Why I'm a bad blogger

I have openly confessed to many of my friends and colleagues that I am not really well suited to the medium of the blogosphere. The puckish and mercurial pace that should be maintained to be an "effective" blogger simply is a demand, a mill stone really, that I don't wear well. Oh, it's not the instant (often quarrelsome) pith that escapes me, I'm quite capable of that on most days - especially the quarrelsome part. Rather, I am someone who still somehow registers a cleft between the quip and the forged word. No matter how I try and shake it I am stuck with a distinction between the two. I could be coy and say that in this matter I follow the French with whom it is still possible to "pay" for your dinner, or at least justify your presence at the party, with the former while you cut out your place with the latter. But it is more than that, it is the self-conscious wariness of presuming to lay claim to a swatch of electronic earth, of staking ownership to place and expertise - however meager both surveys be. The issue becomes one of what is one's own voice, or simply authorial intent. And yes, I realize that authorial intent - the notion that a swirl of words has a (single) specific meaning positioned (or interred perhaps) by the author presumably intentionally - has, in many quarters of academia and elsewhere, been abandoned as either unknowable and hence largely irrelevant (Deconstruction) or, if not that, circumvented by the will of the critic (e.g., Barthes and The Death of the Author and S/Z) - though it should be noted that the "critic" in this is not simply some fatuous construct of a patrician expert waggling a flaccid digit in a demonstration of favor or contempt - though it is understood that, to paraphrase Barthes, the unity of a text is not in its origin but its destination. There is a sense in which this sort of reading, this sort of launching pad on the part of the reader liberates the author. Meaning is left in the hands of the person who stumbles onto and into the text and the author might be left alone to paddle whatever canoe fits and peddle whatever reptilian balm seems to be of appeal - if that can be determined. Though there is also the Lacanian-influenced idea that would suggest that myriad determining factors crowd about and in the author and serve to shape, if not simply prefashion, the ways in which the text will emerge. Perhaps there remains too much Erasmus and not enough Luther in and for me to have too much truck with this formula, but the notion of the Bourdieu-ian field is persuasive. Here, a glimmer of intent might be afforded the author though meaning is largely interpellated by the surrounding social environment. What is perhaps most relevant here is that Bourdieu's notion of the field does not privilege solely the fiscal flex and instead recognizes that fields are not specifically attributed to economic classes and can be vaguely autonomous spaces of social play. For Bourdieu, this meant that other forms of capital might, and often do, dominate the discursive mileu, and principally this suggested the primacy of what he called both educational and more broadly cultural capital. Most generally, this has been a maneuver associated with the moyen bourgeoisie expressing an ability, by way of education, to talk knowlegeably about high culture, but in today's globalized climate the distinction between high and low (or popular) culture has largely been effaced. While the proclamations of an absolute amalgamation of all specific cultural experiences that were popular in certain circles in the 1990s and the early 2000s have not come to pass - and are not likely to in the most extreme understandings of such, hierarchy being an almost necessary state of human society - there remains a certain sense in which a global eclecticism has forced a leveling of the general cultural enterprise. In fact the democratization of technology the globe 'round has made experts of us all as increasingly all that matters is the immediate - the window for reflection and analysis ever wanes as the the field of experience seems to be forever waxing. And, spectacularly rising income inequality/disparity and potential concomitant poltical inequality be damned, what has become important in recent years, according to some at least, is the fact that the broad chasms in real incomes has been overcome by "a narrowing range of experience" of all people. After all, the proclamation of late has been the wisdom of the crowd, while casting aside the judgment of the individuated expert. Crowdsourcing is the mantra of global business as industry seeks to create demand before a supply even exists and, to cite the author of The Postmodern Condition, "capital accomodates all 'needs', providing that the tendencies and needs have purchasing power. As for taste, there is no need to be delicate when one speculates or entertains oneself." I am left asking what comment is to be made when Chad Vader parodies Chocolate Rain as it falls on a laughing baby in Sweden? Or perhaps we leave it at the fact that the presumed elitism of the first successful black candidate for the American presidency is countered with a shot of Canadian (where's your boilerplate protectionist populism now?!) whiskey by the nation's first legitimate woman candidate - who accepts it only because of the peer-pressure of the crowd. What call is there for the speculative, the ruminative, the candle in the wind? That's why I'm a bad blogger . . . or maybe I'm just lazy.
-fp

Once more, with passion this time

Once upon a time there was a tallish man who trundled about for a while and wondered what it was like on the other side of things. As much as anything, that is likely what this little coy, over-the-shoulder look, chopping block is about. There are mysteries to be solved and those that have been laid to rest, but the "why" of some things may simply never be addressed, for that apparently is the nature of today's world. In 1893, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim published The Division of Labor in Society wherein he introduced the concept of "anomie" - by this he meant to describe a condition of "deregulation" in society. The rules on how people ought to act and react in the social weave of things, he argued, had (or were) broken down and people no longer knew what they might actually rightly expect from others in society. Put simply, the norms of society, the customs and mores that help - along with the opposable thumb of course - separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom (oh sure, there are animals that might be better conservationists and selfless advocates of other species, or possessed of advanced language skills, or those marked by a surprisingly subtle self-recognition, even winged creatures capable of fairly advanced arithmetic but nowhere else in nature does it all come together quite like in the package called homo sapien baby!) had been made unclear, hazed, or perhaps even simply wiped away by the forces of modernity. For Durkheim, anomie occurred when there was great change or abrupt disruption in society - serious economic depression, political upheaval, or the shattering impact of war - I wonder if there be parallels here. Perhaps we'll have to see.