March 2, 2010
"It is hard not to be intimidated by New Left Review. At times, the journal can seem like an elaborate contrivance for making us feel inadequate."

—

Stefan Collini on New Left Review at 50 via @aldaily

very often, i feel that large swathes of useful intellectual labor come filled to the knee with contrivance…

give me a reason, don’t give me gestures.. or names.

“What other publication would take out a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper announcing its “quinquagenary issue”? NLR has been accused of many things, but never of populist dumbing-down.”

…or just stfu. (see also pikachu & deleuze via @naxos)

(also also, see @bradfidler’s now deleted post on spivak’s emancipatory jargon. it’s good, trust me.)

10:37am  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/421818557
FILED UNDER: genre politics theory academia philosophy education 
February 14, 2010
Affect Blog » (Geo)Politic{s} and its Love Affair with [Brackets]

“There seems to be a definite propensity for academics in the field(s) of (geo)politics and critical/radical geographies to (bracket) up as many of the complex [‘general group identification words’] as possible. Is this a case of academic elitism that creates an ‘in-crowd’ by using a shared style of expression? Where the use of (brackets) allows the budding critical/poltico/social/economistic/philso/anthro/geo-graphers to to carve out and perform/create ‘their’ own {multiple} identities? Or perhaps it is to highlight the pluralities (multiple meanings) of self-reflexive and self-critical discourses that seem as resistant to self-identification as they do the labeling of others.

Or perhaps pragmatism holds the key - brackets provide a quick and possibly eloquent way of covering multiple meanings and identities all at once; one that allows academics to sidestep any real commitment to a particular label and so avoid arguments being sidetracked by endless rounds of name calling.

Either way, the written bracket {in relation to the meanings it hopes to convey in these contexts} occupies a rather ambiguous space. The mark itself is inherently divisive and yet its deployment in this manner acts as a point of convergence for multiple (possibly) disparate narratives and discourses.

Or perhaps I’m reading too much into it. Then again, there’s always the “/”.”

what about the <angle> bracket? don’t marginalize it, [(typonormative-) fascist] k? >:|

4:29pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/389145031
(No. OF NOTES: 2)
  
FILED UNDER: academia genre language fashion philosophy 
February 12, 2010
The dynamics of effective corrupt leadership: Lessons from Rafik Hariri's political career in Lebanon

Abstract: This article introduces the notion of “effective corrupt leadership” to distinguish those in public office who engage in corrupt practice, who are more effective, and better for their people, than alternatives. The paper examines a case of such leadership by discussing the career of the late Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister who initiated and achieved the rebuilding of Beirut after the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990. Using the historical case-study method, an examination of Hariri’s activities allows us to appreciate the difficulties of achieving tangible welfare benefits in corrupt circumstances. Notably, the moralizing attacks by Hariri’s rivals show that while achieving and sustaining political power may require corrupt practice, such practice can ultimately undermine the leader authority and power. This “blifil paradox” demonstrates how difficult it is to lead effectively in corrupt circumstances. Through a discussion of these difficulties and challenges, the article attempts to demonstrate the significance of “effective corrupt leadership”, both in terms of its impact upon people, and its importance for the refinement of our understanding of leadership.

this article was cited in a conference in the Antoinine University, leading to ‘objections’ [via @azzi] and more.

12:00pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/385391532
(No. OF NOTES: 1)
  
FILED UNDER: lebanon politics academia 
February 7, 2010
what’s in a name?

@F414 There is no such thing as “capitalism” #

@sdv_duras @F414 [..] are you going to explain why we cannot describe the dominant socio-economic system in a term ? #

@F414 @sdv_duras “capitalism”is based ona simplistic,monolithic view of reality that is in turn based ona simplistic,deterministic view of history #

@sdv_duras @F414 of course I disagree but then you already knew that didn’t you, but then I tend to think that naming something helps us understand it #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras @f414 naming may assist understanding and equally contribute to making hidden other things… #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac sure i agree with that, but I would still maintain that a definition and name is a useful starting point… for example without # the name and concept of ‘feminism’ … well we know what that would mean in our society # […] I’m not speaking as a leftist here but as someone interested in why specific acts of naming are being refused # for example where ANT theorists refuse the notion of capitalism they end up with something un-understandable by non academics # for some reason that really bothers me… #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras well i agree with @f414 that capitalism tends to be used in totalizing ways that are hardly productive of understanding # when used by non academics, ‘capitalism’ often tends to be entirely absurd! # when used by Marxist academics, ‘capitalism’ tends to play into a game of reification # perhaps if those who like the term were less ambitious with their goals… # i wonder if ‘capitalism’ is as misleading as ‘democracy’ or ‘terrorism’ for that matter? #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac - that’s a different thing entirely, a matter of academicism, not being one its not my concern # a term like capital is a short hand which you can unpack and use, it’s a tool how you unpack it and use it is what amatters #

@pareidoliac @sdv_duras i agree with you re: ‘capital’ yet when we look at so many cases of how this is unpacked and used… that IS what matters! #

@sdv_duras @pareidoliac - if you reject all the huamn ‘isms’ including religion, science, democracy, liberal etc you reject all human knowledge #

3:00pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/376146673
FILED UNDER: language twitter capitalism resistance academia theory 
February 6, 2010
Tweets of Interest: Facebook Edition

@1D4TW “FACEBOOK.COM: intelligence agencies’ espionage site” http://bit.ly/b0wtJW

@PhilippaBeeb RT @cward1e The sudden rise of facebook as portal for news is staggering. This data gives weight to my anecdotes about my students http://bit.ly/bqjSlv

@PD_Smith Five journalists have spent the last five days locked up in a farmhouse in France w/ only Facebook & Twitter to rely on http://bit.ly/bpYCCY

@evgenymorozov the world is coming to an end: New York Review of Books reviews books about Facebook http://bit.ly/9vgYq5

@ybalagian The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect http://bit.ly/8LMLT5

More Information than You Ever Wanted [pdf] - link between time on facebook and romantic jealousy http://bit.ly/1ger84 via @researchdigest

@semioticmonkey APA Style Blog: How to Cite Twitter and Facebook, Part II: Reference List Entries and In-Text Citations http://tinyurl.com/yhxrbjp #biblio

1:44pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/374110643
FILED UNDER: facebook internet twitter journalism academia politics love 
January 26, 2010
"This article is an overview of the current state of scholarly journals, not (just) as an activity to be described in terms of its changing processes, but more fundamentally as a pivot point in a broader knowledge system. After locating journals in what we term the process of knowledge design, the article goes on to discuss some of the deeply disruptive aspects of the contemporary moment. These not only portend potential transformations in the form of the journal, but possibly also in the knowledge systems that the journal in its heritage form has supported."

— nogoodreason: “Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformaions in the knowledge system of the academic journal. FirstMonday article by Cope and Kalantzis”

12:02pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/354261448
(No. OF NOTES: 2)
  
FILED UNDER: academia knowledge genre culture 
January 9, 2010
"[W]riting that is arcane to the point of incomprehensibility is very much part of radical post-structuralism. Style, according to radical post-structuralism, is political. Post-structuralist writers tend to cultivate a style that excludes the vast majority of potential readers, reduces most of even the highly educated to a passive audience, and invites at best a small circle of initiates to discussion. This is not a matter of objecting to the use of technical terms that are not part of everyday language. Post-structuralist writing more often aims to confuse than to clarify or explain. Some post-structuralist writing rests on idiosyncratic vocabularies; much of it is written in jargon that could be translated into clear English relatively easily. Probably most of those who write in this jargon do not write with the conscious intention of bewildering or intimidating their audience. The style is absorbed with the ideology, and has become an integral part of the discourse."

—

Post-Structuralism As Subculture, Barbara Epstein

via beetx + curate

7:43pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/325517298
(No. OF NOTES: 41)
  
FILED UNDER: genre language academia culture 
January 9, 2010
Games &amp; genres: The Acknowledgements page from Vili Lehdonvirta’s Virtual Consumption (2009) via curate + juliandibbell

Games & genres: The Acknowledgements page from Vili Lehdonvirta’s Virtual Consumption (2009)

via curate + juliandibbell

7:35pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/325507445
(No. OF NOTES: 8)
  
FILED UNDER: literature academia genre media 
December 18, 2009
"What would happen if the printed book had just been invented in a high-tech world in which people had never done their reading from anything but computer screens? The unquestionable advantages of the computer would not be threatened by this new product but the people, who so love to compare apples with pears, would be quite bowled over by this ultra-modern invention: after years spent chained to the screen they would suddenly have something they could open like a window or a door – a machine you can physically enter! For the first time knowledge would be combined with a sense of touch and gravity – this new invention allows you to experience the most incredible sensations, reading becomes a physical experience. And after experiencing knowledge only as a bundle of connections, as a system of interacting networks, suddenly here is individuality: every book is an independent personality, which cannot be taken apart or added to at will. And how relaxing these new reading appliances are, their operating systems never needs updating – the only thing that changes over the course of time is the message that they contain, which is always open to new interpretations."

— Juan Villoro, in an article in last month’s adn CULTURA (an Argentinian culture magazine) about the “future of books.” via Photography Prison + Darius Himes

9:50am  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/288761544
(No. OF NOTES: 2)
  
FILED UNDER: media academia literature technology culture genre theory 
December 15, 2009
"Definitions of the intellectual are many and diverse. They have, however, one trait in common, which makes them also different from all other definitions: they are all self-definitions. Indeed, their authors are the members of the same rare species they attempt to define… . The specifically intellectual form of the operation—self-definition—masks its universal content which is the reproduction and reinforcement of a given social configuration, and—with it—a given (or claimed) status for the group."

— Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals (via fuckyeahtheorists)

11:50am  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/284575001
(No. OF NOTES: 5)
  
FILED UNDER: network academia philosophy politics 
December 1, 2009
Noam Chomsky on Higher Education and Privatization

“I had a startling experience a few weeks ago.  I travelled to Mexico City for talks at the National University, an enormous and very impressive institution with high standards of achievement and scholarship.  Entrance is selective, but the university is virtually free.  I then visited an even more remarkable institution, the college in Mexico City established by former mayor Lopez Obrador.  Again, the facilities and standards are quite impressive.  It is not only free, but has open admissions, though sometimes that requires some delay and sometimes assistance for students lacking adequate preparation. Shortly after I went to San Francisco for talks, and learned more about the California institutions of higher education.  They have been at the very peak of the international higher education system.  By now tuitions are quite high, even for in-state students, and cutbacks are affecting teaching, research, and staff.  It would be no great surprise if the two major state universities, UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles, will soon be privatized while the remainder of the state system is reduced considerably in scale and level. Needless to say, Mexico is a poor country with a struggling economy, and California should be one of the richest places in the world, with incomparable advantages. I mention these recent experiences only to emphasize that the recent cut-backs in higher education seen in much of the world cannot simply be traced to economic problems.  Rather, they reflect fundamental choices about the nature of the society in which we will live.  If it is to be designed for the wealthy and privileged, mostly engaged in management and finance while production is transferred abroad and most of the population is left to fend somehow for themselves at the fringes of decent and creative life, then these are good choices.  If we have different aspirations for the world of our children and grandchildren, the choices are shameful and ruinous.” [via easternblocparty + newleft]

1:11am  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/264159147
(No. OF NOTES: 24)
  
FILED UNDER: ideology education academia economics politics 
November 15, 2009
Outside in the Teaching Machine : Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak > Google Books

“As [the study of colonial discourse] begins to be absorbed into the discipline, the long-established but supple, heterogeneous, and hierarchical power-lines of the institutional “dissemination of knowledge” continue to determine and overdetermine its conditions of representability. It is at this moment of infiltration or insertion, sufficiently under threat by the custodians of a fantasmatic high Western culture, that the greatest caution must be exercised. The price of success must not compromise the enterprise irreparably. In that spirit of caution, it might not be inappropriate to notice that, as teachers, we are now involved in the construction of a new object of investigation—‘the third world,’ ‘the marginal’—for institutional validation and certification. One has only to analyze carefully the proliferating but exclusivist “Third World-ist” job descriptions to see the packaging at work. It is as if, in a certain way, we are becoming complicitous in the perpetration of a ‘new orientalism.”

via igather + lowendtheory + curate

9:56pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/245200415
(No. OF NOTES: 6)
  
FILED UNDER: education academia knowledge colonialism literature 
November 12, 2009
Certificate of Entitlement by @lessig

Certificate of Entitlement by @lessig

12:47pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/241435607
FILED UNDER: resistance capitalism education academia graphics 
November 12, 2009
APA Philosophy referee hand signals via fuckyeahphilosophy + nerdshares + sexartandpolitics

APA Philosophy referee hand signals

via fuckyeahphilosophy + nerdshares + sexartandpolitics

12:45pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/241434260
(No. OF NOTES: 112)
  
FILED UNDER: academia fun graphics philosophy 
November 6, 2009
Learning Truth Telling Beyond Neoliberal Education > Radical Notes

[..] It not uncommon to hear in academic seminars, policy meetings and debates that the theoretical is anti-practical and theoretical discussions slow down the completion of projects. There is a tacit agreement that when a discussion gets into a deadlock on account of theory a decision can be taken on the basis of the practical. Often at meetings one hears “too much of democracy is not going to lead anywhere”. In other words, there is no time for discussion. Time constraints are imposed by financial considerations – ‘the work needs to be one within the time-frame for which the money has been sanctioned’.

There is a conflict between financial time and discussion time. In this conflict the discussion time shrinks and this obviously implies a shrinking of theoretical space.

Such conflict and shrinking has filtered down to other fields of social and political life. Debates on policy are short and snappy, what with political activists being averse to theory. They want action and have no time for reflection. In universities there are fewer students who opt for the social sciences for they do not get one a job. Such pressure has compelled the re-invention of more market-friendly syllabi in the social sciences.

The meaning of theory itself has changed. A good example is ‘theory for computer programs’ taught in schools and institutes. It refers to a list of terms and procedures to run the program and there is no space for asking the why how and what. Here theory itself has become the instrument.

In social sciences, theory is more often than not envisaged as the lens or the frame (legal, conceptual, experiential, religious…) through and within which we see the world. In the first instance, the world appears either smaller (as if viewed through a convex lens) or larger (seen through the concave) than what it is. In the case of theory being the frame, the world is viewed with the terms of reference specified by the task to be accomplished. In both instances, theory is the ally of fragmentation and encourages the exclusion of critical voices of people from diverse experiences and plural cultures.

The neoliberal economy has converted theory into an instrumentality for manufacturing consent. [..] ###

via @mosabou

9:22pm  |   URL: http://micro.maximalis.me/post/235275673
FILED UNDER: education academia knowledge capitalism time theory ideology