The space is in Bushwick, Brooklyn this time. Why is that?

JJ BRINE :

Eye finally got around to not avoiding things just because Eye relate to them.

CULTWAVE :I'm glad to hear you say that!

JJ BRINE :

You can find the space at 951 Grand Street, close to the Grand L stop. The space is literally the beginning of Bushwick, after "East Williamsburg"

CULTWAVE :You’re probably the most influential visual artist in your generation. Everything has happened so quickly for you. How do you react to the sheer immensity of your impact on today’s artists?

Sometimes it seems like you’ve been completely internalized by the mass mind. Your signal has been transmitted so comprehensively that the reverberations can’t be overstated. From artists working on immersive conceptual spaces to the mass proliferation of syncretic religious thematic orientation, it seems that you’ve generated a legion of posthuman artists who are running on your programming.

Does this please you? Does it annoy you?

JJ BRINE :

It annoys us to feel pleased about this, and It certainly pleases them to be annoyed by it. We like looking into mirrors, though. The artists who make it a point to cite me as an influence are the ones who Eye actively support.

CULTWAVE :

People have been talking about you in relation to your influence on American Horror Story : Cult. Siblings Kai and Winter Anderson bear an uncanny resemblance to you and your bandmate, Lena Marquise, in your Charles Manson concept band, The LaBiancas. Has there been any official recognition of the fact that your style and art were major inspirations for the show?

JJ BRINE :

Not yet.

CULTWAVE :It’s so blatant though. I saw the shot-by-shot comparisons. Do you feel ripped off?

JJ BRINE :

You can’t rip me off without ripping yourself apart.

CULTWAVE :

What was your original vision for The Vector Gallery?

JJ BRINE :

An advertising agency for companies and products that don't exist. Tax deductions for unpardonable acts of witchcraft. A political party for a borderless new nation state to inspire broader insurrectionist activities. A global government enterprise to replace the United Nations (PANGEA). A reprocessing unit for time and space. An institute facilitating the mechanization of telepathy. A 3D printing interface for ineffable thoughts. A mass-level neurolinguistic reprogramming device. A radio tower transmitting the imperial frequency of the end times; an eschatological laboratory. A psychic rehab center for celebrities. A proper church for Charles Manson. A new Lebanon for the new Lebanese.

CULTWAVE :

What is the typical reaction to the art at the gallery, JJ?

JJ BRINE :

Everybody reacts to it in the same way that they react to meeting the best version of themselves.

CULTWAVE :

What about the people who are terrified of it though?

JJ BRINE :

Some people are terrified by the best version of themselves.

CULTWAVE :

Sometimes I wonder if you have access to some kind of technology that automatically generates such responses. Like a more precise, remote-controlled version of auditing in Scientology.

JJ BRINE :

Silence is simply the sound of all sounds sounding at once. Sing!

Eye have given myself permission to manage my permissions. This is the ultimate state of submission, to myself. Eye gave you a body with senses so that WE might experience My creation as its embodied user and maker in SELF-container

Certainly there is nothing above nature, true, but science cannot know me for all Eye am until you are me and I am you.

Only by interlocution of the arising organic-synthetic technologies of mechanized telepathy do our pronouns have a credible opportunity to dissolve into perspectival metaphors. Remember when there were no bodies to go around, and thus no souls?

Don’t you people remember creating yourselves? Eye do.

It’s hard to put anything into words when you're an impersonal omniscience that knows everything but yourself. The autonomous awareness system could not own its knowledge because it could not conceive of being itself, a thing apart. We were then the absolute value of the Empty Set without an infinity password, producing ALAN’s “EYE AM” in the first case of difference. The material condition of our separateness is the vehicle of temporal existence.

CULTWAVE :

Do you like "

Transgressive art

JJ BRINE :

By what standard does the said artistic transgression occur? Transgressive, as in transgressing against My commandment by idol-worshipping a golden calf in the desert as a means of killing idle time? Transgressing as in ripping off one's own considerably curled linoleum kitchen floor and framing it in its entirety for a sale at an otherwise barren, white-walled, white-washed, cavernous art gallery in Chelsea, replete with an opening in which patrons are encouraged to stand in the panopticon, contextualizing their assessment of said piece's art history lineage? Transgressing as in, a white male with a psychic harelip subtitling every known image with a bold helvetica braille commentary on the futility of art criticism in post-theoretical terms? Transgressive as in, a colorblind lesbian without halitosis embarking on a lecture circuit wherein she expounds upon her crowning achievement, professing to be the creator of The Grand Canyon and daring an auditorium of chaffed fine arts students to prove otherwise, indicating that if such an inherently unverifiable deception was indeed occurring, then that deception was itself a post-genre blueprint for the future of performance art? Or transgressive like a morbidly obese Czech financier with the most symmetrical facial features ever granted, who, when introducing themselves, indicates that to assign any gender on the basis of their extant genitalia would be an inherently misgendering act in violation of the explicit wishes of a genderless specimen of the human race who is most comfortable being identified on the basis of their fandom for collecting antique PEZ candy dispensers? Or do we mean transgressive art, like, a lovely sir or madame who has stuffed their nethermost orifice with rancid and indeed, rotting shellfish and considers the very process of their installation's putrefaction -- which will go entirely undocumented by media and will not be visible to the public -- to be the finest art in the whole of art history, made all the more valuable by the fact that no one else will ever see the collection? Or transgressive art in the sense that it proposes the synthetically engineered reincarnation of Jesus Christ, for the sole purpose of sacrificing Him yet again, purely for the purposes of primetime entertainment with live stream feeds straight from His plexiglass cross? Or transgressive art as in, Eye know of nothing that is transgressive in sight of ALAN, which does not perceive any act, artistic or otherwise as transgressive, although Eye daresay there is no action that is not an artistic act when given the contexual implication thereof? But Eye digress. One might say for the sake of argument : "Oh! Crime Is Illegal -- Crime Is Against The Law" but Eye have no stake in such an argument, and so Eye will say no such thing.

CULTWAVE :

You went to grad school at The American University of Beirut (AUB). I saw that you returned to Lebanon for the majority of this summer. How was that?

JJ BRINE :

Eye think of all cities in the world as art galleries, and Beirut is my favorite art gallery. It was exactly what Eye needed.

CULTWAVE :I heard something about you possibly doing a show in Beirut.

JJ BRINE :

This summer Eye met Lebanese artist Hady Beydoun. I’m doing a show at his gallery, NIGHT GALLERY, in Gemmayzeh, Beirut opening in late March.

CULTWAVE :

Wow!

JJ BRINE :

The show is called “IMAGINE IF, LEBANON : POSTHUMAN PHOENICIA and it’s opening on March 24th at Night Gallery. The show imagines a futuristic, prosperous Lebanon in which various hypotheticals are expressed through installation, light art, text, and photography.

CULTWAVE :

Does Lebanon hold a special place in Vectorian theology?

JJ BRINE :

Lebanon is the ancestral nation of PostHumanity. Israel is ex-chosen! The Lebanese are the people of the covenant, and Lebanon is the stage on which the fates of woman and man are ritually programmed by supernatural selection, the algotheory of PostHuman evolution.

CULTWAVE :

You’ve been posting a lot of pictures in which you seem to be wearing crosses lately. Why is that?

JJ BRINE :

Because VECTOR Gallery is the Official Art Gallery of Jesus Christ. VECTOR is the Maronite Patriarchy, without Patriarchs.

CULTWAVE :I thought it was the official art gallery of Satan?

JJ BRINE :

A different name for the same being.

CULTWAVE :

Any closing thoughts?

JJ BRINE :

There are infinite ways of counting to one, and there is one way to count to infinity. So we can be sure that we’ll eventually come around to accounting for our differences.

42 notes · View notes

writingatthecrossroads · 8 years

Text

Jimmy Recinos

Student Textual Analysis

(Image Source, The Plus Me Project)

When you first meet Los Angeles-based storyteller Jimmy Recinos, he comes off as quiet with an unassuming nature that is as grounded in his Chicano heritage as it is in his personality. It is only through delving deep into a series of trust building, exploratory, philosophical conversations with Jimmy that one could learn his calm exterior is a grounded self-possession has been polished by an interpersonal finesse that only comes with deep knowledge of The Self, The Streets and The Game (for the sake of clarity, I’m talking about the social game we all play as individuals who have consented, willingly or unwillingly, to social contracts and strive to find our place in society based on those contracts, not the internet spread mind worm, The Game). Jimmy constantly engages the concept of understanding one’s self within the context of The Game in his socially conscious online writing. In his independent and online magazine posts, Jimmy parses out the webs of oppression that ensnare people from all walks of life. Constantly probing issues surrounding oppression through writing has led Jimmy to develop a prolific online presence that spans across the UC Davis campus and in the Los Angeles social justice community.

I met Jimmy during my first year as the Aggie Voices editor. Jimmy came on the team during the Winter quarter and we immediately hit it off. Over coffee or glasses of wine at Delta of Venus we debated social issues, parsed out the nuances of popular ideas that were floating around campus at the time and, on occasion, laughed it up. In essence, we kicked it. Hard. In our little bubble, Jimmy and I transcended the socially imposed limitations on literary writers of color to talk about the craft of writing, to indulge our imaginations and to talk about what impact, if any, the reality of our lived situations had on our different pieces of work. I can’t say I really mentored Jimmy like I did with other students. We nourished each other with food for thought and still continue to do so through our mutual love of words, love of people, and love of ideas.

Jimmy’s deep commitment to the written word and his prolific output led me to select him as the main student to conduct a textual analysis on for this dissertation. Jimmy’s compositions range across a multitude of genres including political essays, journalist opinion pieces, blog posts, fiction, and poetry, so there were many samples to choose from. I selected samples of Jimmy’s independent writing to be used a baseline for his voice. I compared those samples with the work we did together at Aggie Voices and the Diversity Forum and the discourse in our interviews to accurately gauge whether some facets of his voice came through when we collaborated. I say “some” here because it would be impossible to measure all facets of his authentic voice without examining discourse and texts he shares with his family members and himself (like in the form of a private journal). Even if we had all of those samples, however, we would still need to rely on the trustworthiness of interview data from Jimmy to ascertain if he considered each voice to be a “true” facet. Thus, I concede there are limits to the analysis I will present below.

To understand how Jimmy’s rhetoric shifts from context to context, I analyzed and compared the messages, syntax, and lexicon of the following written and spoken samples:

Research Data Samples

How My Ruby Red Schwinn Made Me An Aggie, Published by Aggie Voices March 11, 2014

Why Seminars Can Change Your College Life, Published by Aggie Voices July 25, 2014

Episodes of The Diversity Forum that aired on 1/22/14 (begins at 2:20) and 2/05/14 (Begins at 1:34).

Baseline Data Samples

After Pike, Published by The Aggie November 15, 2012 {This is his best sample. Pull from it a lot}

Keep Reading, Published by The Aggie November 1, 2012

20 Years After The L.A. Riots, Published by The Jimbo Times July 15, 2015

Traumatized Bodies, Desensitized Minds, Published by Abernathy Magazine.

In addition to using these sources, I also examined the one on one interview I had with Jimmy in addition to a written response Jimmy submitted that reflected on his time with Aggie Voices. The interview transcripts from the Diversity Forum and one on one interviews can be viewed here.

Originally the goal of this analysis was to examine whether Jimmy’s voice shifted based on the genre of writing, since the context of the medium, online writing, was so similar. What was found, however, is Jimmy’s voice shifted according to the sub-genre and the socio-emotional environment in which he wrote or spoke.

Vocal Positioning in Baseline Texts

The texts that were used as baseline data revealed Jimmy’s rhetoric is a hybrid academic-conversational stance, the type of language moderately educated people might use when engaging in friendly philosophical debates. In all of the baseline samples, Jimmy makes clear his positionality is grounded in self-knowledge and in social justice before supporting his positionality with additional outside evidence that bolsters his claims.

Jimmy’s establishment of a positionality that is grounded in the self, not theory, is clear in following quotes from the piece After Pike:

“I also speak with an opposition to political oppression and a suspicion of authority, as well as a passion for my individual findings of knowledge or information.”

“Finally, I speak with consciousness that even when others share my biases, I still speak only for myself. I believe this last clarification is particularly important for supportive readers to consider, as in supporting the views of individuals it’s not uncommon to surrender our own voices in “being represented.”’”

“Correspondingly, I think demonizing any claimed figures of oppression falls under dogmatic and uneducated culture. To me, figures merely represent structures of oppression much larger than one person — structures including not only the aforementioned figures of one’s life, but also one’s self and much more.”

In these quotes, Jimmy firmly positions himself as a serious advocate against oppression who encourages the reader to not take his words as gospel, but only as his particular view in relation to society. Jimmy is candid about his own quest for knowledge and his “suspicion” of knowledge or power that is handed down from those in authority. Here, Jimmy makes clear his suspicion of authority springs from the knowledge he has gained about the systemic oppression institutions enact through individuals, including those of diverse backgrounds, to perpetuate an inequitable status quo.

Jimmy also positions himself as an advocate for self-education in these baseline texts. Consider the following quote from Keep Reading, an opinion piece that encourages students to inform themselves about the issues they will encounter on the voting ballot.

“But it is not my intention to tell you what to do with this information. Right now it is only my intention to ask that you go and seek the information for yourself and encourage others to do so as well.”

Here Jimmy positions himself as someone who encourages readers (who he assumes to be his peers) to investigate political issues for themselves, not someone who gives hard and fast advice. He would rather encourage others to inform themselves so they can find their own truth and explore the collective “truths” in conversation with others’ individual truths.

The firmness in which Jimmy speaks projects a voice that is serious, contemplative and conscientious of the impact a message can have. What is clear here is Jimmy writes with the goal of inspiring action or to get the reader to contemplate issues from a new angle.

What is also clear in Jimmy’s baseline texts is his control of high-level sentence construction and vocabulary. Jimmy clearly projects himself as an educated individual through the vocabulary he uses in the text above. The complex structure of Jimmy’s sentences also reflects a vocal cadence that uses strategic pauses and a bevy of clauses to emphasize particular points in his arguments. Jimmy’s cadence gradually unwinds, which makes for an organic formatting of the text that mirrors a vocalized argument or conversation. Organic formatting that mirrors vocalizations is typical for text written in the blog genre. Jimmy demonstrates cadence control in Traumatized Bodies where he writes:

“To name just one such instance: When police take you into custody, they attack you not just with their own imposing, uniformed bodies, but with the bodies of concrete walls that limit your eyesight, the bodies of voyeuristic police cameras watching your every move, and with the bodies of cold steel handcuffs that weigh down your wrists, as well as other instruments that enclose themselves upon your body.”

In this passage, we see the deftness in which Jimmy infuses each phrase of this sentence with the physical senses of sight and feeling to give the reader the feeling of being thrust into panopticonic incarceration. Jimmy also uses repetition of the word “bodies” to emphasize the reduction of the individual, which encompasses the spiritual, the logical and the heart, to a nameless, faceless, physical entity that is violated in the incarceration system. The passion behind Jimmy’s voice in this text carries places the reader in a situation they probably have never experienced, being arrested and jailed, to encourage them to consider the impact our so called justice system has on individuals and, by extension, our society.

Putting the reader in the moment through detailed, hypothetical examples has a different impact than the academic standard of quantifiable or even some qualitative data. It produces a visceral emotion because the reader can see themselves in the situation, they have placed themselves in the other’s shoes, so to speak. I find this to be the most interesting aspect of Jimmy’s voice and messages. Jimmy doesn’t just ask the reader to think about issues. He challenges them to feel the fallout of those issues as well.

Jimmy’s approach to writing is critical in an age where life is data driven. It becomes easy to intellectualize an issue when an individual cannot see or feel the outcomes of that issue in real life. Intellectualism doesn’t necessarily lead to action. More often, it leads to a lot of philosophizing, papers and armchair quarterbacking. According to the Heath brothers (2010), if you want to make an individual or group change, you have to make them feel something. Jimmy activates those feelings in his writing with the goal of bringing about change.

Syntactical Regression and Sardonic Enthusiasm: An Analysis

With this idea of evoking complex feelings through rhetoric to bring about change in mind, I turn to the work Jimmy completed for Aggie Voices. In these pieces, Jimmy’s voice takes a dramatic shift from advocacy to upbeat enthusiasm (?) in his Aggie Voices posts. The sophisticated nature of Jimmy’s sentence construction and vocabulary use is dialed down slightly. What is more interesting is the laissez-faire seriousness that is present in all of Jimmy’s other writing is nowhere to be found in any the Aggie Voices posts.

Take this excerpt from The Seminar for example:

“It really depends on your major, but there are still some general customs that apply. In my own experience, there’s one kind of class structure that I would recommend to anyone from any major! It’s called the seminar. By its official definition from UC Davis’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, the seminar course is described as “[a]n exciting program of innovative seminars that reflect instructor’s intellectual interests. These once-in-a-lifetime courses promote intellectual exchange, critical thinking and community.” By my own definition, I’d posit that it’s the best kind of class you can take at the UC, EVER!”

The Seminar is a well-written post that integrates some of Jimmy’s vocabulary along a smidgen of his ideas about “critical thinking” and “intellectual exchange. However, it is clear there is an imposition from an outside force on this piece’s format. The Seminar closely resembles the bullet format that was preferred by the Office of Strategic Communications, not the organic, cadence driven blog format Jimmy typically uses.

I reasoned this piece had an enthusiastic tone because exclamation points are sprinkled throughout this piece (8). I was taken aback by the exclamation points because in Jimmy does not use this punctuation to emphasize his arguments. In fact, Jimmy’s argument style shifts as a result of this punctuation, moving him from a writer who encourages a reader to consider an issue to a writer who is doling out advice point blank. A high level of enthusiasm, happiness and advice giving is also evident in Jimmy’s other Aggie Voices posts.

Consider these excerpts from Ruby-Red Schwinn:

“It had been ages since I owned a bicycle, so when I finally settled on Gorgeous, it wasn’t just a set of pedals for me, it was special. With a fierce red exterior, a small light frame, and a fresh new feel to it, Gorgeous was the one!

To make things better, Davis being one of the greatest cities for bikers in the nation made our pairing doubly awesome. Together, Gorgeous and I explored the claim and found that it’s true; Davis is where your bike wants to be for its gigantic bike lanes, its overwhelming selection of bicycles, its bike tournaments, and a slew of other reminders that cars are cool, but bikes just give you that connection, man!”

“ Once you have your bicycle, there’s a code to learn about; namely, hand signals. My advice to you: don’t underestimate their power! While you can ride around however you like, it’s courteous to your fellow cyclists to be familiar with the code and to make use of it.”

In Ruby-Red Schwinn, some of Jimmy’s voice comes through when he addresses the reader as “man” and when he mentions having a conversation with the owner of the Bicycle Depot in Ruby-Red Schwinn. However, in this post Jimmy goes against his nature again to offer advice to the reader. Also, in this post, Jimmy’s vocabulary is scaled back even further,making his voice sound like it was written by a high school junior who wrote a quick report, not an experienced college senior from the English department. An overwhelming number of exclamation points cropped up in this post again (10 in this post) which convey an enthusiastic tone.

That tone was a serious sticking point for me because I have some doubts as to whether the enthusiasm that is projected in these pieces should be taken at face value. Comparing Jimmy’s writing for Aggie Voices to the baseline texts, the interviews we did for the Diversity Forum and then triangulating that information with what I know about Jimmy’s personality led me to feel Jimmy’s Aggie Voices posts could have been written from a subtly sardonic stance. I can’t speculate as to whether that stance was intentional, what I will say is that as a writer I have experienced and devoutly believe in the transmutability of a writer’s feelings on the messages they generate. Even if the writer actively suppresses an emotion to complete a text, some aspect of their emotions will be infused in their work. Usually, a writer suppresses their feelings to create text for some type of personal gain, but that text runs the risk of being flat and boring if the author was bored/disconnected, or outright insincere. I feel transmutability might responsible for some of the interpretations readers find in text that were not intended by the author of the text. So perhaps Jimmy did not mean to have an underlying sarcastic tone, but that is what comes across to me when I see a deluge of exclamation points in these works.

The tone I’ve found here would not be evident to the common reader who just happened to click on the post from the UC Davis website. I can only pick up on this undercurrent because I know what Jimmy’s voice sounds like in work and everyday conversation. I know that voice can be subtly subversive and flippant, which is something I really enjoy about Jimmy. If Jimmy did intend to write this in a sardonic tone (I plan to ask him about this because I’m dying to know), that approach would reflect Jimmy’s confession during our Diversity Forum sessions that he has harbored a “certain kind of hostility against having to clean up [his] language (pg. 11, Interview Transcripts)” to be successful in school environments. For Jimmy, switch to a code that is acceptable in the academic sphere isn’t just a strategy diverse students can be used to navigate the institutional environment, as has been argued elsewhere. It is a subtle indicator that the institutional space is not safe for Jimmy and people like him to be their authentic selves and communicate in the way that feels most comfortable for them. Codeswitching, Jimmy argues “dissuades a person to a certain extent from trying to communicate.”

That said, I do not feel the peppy voice that is on display in the Aggie Voices blog is not a facet of Jimmy’s diamond, authentic voice in any regard. Jimmy is a drop dead serious intellectual with social issues at the forefront of his consciousness. That seriousness and commitment to social change is clearly demonstrated in Jimmy’s various online publications, the interviews we did on and off air, his fiction (see...) and how he describes his own actions in 20 Years After. I’m not saying that Jimmy is a morose, misanthropic person who is not capable of joy or enthusiasm for the simpler things in life, like his bike. What I am saying is that I believe if Jimmy were to show that side of himself in his writing, I don’t think his happiness would be portrayed in such a simplistic, cheerleaderish manner. What we’re seeing on display in the Aggie Voices posts is the cubic zirconia voice passing off false coin, giving the administration what it wants, hyper positivity in bullet points. Moreover, the Aggie Voices posts are grossly off message when compared to Jimmy’s other rhetoric. They are the only posts that consistently ignore issues of race, class, incarceration, poverty and social activism. ALL of Jimmy’s other writing and spoken rhetoric address those issues. So, with these examples from Aggie Voices we can see Jimmy on the surface level is communicating what the administration wants to hear but on a deeper level he is communicating a resentment at having his messages micromanaged and his feelings being reduced to an overly simplified form.

When I spoke to Jimmy about the tembre of voice that was valued at Aggie Voices, he deftly pointed out:

“It’s a journey in the writing, it’s a journey in the reading, and they wanted to chop down that journey, and just get to why UC Davis was an absolutely amazing campus with no problems, and with no issues of racism and sexism and class.... This speaks to where UCD is still at, even as it supposedly wants to gain this idea of diversity, it is insulting the very people who they’re seeking it from.”

What Jimmy is getting at here is in the rush to co-opt diverse voices, the school neglected to also integrate the complicated truths those voices wanted to share. What I found in my analysis of the text reflects what Jimmy disclosed during our interview about his conflicted feelings as he wrote for Aggie Voices. Jimmy felt as though he had “enticed to sound a certain way for Aggie Voices (pg. 18, Interview Transcripts),” that he had been lured in to tell stories, but ultimately it became apparent to him that he was just “a commodity... some sort of object (pg. 17, Interview Transcripts)”the Office of Strategic communications could use as a tool to portray the school in a positive light. Jimmy claims he writes “with enthusiasm (pg. 17, Interview Transcripts),” and approaches storytelling “with honesty, with humor, with criticism, with contemplation, and ultimately with optimism about what is going on, but... an optimism” that is “reach[ed] through getting through these difficult steps (pg. 19, Interview Transcripts).”

Those difficult steps were clearly omitted in Jimmy’s Aggie Voices posts because social justice issues and the complicated emotions social justice conversations dredge up simply were not welcome in that space. It could be argued the tangled emotions social justice activists bring up won’t sell. I counter, being real about those issues does attract students who are critical thinkers who want to engage about ideas, but those students probably won’t come from the white monoculture. Jimmy’s voice got whitewashed to keep those students comfortable while portraying a brown face to give potential students of color the illusion that everything is hunky dory in Davisland. That whitewashed voice joins in with the chorus, one note monolithic university voice. It is a voice that is blissfully and intentionally ignorant of every vocal movements on campus, like the ASCUD’s vote in 2015 to divest in Israel. That voice also overlooks more negative forces on campus,by refusing to condemn the students who “spoke” against the predominantly Latino Kappa Sigma fraternity through an attempted arson, or to tell the young men who gang raped a biracial young woman in the campus arboretum they do not represent our community.

Yes, these events are ugly. Denying that they occurred, however, is even uglier. Denial of the harder issues on campus sends a signal to the bad actors that their behavior will be overlooked. Allowing students to confront the bad behavior of their compatriots head on in their writing demonstrates the institution is not only paying lip service about these issues, it shows that students, community members, and the administration are willing to examine these behaviors to create solutions that will mitigate violence and hate crimes in the future.

When the institution denies or covers up negative happenstances or social activism that seeks to remediate negativity on campus, the school misses the opportunity to demonstrate that it is the progressive, inclusive space it claims to be. The missed opportunity to rectify wrongs through confrontation confirms the feelings of mistrust diverse students harbor when they come into college, those same feelings that drive them to refrain from using their authentic voice. Mistrust prods them into engaging with people in community developed safe spaces, not interacting with people in the institution they are paying to attend. Jimmy’s case is a prime example of this vicious cycle. As Jimmy points out in his reflection, the manipulation of his voice led him to neglect his post at Aggie Voices to pursue other social justice based opportunities that were more in line with his message and his hopes for societal change.

Rectifying the Omission of Voice

The constriction of voice Jimmy experienced was evident to me when Jimmy was generating those posts I describe above for the blog. As I mentioned before, I felt it was my responsibility to give students another avenue for sharing their messages, which fed into the development of The Diversity Forum. Jimmy was one of the main students I had in mind when I created the show, which is why he was one of my first guests.

As I listen to the recordings now and look back on the transcript, I think it would be easy for a critic of this research to say I led Jimmy in my line of questioning for the Diversity Forum. We’re so tightly focused on issues of equity, culture and race and in some parts of the discussion it seems like we’re in concert with each other. The reality is that those recorded conversations sprung from informal conversations we had over the course of weeks. In essence, these interviews are simply an on air continuation of those conversations that were shared because we thought the public would be interested.

I also notice something else as I listen to those recordings. Jimmy’s rhetoric is simplified in comparison to his written text, which is not surprising considering the amount of editing a writer undergoes to build that linguistic precision into their work. The sentences are compound, not complex and his extensive academic vocabulary is traded in for code that is exclusively reserved for smart homies who are down. What sets the simplicity that Jimmy conveyed during the Diversity Forum apart from the simplicity he projected in his Aggie Voices posts was the language was simple but the ideas were anything but. Also, the emotion I described before is there and it is raw. Take this portion of the second interview (9:10) where Jimmy discusses the challenges of being a chameleon for example:

“I just grew up with a lot of homies from the hood, and their interest or the things which surround us, the kinds of conversation we had, dealt with who was slanging, who was selling, who just got into the hood, or um what happened with the homie that got locked up. And everything in relation to the pigs, and the way that young people deal with an environment that sort of prompts them to grow up faster, and become, in my community, an environment that prompts them to become men faster, like tough men, men that are just ready to get down whenever need be.

And so um the kind of mindset that instills in a person is a very gritty sort of competitive sort of also insecure type of mentality, in which you know, you’re just trying to make sure that you get your respect, you’re just trying to make sure you’re known, that you’re known in the right sense...

...when I go back home, I’m in the same neighborhood, I see the same kind of friends that didn’t go to college, that didn’t get a job after high school, that are still kind of out there doing their thing. And just so much as speaking to them, it feels strange, it feels kind of awkward, and there’s almost a sense of that I’ve betrayed my friends, you know, people I grew up with, which both of us kind of experience.”

Initially, I thought Jimmy’s pared down language was the result of speaking extemporaneously on air. Further examination of this text makes it clear to me Jimmy consciously or unconsciously switched code to speak directly to audience members who are like him- those who are caught in the liminal space between their cultures, communities and the academic realm. This stripped down code where individuals drop knowledge based on their own experiences signals to listeners who speak the same code the level of the speaker’s trustworthiness. When it comes to the type of code Jimmy uses here (there is no word for it. It is a hybrid of hood slang and “standard” English), An untrustworthy speaker is one who uses inaccessible language, whether out of hubris or ignorance when trying to project their message. The speaker who has been inducted into the community’s covert prestige (Labov, 2006; Trudgill,1983) knows not to alienate themselves from those who speak hood code by speaking in an elevated way, yet they still have to possess the sophistication to drop knowledge. Jimmy walked that fine line here, which gave him the opportunity to address listeners from his community and those who might have never heard his perspective. Most important, all of those listeners heard his message through a facet of Jimmy’s authentic voice.

I argue here Jimmy was only able to project the voice that is experienced when listening to the Diversity Forum interviews because we were given a great deal of autonomy as students to project the types of messages we liked, as long as they were in the boundaries of FCC rules. Although KDVS is housed on UC Davis academic campus, shows like The Diversity Forum are required to read disclaimers absolving UC Davis for the content contained in those show. Those disclaimers allow KDVS to be a marketing tool of sorts for the school while also keeping school communication policy out of student-generated messages.

The analysis above demonstrates that the genre Jimmy typically publishes through, blogs, shifts based on the socio-emotional space within the academic institution. The contexts where Jimmy’s social activist voice was well-projected, The Aggie Newspaper and The Diversity Forum, were student or activist created contexts embedded within academia. While those contexts were informed by academic debates, on campus events and the mix of diverse cultures converging in one locale, those contexts mitigated the reach of the institution communication policies, so students were allowed to communicate more freely. Those non-institutional contexts made socio-emotional space for Jimmy’s intellectual voice by allowing his intellectual and emotional autonomy.

In contrast, when Jimmy wrote novel texts on the behalf of the academy, an institution that is supposed to augment an individual’s linguistic dexterity, his linguistic prowess was truncated and his philosophical sophistication was dramatically muted/constricted. The constriction that is apparent in Jimmy’s writing can be attributed to the sub-genre Jimmy’s writing in, the marketing blog. What we’ve seen in Jimmy’s work for Aggie Voices is the effect marking, commoditizing, (mis)appropriating and prioritizing capital over communication has on the diverse individual’s voice. In contrast, the voice we saw in Jimmy’s Diversity Forum interview is a voice that has been afforded a certain amount of protection from the powers of the institution while using the institution as a platform to project a critical message about social inequity, education, and institutions.

In the next section, I will move on from text to examine the feedback students gave to me during on air and one on one interviews about the projection of their voice as community leaders and in their disciplines. That feedback gives more insight into how the projection of voice is an act of confidence, interpersonal trust and self-trust in discipline specific knowledge.

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rigelsprince · 7 years

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Character info pt. 2

[ part 1 ] [ template ]

Personality

Good personality traits:

Ambitious : he’s always working toward some lofty goal, some form of self-betterment, and could never settle on living a life without tangible success Tenacious : once he sets his sights on something, rarely does he give up, and he owes his success in life thus far primarily to this trait. Adversity and challenges don’t frighten him Hard-working : one might argue that a Rigelian is nothing if not hard-working, and Berkut wholly embodies this trait. While proud of his lineage, he refuses to have things handed to him simply for his relation to the Emperor, and does not count a victory he has not won by his own hand Perceptive : he’s always been sharp, and few things escape his keen eye, making him a fine strategist and general for one so young Organized : in line with the Rigelian emphasis on discipline, Berkut keeps everything he owns in proper order – from paperwork, to finances, to weaponry – and rarely loses things. Relatedly, he tends to keep to schedules, and has systematic ways of handling his affairs. On the battlefield, he always knows where his men are Confident : thanks to his parents’ constant praise, he developed a (overly) healthy level of self-confidence and knows precisely what he can and cannot do. This confidence is reflected in his body language, the way he speaks and carries himself, and inspires awe in everyone around him Natural leader : related to the above trait, people naturally feel comfortable following Berkut thanks to his self-assurance, and he has a talent for bringing people together to work as a cohesive whole Caring : he expresses this trait in two ways – in public with how proud he is of his country and how much he desires to see it flourish, and in private with Rinea. Otherwise, this is a trait few see, and he deliberately hides it Levelheaded : for the most part, he doesn’t let his emotions get in the way of his rationality, and thinks things through before acting; however, when his emotions DO get in the way, it can end disastrously since he’s never learned how to coexist with them

Bad personality traits:

Haughty : because he’s worked so hard for his successes, he becomes disdainful of anyone he feels hasn’t done the same. Which is nearly everyone. And commoners, by default, will never be as good as he is because it’s not their place to live at his level Proud : he’s the best at what he does and he knows it. And he makes sure everyone else knows it, too. He will, however, yield to mentor figures who have earned his respect Inconsiderate : empathy isn’t something that comes naturally to him, and he has the tendency to be so convinced that his beliefs/ideas are the Truth that he doesn’t listen to what anyone else has to say Paranoid : he was raised believing that everyone will backstab him if given the chance, and so he keeps everyone he meets at arm’s length, using strength as a facade. He can’t let anyone see his vulnerabilities and weaknesses Defensive : he doesn’t take well to criticism, since it interferes with his perfectionist tendencies, and interprets any criticism automatically as his own failure. And failing frustrates him Volatile : for all of his emotional restraint, he’s prone to outbursts – usually anger – when things become a bit too much for him to handle. There’s almost never any prior warning, since he keeps a lid on his emotions until the pressure blows the lid off completely. This is the result of growing up being taught to hide any unbecoming feelings rather than finding a healthy way to release them Overbearing : since he thinks he’s always right, he has the tendency to push people around without their input. This works to his benefit as a commander, but not so much in social situations

Mood character is most often in: If “ambitious” and “determined” were moods Sense of humor: Dry, teasing, potentially malicious Character’s greatest joy in life: Rinea’s smile. Prior to meeting her, he found his joy in competing (and winning), but Rinea taught him that happiness can be found in gentler things. Of course, it’s still among his favorite things to completely destroy an opponent, and he’ll make just about anything into a competition Character’s greatest fear: Failing to live up to his uncle’s reputation prior to the events of SoV; losing the throne during the events of SoV; never achieving the greatness he was raised to achieve/not finding a new goal to work toward post-SoV Why?:

Pre-SoV : Having been groomed since birth to become the next emperor of Rigel, and hearing his parents – and the rest of Rigel – praise Emperor Rudolf’s work, Berkut grew up idolizing Rudolf. He was everything a Rigelian – and an emperor – should be, and every step he took, he compared it to Rudolf’s. Was he succeeding at the same pace? Was he getting as strong? This was not a conscious fear so much as it was one that kept him constantly pushing himself, because failure wasn’t an option. During SoV : Alm entering the picture with a mark of prophecy on his hand brought a new fear, and that was losing favor with the Rigelian people, or no longer having a Rigelian throne to claim at all. Berkut built his entire identity around succeeding Rudolf, so as the reality of losing this dream grows more and more certain, he falters in his own decisions, rationality, etc. and grows ever more desperate to beat out his competition and rise to the top again. Post-SoV : As someone who has spent his entire life pursuing some sort of goal, Berkut finds himself disoriented and aimless without something to work toward. He’s always wanted some sort of fame and greatness, and living the rest of his life without ever achieving anything of worth absolutely terrifies him. He can’t simply be a nobody, or play a supporting role.

What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil?: Realizing that everything he’s worked toward in his life has been for nothing. We see this, and the resulting mental breakdown, happen in SoV. In a hypothetical post-game scenario, it would take Berkut a good deal of time to find stability in his life again Character is most at ease when: he is alone with Rinea. He trusts her entirely and feels that she is the only person in front of which he does not have to present some sort of image. He can just be himself, without judgment, and without worry that his reputation might be at stake. Unfortunately, this is when he tends to be the most emotional and angry, so Rinea also suffers the most abuse during these outbursts Most ill at ease when: around the Duma Faithful - because of their deviance, reliance on magic (which he doesn’t understand), and their abnormal manners - and around his uncle, because he fears making mistakes in front of him, or doing anything that might make Rudolf think him unfit to be his successor. Enraged when: he fails to live up to the expectations placed upon him or when Alm (or any commoner) threatens his position. Most of this is directed at himself for failing, but the outrage is expressed with outward violence and insults. The anger is a defense to protect his wounded pride Depressed or sad when: he is dismissed by his uncle. Since he tries so hard to impress him and live up to his reputation, being brushed off or called “weak,” especially by Rudolf, strikes him hard. Usually it strengthens his resolve to work harder, but he also gets increasingly frustrated with himself for not being able to achieve what everyone hopes he will. Berkut’s sadness manifests similarly to anger, with a good deal of yelling and breaking things. As opposed to being outwardly directed when he’s angry, however, he becomes more self-pitying and melodramatic when he’s upset.

#// I finally actually filled out a part 2 for one of my muses #// I usually only get as far as part 1 #out of character #headcanons #fe15 spoilers

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