Mike Tamburo playing homemade instrument

Mike Tamburo is one of my favorite Pittsburgh musicians.* His music could be characterized as experimental/electronic/american-folk. Below is some footage of him playing hybrid instruments for a Memorial Day "Build your own instrument" show. The second instrument is, as one of the audience exclaims, "so metal."



Also, you can listen to his other works here, plus some free downloads.

*God, how far am I from my teenage hardcore purism?

This is fucking hilarious

A friend posted this on my myspace profile and I cannot stop watching it. It is a sort of fictional panel discusion between various female celebrities, a former, reputed second wave feminist, and a Brooklyn housewife over the significance of videos produced under the moniker "The Worm." The woman imitating Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears, Winona Ryder, and Gloria Steinem is surprisingly adept, and if you visit the filmmaker's own myspace page his reading list includes various surrealist classics etc. I suppose I am a little leary of this being as amusing as it is given the filmmaker/central thematic is myspace friends with Squeaky of Marilyn Manson fame, but I suppose even human-proportioned embodiments of the Id cannot be free of such influences.

Also, check out this Madonna video to youtubers pulling Henry Jenkinses by producing their own videos of her 4 minutes song, fiasco



Parodied, here:

Grover Furr Interview

Grover Furr is an interesting anomaly as a member of the Marxist Literary Group and MLA's Radical Caucus, who has argued that the reign of Stalin was actually not as clearly totalitarian as has historically been asserted, and was rather a moment of the emergence of some democratic reform for the Soviet Union. In the interview here he offers some insights into the question of Kruschev's "Secret Speech" the revealed the atrocities committed by Stalin. He questions the validity of Kruschev's motives for revealing these atrocities and suggests to a Russian audience the importance of the reappraisal of Stalin.

As someone who is not a scholar of either Soviet History or Russian, I am of course of two minds about it. I wonder if there might be some figures not worth recuperating from the annals of radical history. The question of Stalin remains nonetheless.

The Significance of 1968

This is perhaps one of the most debated moments in Leftist history. The question of the failures and possibilities of this moment continue to inform how we regard the possibilities of utopian struggle in this moment. Below is Slavoj Zizek's interview on Democracy Now discussing the meaning of this moment. He correctly points out that the backward look to 1968 tend to read it as the moment of sexual liberation, personal expression, and creativity instead of a moment of intense international unrest, mass strikes, anti-colonial resistance, etc. Thus, 1968 remains a moment whose meaning becomes intense ideological struggle.



Also, here is Barbara Epstein, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, and John Sanbonmatsu discussing the effectiveness of the strategies of 1968. What strikes me as interesting about this second interview is the ways in which the hedonism, the free love, and what is called "expressionist" aspects of these movements in the United States get connected to late capitalism's emphasis on consumerism. Issues of repression and torture by COINTELPRO forces are also treated upon. And John Sanbonmatsu engages in a slightly predictable, though seemingly out of context, rant against post-structuralism as the vehicle for the depoliticization of academia. If this is the venue of retreat for the 1960s radicals as many have argued, and the right (misreading Gramsci) fear, I suppose we may regard the temporary ascendance of post-structuralism in particular humanities departments as abstracting conversation outside of the bounds of everyday politics, etc. However, I don't believe the wider social relevance of this change is necessarily in operation to the extent Sobanmatsu suggests. Especially given how critical he is of the 1968 generation.

Radical Composition Syllabus - Terrorism

A fellow PhD. student and I decided that whilst we are graduate students in English, at a tech university that builds the machinery to kill tomorrow's Iraqis we wanted the freshmen to at least have an idea of the stakes of their eventual careers. Together we developed a syllabus that explores: "Is terrorism merely a destructive force bent on undermining Western civilization? Is it a politically necessary tactic or strategy? Is it used only by the powerless to resist domination? Or do powerful states and institutions also use terror for their own purposes? What forms of protest are labeled as “terrorism” and who has the authority to make such distinctions?" This syllabus works well with the comp. curriculum here because all of it is based on analyzing and mapping arguments, all before students can contribute their own positions.

A great deal of the syllabus uses Samuel Huntington's article as a foil: an article that we did not assign until midsemester so that it would appear an illegitimate. This seems necessary given that H's position is largely the position students come to the class with--the assumption that terrorism is a response to Western culture and its open society, rather than a historical series of political decisions and interventions (Mamdani is great for responding to this). Beginning with Kellner's article on globalization works well to contextualize terrorism not as some primordial, pre-modern specter emerging to haunt humanity but a response to contemporary, shifting global forces and relationships, as well as in the context of an international series of interconnected resistances. Several of the articles emphasize the stakes of nationalism which are obliterated by the current media discourse that confuses insurgent with terrorist. I also highly recommend coupling the first two chapters of Mike Davis' short history of the car bomb (a very accessible, short book) with the documentary The Weather Underground (trailer below) to highlight the homegrown aspects of terrorism as well.



I generally like to do something a little more philosophical to finish off the semester to open up more room before the students complete their last paper, in which they take a position of their own. The Baudrillard fell flat unfortunately because of the dense discussion of good vs. evil which drew students to speculate on human nature which works a little counter to the material from the course that emphasizes historical precedent. I am trying to use a chapter from Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom this summer to redefine the meaning of "freedom" in the contemporary context indicating that Protestantism and capitalist selfish individualism both participate in the production of subjects afraid to exercise their freedoms. It might be a little more accessible. This is an old piece from the psychoanalyst of the Frankfurt School, but it is by far some of their more accessible work.

Suggested Readings:

Ahmad, Eqbal. “Terrorism: Theirs and Ours.” Presentation. University of Colorado, Boulder. 12
Oct. 1998. http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Ahmad.htm

Ali, Tariq. “Mid-Point in the Middle East?” The New Left Review 38, March-April 2006. New York: Verso.

Baudrillard, Jean. “L’Esprit du Terrorisme.” Trans. Michel Valentin. The South Atlantic
Quarterly 101.2 (2002): 403-415.

bin-Laden, Osama. Interview with Taysir Alluni. al-Jazeera. 20 Oct. 2001. Published as “Terror
for Terror.” Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin-Laden. Ed. Bruce
Lawrence. Trans. James Howarth. London: Verso, 2005. 106-129.

Davis, Mike. Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. London: Verso. 2007.

Huntington, Samuel. “The Clash of Civilizations.” Foreign Affairs 72.3 (1993): 22-49.

Kellner, Douglas. “Theorizing Globalization.” Sociological Theory 20.3 (2002): 285-305.

Mamdani, Mahmood. “Good Muslin, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and
Terrorism.” American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 766-75.

Mann, Michael. Incoherent Empire. London: Verso, 2003.

Paglen, Trevor and A.C. Thompson. Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights.
NY: Melville House Publishing, 2006.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. “America and the World: The Twin Towers as Metaphor.” Charles R.
Lawrence II Memorial Lecture, Brooklyn College, 5 Dec. 2001. http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/wallerstein.htm

Alternative Readings:

Fromm, Erich. Escape From Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1942.

Ohiopyle camping

Ohiopyle State Park (http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/ohiopyle.aspx)
is a beautiful park in South Western PA. Swimming holes in cold rivers and hiking up Appalachian foothills. Below is a non-sensical mash up of images by another graduate student camper. Highlights included: getting completely soaked from a weekend of pure rain, graduate student incapacity to deal with the travails of nature, favorite swimming hole invaded by fly-fisher fucks, mysterious knee foaming by one grad. student, and getting chided by Park Rangers for drinking.

End Vidal Sassoon, NOW!