The babies

You ever think about the life that someone born around now will have?
It isn't going to end with us. We have to leave them something. It should be something good.

It isn't that complicated. In the past all species have developed until they became extinct. Because they couldn't survive. Some of these we killed. Others died because of ecological changes. One of the things that distinguishes humans from other animals is the impact we have on the environment. A wolf might eat a deer, but damn thing isn't dumping poison into the oceans.

We do this. Because we have to have stuff. Because we are selfish and live for our own pleasure, ignoring the impact it has on anyone else.

A lot of people have talked about how to make the world a better place, but beyond sin, beyond oppression, beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond whatever you want to call the bad in the world is the selfishness of evolution. That's what capitalism is: evolution. We compete to see who gets to reproduce. Or whose ideas get to reproduce themselves. Humans, see, can think about shit and figure it out. So we come up with ideas and those reproduce themselves in culture so we can become selves who fight to survive. So our DNA can get from here to there.

It is culture that keeps us from being condemned to the fate of all previous species who have had their day and died. We can talk all we want about the fallen civilizations of the past, but truth is the Roman Empire lives on in the U.S. and it will live on in China or whomever survives us. As a species we've only been around a little while, but we've managed to transgress our temporality because of our ability to communicate. A dinosaur could only warn his immediate contemporaries of dangers, could only pass on her acquired knowledge to immediate contacts. We can learn from those who have been dead for thousands of years.

People die. Culture doesn't. It just mutates.

We need to make sure there are hosts for it in the future. Because it is all we can leave of the past.

mm

Think with me please.

Just read the words, don't think too much about what they mean.

A point becomes a line becomes a circle becomes a sphere becomes time becomes thought becomes language becomes consciousness becomes culture becomes reality becomes cosmos becomes God becomes a point.

Now think about each of these words.

A point becomes a line becomes a circle becomes a sphere becomes time becomes thought becomes language becomes consciousness becomes culture becomes reality becomes cosmos becomes God becomes a point.

Long ago before you remember running your eyes across these words the codes to make you were scattered all around the world. Right now you’re thinking, the primary concern in your consciousness is trying to figure out what the fuck I’m talking about, because you imagine there is someone on the other end of these words and they might have something to tell you worth knowing. The words you hear in your head so many of them get lost before you can utter them.

Or write them.

Floating back into the sea of signifiers. This is the sea that makes up our consciousness. As it flows over the sands of the shore that makes up the self. It shapes it. Ideology. Language. You learn it to shape the seas, to have some control over the flows, so you can have control over yourself. And your ability to shape it is what limits your will to power.

Because you want to be affirmed.

You want to know that you’re not the only one who sees how crazy it is. And you want to join with others. But in that is a body, made up of cells. The light from the screen triggers synapses in your brain. The most complicated thing in the universe. Exchange of energy. Time is your experience of the expansion of the universe. The reason things go in this order is because you are moving from here to there. In multiple dimensions. We directly experience only four, and those poorly. Yet people try to pretend that what they can understand of that is all there is.

The reason there are neurotransmitters sending bioelectricalchemical signals across your synapses is the same reason there is communication. Transfer of energy. The reason humans communicate is because the pattern for us is a double-helix structure made of nucleotides that alternate in a sequence of G A T C to form a pattern that tells your cells to make proteins to make you a human instead of, say, a dolphin. As the universe expands this pattern tends to complicate itself as the energy from the big bang is expended.

The DNA in a single cell has the pattern for the proteins that align themselves in the brain you think is you, it’s what you’re using right now to think about this.

Humans make shit to keep their thoughts trapped, so that they can spread to more people. First we invented speech, but we had to move around in spacetime so to make our thoughts able to move beyond the immediate air we invented writing. So on and now we have the Internet. Huzzah, more people can read this than even existed 2000 years ago. Jesus.

So we developed language to help DNA get from here to there, to keep the expressions of the immanent expanding with the universe. To make room for God. Who is always coming.

The reason we have hierarchy: because our DNA is making survival machines, competing for exchange of energy. It’s called life. It expresses itself as libido and manifests itself in many forms. But our DNA also wants to replicate itself by dominating the DNA of others, whether we are men or women, because we all have “dominant” and “recessive” genes. That doesn’t make the genes better or worse than each other, it just means they contain the programming for different things. And the new combinations make new survival machines that then want to spread their DNA forward through the aeons.

The DNA is more tied to females, though, because it is through them that mitochondrial DNA is transmitted, and that’s what makes our cells being alive possible. That’s why we eat, shit, fuck and kill. Just more going through the system. That’s why we have ideology, an emanation from the DNA that replicated itself in language so make survival machines that could work together to become more complicated. So oppression is an expression of the domination at work on the genetic level. We make up consciousness, culture, society and all this other shit to become another organism. So the mind doesn’t die with the brain, because the mind allows the body to survive, which allows the DNA to replicate itself.

Because:

A point becomes a line becomes a circle becomes a sphere becomes time becomes thought becomes language becomes consciousness becomes culture becomes reality becomes cosmos becomes God becomes a point.

Because you're just trying to get from here to there. Because the universe exploded into being. Energy going from here to there. Just as the DNA in your body comes from your parents and goes to your kids, the thoughts in your head are the ocean of signifers beating against the shore of your material existence.

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Feminism and agency

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
-Audre Lorde

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
-Sally Kempton

I somehow managed to do all the readings for my Feminist Theory and Rhetorical Criticism class this week and it has made me think a lot about things I've had an ongoing discourse with others about for the past two years. One thing I consistently find is that I have a real problem with the ideology of individualism so common to our society, because I think it's essentially an appeal to selfishness and I'm kind of a Buddhist so that's not cool to me. This shows up in our articles this week and is nicely responded to by Barbara Biesecker and Dana Cloud (who, along with Josh Gunn, make up the trio of communication scholars I think are usually right).

Here's where I'm coming from:

I approach these problems from a critical perspective that views partiarchy, racism and capitalism as all part of the same hegemonic order. My theoretical perspective is informed by Marxist, psychoanalytic, Foucauldian and Deluezian theory. Huzzah.

So: I think appeals to selfishness are just another way of interpellating us as consumers. Which means we're colonized.

I believe that one of the ways 21st century hegemony works is by telling us that it's ok to objectify ourselves and others, thus robbing us of a position as a speaking subject. Objects don't have agency. Subjects do. Sort of (as subjects are formed by discourse). I believe this is part of our colonialization under late capitalism, where our identities are commodified and we're just another product on the market. From a psychoanalytic perspective, we become fetishes and fetishize(?) others to maintain them as "other" and reconstruct our identities as paranoid egos. Love has no place in hegemony. Love is consubstantial and breaks down barriers. We need barriers to sell shit.

So like, there are these theories of "empowerment" that I believe are just ways of buying into patriarchy from a different angle. They tell you others are selfish if their lives don't revolve around you. That others only have value inasmuch as they exist to serve you in some way. Doesn't anyone else see the irony there? This shit runs deep and many people probably don't even know it informs their perspectives. Once feminism deterritorialized sexuality, for example, capitalism responded by reterritorializing it.

Feminism reclaims sexuality by saying women can enjoy sex without being whores. Partiarchy/capitalism responds by saying "ok, but sex is still an economic exchange, whether you're a man or a woman. Women, you can have the currency, but you're still going to have to buy or sell." so we go out to the club and buy each other drinks to get each other drunk to fuck and think we're empowered (but you can't play a playa!). By reifying the mind/body binary and trying to seperate emotion from sexuality, capitalism wins because others just become another object to consume (also: you, mass-produced and marketed. We'll take your surplus).

Your body and mind are the same damn thing!

If you don't approach relationships from a basis of equality you're just becoming another tool in the system. If you think empowerment comes from manipulating others, it's because there are "outposts in your head." I don't think true empowerment comes at the expense of another. I think if you try to use the master's tools you end up becoming part of the problem. So there's that.

In Foss and Griffin's article about invitational rhetoric they say one of the fundamental principles of feminism is "self-determination" and my question is "what the fuck does that mean?" Does this assume an independent, rational subject? This, again, is a capitalist construction that makes us love our oppressors. We do what they want thinking it's what we want because, you know, we're colonized. Are we supposed to ignore the discourses that construct our subjectivity? Are we supposed to ignore the structures in our society that constrain our agency? Believing that if we do what we want we're doing what's best? What?!! What about other people?

There's a whole industry dedicated to constructing the illusion of self. "Self-help" books, "The Secret," "The Game" etc are all there to make us think more about what we want than what is good for society as a whole. Because if we start thinking socially we might question capitalism and they don't want that. But these are all parts of the discourses that construct our subjectivity and constrain our agency by determining our desires. You do what you want because it's what they tell you you want. Fuck everyone else. That's fucked up.

My answer of course is the doctrine of 'No-Self' and the Four Noble Truths. Desire causes suffering. That kind of thing. It is desire that chains us to our oppressors and makes us love it, making us another cog in a machine that is destroying the environment and keeping women, GLBT folks, people of color and the poor marginalized.

Which leads to another point I wonder about. In my master's program there were a couple people who insisted (by fiat, not really making an argument but saying it as if it's true and if I didn't believe it I was oppressing them) THAT only those on the margin can REALLY see the system. So automatically, I as a white middle-class male heterosexual should be taken as reinforcing the system with everything I say because, um, I'm not sure why. While I recognize that it took a lot for me to start (START) to understand my own privilege, I also have to wonder if my position as "master" doesn't give me some kind of insight into the master's tools. And perhaps on how they work on the colonized. Because while I obviously am wrong about a lot of stuff, I recognize that I can be seen as the "colonizer" rather than the "colonized." So, like, I'm sorry, but sometimes I look at people and just wonder how they can't be aware of how they are embodying angloamerican hegemony or whatever. I'm just saying. This isn't an idea I'm attached to. It's just something I've been wondering about.

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(You Drive Me) Crazy: The Rhetorical Construction of Britney Spears's "Breakdown"

This is my paper proposal for Basic Rhetorical Criticism with Josh Gunn:

Britney Spears has spent much of her young life within the popular gaze. Over the past 10 years through music videos, concert appearances and five successful albums, Britney’s image has become an industry. At the start of her career she was sold as a fetish of the virgin/whore dichotomy, playing the “sexy schoolgirl” role in her first video for “…Baby One More Time.” While her more talented colleagues (Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake come to mind) rely on actual vocal ability to sell records, Britney has become one of the most successful female artists of all time through a combination of a catchy (manufactured/insipid) sound and constant popular attention. However, for the past few years Britney’s personal strife has fueled her public persona as she’s undergone what Vanessa Gigoridadis (2008) calls “the most public downfall of any star in history.”

In the period from 2006 to early 2008 Britney’s music took a backseat to her stints in rehab, “accidental” crotch shots and custody battles with ex-husband Kevin Federline (K-Fed). As Grigoridadis (2008) writes, “She’s the canary in the coal mine of our culture, the most vivid representation of the excess of the past decade.” As a celebrity whose image is manufactured for public consumption, Britney Spears’s public “breakdown” has also been extensively documented, raising questions about 21st century American culture: “She's the perfect celebrity for America in decline: Like President Bush, she just doesn't give a fuck, but at least we won't have to clean up after her mess for the rest of our lives” (Grigoridadis, 2008). Just when it seemed she might make a musical comeback with her successful 5th album, disturbingly titled Blackout, she gave a performance at the 2007 MTV Awards that might lead one to wonder if she even knew she was there. Speculation about her psychological condition came to a climax early in 2008 when she was taken to the hospital by the LAPD, leading to rumors that she had attempted suicide and might be suffering from bipolar disorder.

Britney’s construction as a celebrity and the discourses about her mental illness raise several questions. What is it about Britney Spears that fascinates Americans? Why do we seem to take so much pleasure in her suffering? How might the commodification of her identity interact with the rhetorical construction of her mental illness? Is the Britney we know a cultural construct? If so, is her crazy really a communication of our cultural craziness? Did we drive her crazy? Finally, what does it say about America that we would do this to a human being? Though this analysis interrogates the discourses surrounding Britney’s “breakdown”, as a primary rhetorical artifact I have chosen as a text the South Park episode “Britney’s New Look” that first aired on March 19, 2008.

In the typical style of South Park, “Britney’s New Look” takes a satirical look at a cultural phenomenon while also driving home a clear message, which I intend to unpack in my rhetorical criticism. Within the first five minutes of the episode Britney, who has taken refuge in South Park, is driven to blow off her face with a shotgun when the boys join in on the paparazzi frenzy and break into her hotel room to take a picture of her. Through the miracle of animation, Britney survives and continues to be the focus of the episode despite not having most of her head. The media and her managers seem oblivious to her suffering as they force her to gargle her way into the studio and continue to degrade and humiliate her. The boys, however, realize the error of their ways and try to help Britney escape the constant attention.

Butters and later Stan argue that treating Britney the way we do is inhuman and that we should just leave her alone. When she attempts suicide in the episode, the message is clear: we made her do it. The boys try to take her to the North Pole, but are unable to escape because of the plot that becomes the metaphor for the message of the episode. Britney can’t escape because we need her to die. In the episode, her creation as a celebrity and subsequent downfall is explained as part of a convoluted sacrificial ritual that America engages in to insure a good harvest. The episode climaxes with a crowd gathering around Britney and photographing her to death. In an ominous conclusion, the citizens of South Park congratulate each other on the good harvest but pause to watch a celebrity gossip show talking about the newest teen sensation: Miley Cyrus. The implication is oops, we’re doing it again. Though Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s argument that we create and destroy celebrities for a good harvest is satirical, the question they ask I think is an important one because of what it says about 21st century U.S. American culture:

What have we done to Britney Spears and why?

References
Grigoriadis, V. (2008) The tragedy of Britney Spears. Rolling Stone. (Feb 21, 2008).
Retrieved September 3, 2008 from http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/18310562/cover_story_the_tragedy_of_britney_spears/print
Parker, T. and Stone, M. [Writers, directors and producers] (2008) Britney’s new look.
[Television episode]. South Park. March 19, 2008.