The Other Libertarian Paradox. . .

This is just funny. No matter how you feel about the Pauls, the absurdity here is just amazing. Especially on the heels of Roe v. Wade's anniversary. Call it pandering to social conservatives who would otherwise feel alienated. Call it being genuinely that obtuse. Regardless, this quote from a Reuters article earlier today just outlines the phenomenal ridiculousness in these ideological discontinuities: "Paul and his father, who is a U.S. Representative from Texas, have helped lead the charge against what critics call excessive federal intrusion, from healthcare to body searches. . . Paul's personal showdown with airport security unfolded as he headed to Washington to address an anti-abortion rally." Come onnnnnnnnn. . .

Serving up Gender in the 2012 Republican Primaries

If there were any lingering questions about how Michele Bachmann views women's rights and roles, last night's Thanksgiving Family Leader Forum provided a clear indication of where she stands. As the event began, Bachmann proceeded to woman up and pour water for each of the other male candidates and moderators. As women continue to struggle as candidates and leaders against the stalwart masculinity of the U.S. political system, it is problematic that a presidential candidate felt it appropriate or necessary to pour water for her fellow dude candidates. Why?

1. Let's start with the most obvious - performing acts like this reifies traditional ideas of acceptable and expected femininity in troubling ways. Call me crazy, but I feel that it would kind of suck if this was the image put forth by the first female president (not that I think for a minute there's anything remotely viable about Bachmann).

2. One of the biggest reasons women are noted as having problems getting ahead in their careers is the persistent expectations that they provide extra care to those around them - to their peers and subordinates.

3. Though it's sort of like having an official national mom, I don't think the public at large would be inclined to take any female candidate seriously who self-subordinates in the presence of her male peers. Women in politics have reported many instances of misogyny on the campaign trail and in office that often impede how freely and effectively they can focus on the issues of their constituents.

4. As much as I hate Michele Bachmann, I hate the fact that she felt compelled to do this even more. Put down the water pitcher, Michele. Put it down.

Women Hating Women Loving Babies

I usually, for reasons of personal and psychological health, choose not to participate in broad public forums like Facebook regarding controversial political issues. Give me a closed group or a great blog, I'm your girl. Facebook status threads, notsomuch. However, a friend of mine from college posted something about her concern regarding the troubling implications of the recently passed bill HR 358, or "Let Women Die Act" as it's been termed in the media. I am always so pleased to see old friends post unexpected things regarding women's rights and issues of similar ilks that I couldn't help but get involved. It IS troubling. The implications of a bill that allow doctors to choose willy nilly who they value more, woman or wombdweller, extend way beyond the usual pro-life/ abortion rights debate. This speaks to what Lauren Berlant writes of in her book The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citzenship regarding the American obsession with futurity and the primacy of the fetus in questions of political viability of it v. the woman who carries it. Women's rights as citizens are decreasing on the regs. All around us. Yet it is interesting to me that it seems like no one really cares very much anymore. . . chiefly women. Their arguments for their rights are startlingly absent. Operating in a rather insulated political world where I take for granted the progressivism I'm around, I had forgotten until this morning just how misogynistic women can be. How self-loathing we have become. Couch it in religious ideology, political slants, whatever you want -- when a woman's life is less valuable to most women than the fetus residing within her, we've got us a big problem. And my friend on Facebook asked, "Where's the media coverage?" WHERE IS THE MEDIA COVERAGE? Turn on the TV, log onto Facebook, pull up the CNN homepage. The Occupy Wall Street news is everywhere. People are outraged. People are active. Where is their outrage regarding the state of women's healthcare? Where is the bustle over how disenfranchised women are becoming and how widely accepted this seems to be? In this 21st Century when anyone can do anything anywhere and we are all working so tirelessly for LGBTQ rights and issues of class, where are all the feminists? It really kinda freaks me out.

Slavoj Zizek at Occupy Wall Street

Check out parts 1 and 2 of philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street:





You can also read the transcript from his speech at VersoBooks.

Sundays, Silhouettes, and Sleeplessness

So in an effort to jumpstart our conference preparation, my dear friend J and I had an all-night theory extravaganza that began with meticulous organization of our compiled resources to put off digging our heels in and ended with an early-morning screening of Lars von Trier's, Melancholia (deserving of a month of posts and certainly deserving of a mental acuity that just isn't feasible today on this total and utter lack of sleep). However, as I began to flesh out my latest paper ideas on race, Black male incarceration in the Southeast, and its correlation to a narratological structure of imprisonment and deprivation, I kept coming back to images by one of my favorite artists, Kara Walker. Her simple, though extraordinarily poignant, cut-paper silhouettes are some of the most haunting images I have seen to date (save for Ana Mendieta and her headless chicken piece. . . but that's neither here nor there).

http://learn.walkerart.org/karawalker

Puar's "Paranoid Temporality" and the Occupy Movement

I had the choice to continue devouring Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times or to watch the coverage of Occupy Wall Street and (gasp!) maybe even check into some regional meetups this weekend. For once, television seemed like the more productive option. It feels useful, though, even important, to personally situate her work in this present. Puar describes:

Paranoid temporality is. . . imbedded in a risk economy that attempts to ensure against future catastrophe. This is a temporality of negative exuberance -- for we are never safe enough, never healthy enough, never prepared enough -- driven by imitation (repetition of the same or in the service of maintaining the same) rather than innovation (openness to disruption of the same, calling out to the new).

A paranoid temporality therefore produces a suppression of critical creative politics; in contrast, the anticipatory temporalities that I advocate more accurately reflect a Spivakian notion of 'politics of the open end,' of positively enticing unknowable political futures into our wake, taking risks rather than guarding against them. (xx)

My entire recollection of an American political landscape has been characterized by this paranoid temporality that Puar introduces here. Fear-based everythings. Fear-based politics, fear-based consumerism, fear-based loving, eating, education, walking, traveling. Fear-based everythings that characterize actions of inactivity and paralysis. And I can't help but feel a sense that this could be the rare, expansive breach of that? I have to admit that I initially approached the Occupy movement with a dose of skepticism, an embarrassingly bourgie level of skepticism. Surely this wouldn't go anywhere. Surely this would be a bunch of hipsters and hippies that would give up after a weekend, and it would gradually dissipate until it was a funny little joke that only Democracy Now! covered.

Alas, this appears not to be the case. It's galvanized. It's spreading. It's laced with uncertainty and growing excitement. I don't have the energy tonight to address the relationship between Puar's work and the description of these protests as an "American Autumn," but there is much to be said and explored there, for sure.

More tomorrow. Now, bed.

Just Remembering

The more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side. . . .

In short, I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor "humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls.

I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubt -- or religious belief.

I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry division.

I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.

-- Senator Ted Kennedy, Speech on "Truth and Tolerance in America," Oct. 3, 1983, Lynchburg, Va.

(reposted from LA Times' "Ted Kennedy Quotes" from August 26, 2009)