February 9, 2010
This comic is hilarious. It’s also entirely wrong.
No no. I really do get it. No one cares about your dog, your girlfriend’s favorite muffin, or which character you slept with in Mass Effect 2. I understand that that’s INCREDIBLY banal information. It’s boring and mundane and no single piece is useful in, really, any way.
But see, that’s the point. Twitter is not a blog. It has a 140 character limit. You -can’t- hash over the mysteries of the universe in that space. So can we all stop pretending like we expect to? Twitter is a social networking tool. It’s a nice way to announce things. It’s a better way to smirk and share experience. It’s not a journal.
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Posted by Genghis Philip
September 25, 2008
Before we can begin to understand transparency (or even really define it), we first need to understand disciplinary systems. I know, that connection makes no sense from the outset, but I promise it is crucially important. It will become abundantly clear in a moment, but why it’s a big deal to become transparent—to volunteer our privacy away—has a whole lot to do with how we are watched.
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10 Comments | Critical Theory, Transparency | Tagged: Bentham, Foucault, Genghis's Thesis, Panopticon, Transparency | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
April 15, 2008
This entry is written as a response to Rebecca Traister’s “Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!”1 Before you read my response, I highly suggest you go and read Traister’s entire Salon.com article: it is well-written and reasonably argued. I take issue with only a small portion of it, and wish to clarify other bits
That out of the way, Traister makes an argument that the extremely enthusiastic (some would say bombastic) support of Senator Obama among young male Democrats marginalizes women who follow Senator Clinton. In order to avoid seeming to vote for Hillary “just because she’s a woman,” young female Dems are rhetorically coerced into (at least publicly) singing the praises of Barack Obama.
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6 Comments | American Politics, Critical Theory | Tagged: barack obama, Clinton, Discourse, Feminism, hillary clinton, Obama, Rebecca Traister, Salon, Sexism, Traister | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
April 9, 2008
As my last entry makes clear, I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. Over at his vlog, a recent episode focuses on pigeonholing and identity—in G.V.’s case, how strange people find it that he is a Wine Guy as well as a Tech Guy. Gary says that we, as a society, feel that people “need to be one dimensional, [. . .] one trick ponies.” I take issue with this idea. We proceed as though most people have one specialty, because that’s what most interactions call for.
The better people know each other, the more robust their understanding of each other becomes—but it is never complete. So while people who only know Gary V. as an internet wine celebrity will be surprised by his active role in the web world, his friends (and even attentive fans) will expect it. This isn’t a fault on the part of those who have only a casual knowledge of Gary. It’s how identity works.
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2 Comments | Critical Theory, Identity | Tagged: Gary Vaynerchuk, Judith Butler, Identity, Performativity, Performative, Gender Trouble, Web 2.0, Panprojection | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
March 22, 2008
As a theorist, I’m obviously suspicious of the “great men” view of history. It ignores social construction of identity (something I base my entire life philosophy upon) as well as any kind of cultural or economic causes for events. I do, however, have a soft spot for the spirit of leadership.
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5 Comments | American Politics, Critical Theory, Rhetoric | Tagged: augustus, barack obama, cicero, election 2008, hilary clinton, leadership, rome, yes we can | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
February 13, 2008
Boy, but do we love us some zombies. I’ve just finished reading World War Z by Max Brooks and am absolutely in awe of the novel’s poignancy. Reviews of the book will go on and on about all the reasons I loved it, so I’ll skip those and focus on this—Brooks’s novel is so compelling a read that I have to remind myself that I am not simply awaiting an outbreak. It’s not only unlikely, it’s just fiction. I’m clever, pretty well educated, and good looking reasonable. I shouldn’t have to keep telling myself zombies aren’t real. But I do—and I think it’s pretty obvious as to why. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Critical Theory | Tagged: Headshot, Max Brooks, Nazis, Red Vs. Blue, Wolfenstein, World War Z, Youtube, Zombies | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
February 9, 2008
Protesters in Berkeley, California have pushed a motion through local government that declares military recruiters ‘unwelcome’ and ‘unwanted.’ The motion was directed at a local Marine Recruiting office—located just off of the UC Berkeley campus. However, the phrasing of the item says that ‘recruiters,’ if they choose to stay, do so as ‘intruders.’
You can see the CNN article here: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/02/07/berkeley.protests/index.html
The rhetoric flying between sides is absurd. I’m certainly no supporter of our wars abroad, but really, Berkeley? Really? The United States Military is not entitled to occupy a legally obtained piece of property? The protesters in the CNN article cite the recruiters lying and misinforming young recruits—something I concur with. Military recruitment is a testament to what persistent patriotic persuasion can accomplish. Service is also, in many cases, made out to be something it’s not. Still, this means that the recruiting center is no longer welcome? The town of Berkeley is effectively painting the Marines as an occupying force on American soil.
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Leave a Comment » | American Politics, Rhetoric | Tagged: Berkeley, Message Control, Semper Fi | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
February 5, 2008
[This piece was originally given as a symposium on April 19, 2006]
By now, the blue jean should be tired cliché—overdone, co-opted by knock-offs, made into caricature. The personality that can be packed into a pair of jeans has made denim the uniform of casual. Blue jeans have joined America’s background noise: the word ‘jeans’ can even substitute for ‘pants’. It is their omnipresence that makes them interesting. Like every single thing we wear, jeans encode messages. They are so common, though, that we often ‘read’ them unself-consciously.
Our clothes talk to the world around us. With what we wear, we announce our allegiances, our moods, even our body image issues. When Umberto Eco says he is ‘speaking through’ his clothes,1 he (of course) does not mean that he replaces verbal language with the discourse of dress. He’s drawing attention to the idea that other people see what we’re wearing as part of us, no matter how much we try to play down the importance.
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5 Comments | Fashion Studies, Full Papers, Semiotics | Tagged: Jeans, Culture of Fear | Permalink
Posted by Genghis Philip
Genghis Philip
Gordon Levine