Re-Thinking “The Visual”: Time, Process, and 4D

I’m working on a manuscript in which I contrast classically liberal visual epistemes with neoliberal affective and audiological epistemes. If classical liberalism thinks with and through primarily “visual” examples, neoliberalism thinks with and through examples derived from different modes of sensory experience—affect and sound. One of the main points of difference between classical liberal viz-centrism and neoliberal affect-ology or audio-logy is this: the viz-centric episteme adopted in classical liberalism focuses on objects (static, defined substances), while the sensible/sonic episteme of neoliberalism focuses on processes (dynamic, temporal phenomena).

I argue that philosophy generally, but especially feminist philosophy, tends to theorize “from the visual.” That is to say, it begins from a set of metaphysical, ontological, political, and normative (ethical & aesthetic) assumptions that are derived from Enlightenment/Modern epistemologies; these epistemologies frame the “subject” or “self” through and in terms of a 16^th/17^th century understanding of how sight works. So, “the visual” is not necessarily tied to how current science understands the physiology of sight and the physics of light to work. Rather, it is grounded in the account of seeing and being seen that we inherit from Enlightenment science and, more importantly, philosophy. (One could argue that this understanding of sight/light focuses on light’s “particle” properties to the exclusion of its “wave” properties.) “Visibility,” in other words, “takes on a particular organization that corresponds to our habits of seeing” (Al-Saji 377). The regime of visibility we inherit from the classical liberalism/Enlightenment philosophy is consistent with what Foucault calls (in The Order of Things) the “classical episteme.” Or, perhaps more correctly, the “classical episteme” is visual or viz-centric (think about Las Meninas, the painting at the beginning of Foucault’s book…).

I do all that arguing in the book’s introduction. Here, I want to focus on one very specific aspect of this contrast between classically liberal “visuality” and neoliberal “processuality”: the shift from 2D to 4D thinking. I’ve already talked a bit about the role of 4D in Jasbir Puar’s theorization of neoliberal superpanopticism. Here, I want to trace this in Alia Al-Saji’s work on visuality in Merleau-Ponty and Bergson. By showing how various feminist theorists, each drawing on different source material/philosophical traditions, all arrive at something like this shift from 2D classical liberal “visuality” to 4D neoliberal affectivity, I hope to establish this 2D-4D shift as a general phenomenon, one that is not specific to any one philosophical system, but reflective of broad and deep shifts in Western theory and lifeworlds.

In her article, Al-Saji identifies two types or modes of vision: objectifying vision and critical-ethical vision. Objectifying vision treats sight as “merely a matter of re-cognition, the objectivation and categorization of the visible into clear-cut solids, into objects with definite contours and uses” (375). This objectifying vision is both classically liberal and Cartesian: it operates in a two-dimensional metaphysical plane, and according to a binary logic.[1] (Think about it: the Cartesian Cogitio, the foundation of the classically liberal subject, fits quite nicely with, uh, the Cartesian coordinate system…). “Modernity in the West,” Al-Saji explains, includes and is “motivated by imaginary and epistemic investments in representation and the metaphysics of subject-object’ (378; emphasis mine). This binary subject/object logic implies a specific type or mode of representation: two-dimensionality. Binaries like subject/object, inside/outside, public/private, male/female, black/white—these are all manifestations of an episteme that frames everything in terms of either X or Y (i.e., the axes in the Cartesian coordinate system). The idea that social identities—like race or gender—are properties of individuals (rather than systems of social organization) follows from this 2D object-orientation. Al-Saji explains: 

social positionality and systems of oppression…are only acknowledged by objectifying vision insofar as they are made into objects or properties of objects…As the formative conditions by which objects and ‘others’ are differentiated and discerned, these dimensions cannot be seen for themselves (378).

Objectifying vision treats identity as an object: liberal vision can only see identities, it can’t see the “system” or the “frame’ or the “frame-making process.” In fact, objectifying vision can see neither processes nor relations: it can account only for “inert and self-same being, subject neither to contextual variation, nor dependency” (379; emphasis mine). (I’ll pick back up on this connection between systematic accounts of oppression and process below.) This classicaly liberal, 2D, identity-centric account of race and gender privileges a theory of representation like the one Guyatri Spivak discusses, via Marx, in her iconic Can the Subaltern Speak? The subject/object and inside/outside dichotomies encourage the view that political representation (Vertreten), as in the ability to speak for or as a member of a group, is grounded in 2D artistic re-presentation (Darstellung). Only those who outwardly, realistically, and authentically possess the objective properties that index group membership (skin color, eye shape, organs, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, etc.) are taken as credible political representatives of that group. More simply, what we commonly understand as “identity politics” assumes this 2D regime of visuality. (I know this is more of the summary of my argument than the actual argument—but you’ll have to wait for the book for the full argument.)

According to Al-Saji, critical-ethical vision is a “concrete, dynamic and affective seeing that…is forgotten when vision falls into habits of objectification” (376). If objectifying vision is attuned to, well, objects, critical-ethical vision is attuned to (dynamic) processes. These dynamic processes include “the temporality of [lived bodies’] habits, their dependency on social position, and the contingency of their material form” (379; emphasis mine). Critical-ethical vision is 4D in the art historical sense because it, like 4D media, is time-based.[2] Following Bergson, Al-Saji calls this temporal aspect of critical-ethical vision hesitation. “Hesitation questions the seamless mirroring of seeing in the seen; it reveals the difference and non-coincidence within vision itself” (380). Hesitation is a temporal rupture in the “ahistorical” (379) subject (seeing)/object (seen) 2D logic.[3] Time itself is what interrupts the “flat” or “static” two-dimensionality of objectifying vision. Time, in the form of “the felt weight of historicity,” draws our attention to the social conditions of vision (what Al-Saji calls the “diacritical” conditions of vision). For example, objectifying vision, by overlooking the social conditions of visuality, falsely presents a normatively masculine/male subject position as both gender-neutral and universal. In classically liberal theories of subjectivity and agency, “the normative ‘I can’—posited as human but in fact correlated to male bodies—itself relies on a certain ‘I cannot’ that excludes other ways of seeing and acting. This exclusion constructs the teleology of objectifying vision and action as ‘efficient’ and ‘seamless’” (382). This seamlessness is possible because the “rough edges”—i.e., history, social context—are absent in a 2D “flat” account of subjectivity. Treating identity and oppression only as objects, 2D accounts obscure the systematic nature of oppression.[4]

This systematic (historical/diacritical) character of oppression is, for objectifying vision, “the blindspot that it cannot make visible directly, but can only marginally see in its moments of hesitation” (385). Al-Saji implies that hesitation, the introduction of history and social context into two-dimensional subject/object ontologies, requires us to think in more than two dimensions. “To glimpse these dimensions,” she argues, “is to witness the virtual multiplication of other ways of seeing and acting, of alternative routes to those being actualized through objectifying vision” (382; emphasis mine). Time itself is not homogeneous; the fourth dimension is multifaceted. The heterogeneity of time/temporality is a common theme in postcolonial theory: think, for example, of Homi Bhabha’s discussion of time in The Location of Culture, or Paul Gilroy’s discussion of black Atlantic counter-Modernity. Thus, Al-Saji argues that hesitation does more than introduce “time” as an analytical category; if it accounts for “the weight of multiple pasts, of historicity and habituation” (385), hesitation can in fact reveal the “temporality and contingency” of time itself—or rather, it reveals that time, like any other epistemic/experiential dimension, is structured by “instituting horizons and norms of meaning” (385). (This perhaps parallels Puar’s discussion of the need to think time non-metrically, or to relativize “meter” as a contextually-specific regime of temporality/timekeeping.) Though Al-Saji uses “hesitation” to describe an epistemic-phenomenological practice (critical-ethical vision), she models this practice directly on the literal meaning of the term. “Hesitation” can refer to a visual experience tha tis either (or both) “delayed” or (and) “already ahead of itself” (387). “Hesitation” thus describes the perception of something being too late or too soon—something whose temporality doesn’t follow normative tempi, meter, rhythm, etc.

Painting, 4D, and Sound

It is interesting that Al-Saji (via Merleau-Ponty and Bergson) glean their concepts of 4D critical-ethical visuality from painting, because painting is a 2D medium. Al-Saji uses 4D terms and concepts to describe critical-ethical vision, so time-based media would offer more appropriate examples from and with which to theorize critical-ethical vision. She even suggests as much:

More than mere looking, this is seeing that listens, checks and questions, that is critically watchful as well as ethically responsive (391).

In a footnote, she qualifies her reference to audition: “By invoking listening here, I mean to point to the synaesthetic openness of this vision” (398n74). But I would argue that listening is actually highly appropriate to theorizing hesitation, as music and sound art are fundamentally 4D media, and have been 4D long before visual arts caught up to them in the 20^th century with film, video, and digital media.  Sound, music, and audition are such productive means for theorizing “hesitation” that Al-Saji calls on musical concepts to describe painting:

Paintings, and cultural productions more generally, teach us to see differently…In this context, Merleau-Ponty notes that ‘painting deposits in [us] a feeling of profound discordance, a feeling of mutation.’ (EM 179/63) Painting, it seems, has its own affective atmosphere, its own way of addressing us that disrupts our habitual rhythms and perceptions (388).

Painting is a 2D—perhaps the 2D—medium. However, Al-Saji and Merleau-Ponty both use musical concepts to describe the way painting, a 2D medium, sparks critical-ethical “vision”: it uses rhythm and consonance (discordance). Or rather, it critiques objectifying (2D, ‘regular old’) vision, and these critiques “appear” or rise to perception as 4D phenomena. The critique seems or feels like delay, syncopation, dissonance—the interruption in objectifying vision manifests as a temporal phenomenon. The effects of “destabilizing the objectifying habits of seeing” (344) present themselves—or rather, are perceived as—time-lag, hesitation.

Hesitation, 4D, and Neoliberalism: Or, “seeing differently” is not always critical or ethical

Hesitation is not necessarily critical. In my reading of Puar, I argue that neoliberalism is a 4D “medium”. So, hesitation could function uncritically as the very means and medium of neoliberal hegemony. So it’s important that Al-Saji focus on the critical-ethical dimension of hesitation. However, I worry that her account is too narrowly targeted to classically liberal “objectifying” vision, and that it doesn’t indicate how a critical “hesitation” or “delay” in 4D vision itself would work. Because if it’s the attention to process and temporality that disrupts the 2D logic of objectification, then while this “hesitation” may be sufficient to critique classically liberal “vision,” it is not adequately disruptive of neoliberal “vision.” (E.g., Al-Saji frames affect as an alternative to objectification/sight,[5] but Puar shows how neoliberalism transmits hegemony via affect.)

Objectification is not the problem, Power is the problem

One thing I particularly appreciate about Al-Saji’s account is that it shows us that “objectification” is situated in a specific framework or regime of vision. “Objectification” is one strategy, manifestation, or ode of a broader system of social organization—this is what attention to the diacritical and historical conditions of vision demonstrates. Just as not all “vision” is objectifying, not all kinds of power or hegemony are “objectifying.” Objectification is not the only way that oppression works—it’s not even the only—or perhaps even primary—way that the media oppresses women and perpetuates misogyny. We can’t just stop at objectification. We miss a lot.

            If we follow Al-Saji, what we miss by stopping at objectification is the systematic nature of oppression. When we treat objectification as the problem (e.g., this images objectifies women), we obscure the broader context in which this occurs—patriarchy. Objectification is not the problem; patriarchy is the problem. Patriarchy is what makes the objectification of women harmful. (E.g., men get objectified in images, too—as athletes, as sexual objects—but the kind and quality of harm is different.)

            Al-Saji clarifies that objectification or instrumentalization is actually a necessary condition of any type of “vision”: “These others form the invisibles that have already been laterally implicated in my field of vision” (389). In her terms, “lateral” implication means historical and social implication: other people make, maintain, and disseminate the specific systems of vision that I follow. For example, in order for a language to live, people have to speak it; I learn it from others, I practice it by talking with others or reading what other people have written, and it stays current when people invent new words to describe new things. People make language and keep it alive, so my ability to talk or read is contingent upon other people’s linguistic practice. The same is true with “vision”: I can “see” because other people practice this style of seeing with me. There is a “lateral dependence of my vision upon others whose affective influence” (390) is a prerequisite for my own ability to “see.” I can’t see—in any way, objectifying, non-objectifying, critical-ethical, whatever—without relying on others. I take them as objects, as instruments. (Knowing her work on Beauvoir, I suspect Beauvoir’s notion of “ambiguity” is influencing Al-Saji here.)So the problem here is not that I’m treating others as means and not as ends-in-themselves. In fact, what quasi-Kantian feminist critiques of objectification forget is

my debt to others who have accompanied the development of my vision, specifically parental, communal and proximate others from whom I have learned how to see; this invisible ‘weight of my past’ institutes a particular way of seeing as normative for me (Al-Saji 389).

So those all-too-standard feminist objections to “objectification” actually play into the very system of power that they’re objecting to. By claiming that “objectification” is a problem, one ignores the ways that we are dependent on others, and de-values all the care work that is primarily done by women. Who teaches children? Who does this “parental, communal” labor that Al-Saji mentions? Mostly women, either formally as teachers or informally as parents. This “oversight” of dependency is an “appropriation of the flesh of others to whom my attachment is rendered invisible” (389). By claiming as my own accomplishment what was actually the work of others, I appropriate their labor. So, the ethical framework (which is basically Kantian: Treat others only as end-in-themselves, never as means to an end) according to which “objectification” is a problem actually denies the moral personhood of women. If we are dependent on others, then we can avoid objectifying people only if the entities on which we depend—those “parental, communal, and proximate others from whom I have learned how to see”—are not moral persons, i.e., do not “count” as beings deserving to be treated as ends-in-themselves. So, it’s actually a problem to think objectification is inherently and necessarily problematic.

            My reading of Al-Saji also clarifies another limitation of the “objectification” objection: If objectifying vision is more or less the regime of classical liberalism, then “objectification” is a technique that classically liberal modes of patriarchy, white supremacy, etc., use to perpetuate themselves. If neoliberalism is more process-oriented than object-oriented, neoliberalism’s misogyny will not necessarily, or not primarily, take the form of objectification. If we focus too narrowly on objectification, if we think “objectification” is the main way cultural products, media, images, etc., harm women, then we overlook a whole slew of ways that misogyny occurs in neoliberalism, in 4D forms of power, in 4D media, etc.

So, Al-Saji’s article helps establish and clarify the connection between the epistemic system of “objectifying vision” and the political system of classical liberalism. It also shows how classical liberalism operates in a 2D metaphysical plane. Al-Saji’s work through Merleau-Ponty and Bergson clarifies how art-historical notions of 4D “vision” intervene in and critique 2D logics. Time is a key element of experience, one that is not captured in 2D systems. Al-Saji’s critique of “objectifying vision” also opens up a feminist critique of all-too-standard feminist objections to “objectification”: objectification is a feature of a specific kind of “vision” or system of hegemony.  

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[1] Foucault’s concept of the “classical episteme” is also relevant here, especially as it relates to categorization and “clear and distinct” boundaries.

[2] Critical-ethical vision is also 4D in that it introduces additional “planes” or “axes” of sight into the visual field. “Hesitation makes visible, in indirect and lateral ways, the processes of habituation, identification and exclusion involved in the institution of the level according to which I see. Hesitation thus installs an interval through which both forms of therness, elided in objectifying vision, can be glimpsed” (390; emphasis mine). The “lines”—e.g., the sine waves or equations graphing the processes rather than the objects of sight—manifest laterally or obliquely to the 2D X/Y Cartesian grid.

[3] Hesitation is a temporal phenomenon that deconstructs subject-object binaries, and, in so doing, the classically liberal framework that ties political representation to 2D artistic representation.  “At the hinge of passivitity-activity, but also of inside-outside” (386), hesitation “goes beyond what can be cognized in the logic of objects, an openness to that which may register as feeling rather than representation” (386; emphasis mine).

[4] “Hesitation is, then, a response to, and an effort of openness towards, an affective field that is unrecognizable to the objectifying gaze. In this sense, hesitation would be a remedy for the blinders and the arrogance—to use Marilyn Frye’s term—of objectifying vision”  (382)

[5] AL-Saji argues, “affect is an interruption of habitual action, a delay that is generative of recollection and that can open within habit other ways of seeing andn acting” (386)

How To Subvert Biopolitical Administration/Big Data/Neoliberal Superpanopticism?

This post follows up, but doesn’t complete or come to any final conclusions about, some issues that were discussed in my Spring 2012 graduate feminist theory class.

This past semester in my graduate feminist theory course, we read Foucault and Puar on neoliberalism, biopolitical admin, the “power over life,” etc. These are all various names for the kind of power that is characteristic of 21^st century neoliberalism. It can be generally characterized in this way:

(1)  It targets the “life” of specific populations. It is only secondarily concerned with individual subjects (that’s the job of disciplinary power).

(2)  It works by optimizing the life (or the flourishing) of privileged populations, and pretty much leaving oppressed populations to die. This produces a seemingly counterintuitive context in which privilege can mean having more power work on and through you, and oppression can mean being more distant from centers of power. It sounds counterintuitive b/c classical liberal contract theory conceives of privilege or liberty as “freedom from” power, and oppression as having power’s boot on one’s neck. Power doesn’t always work this way, but sometimes it does. For example: if you are economically privileged enough to go to the doctor often, to fly, to be very active on the internet, to use debit and credit cards instead of cash, you’re actually more integrated in networks of power than people who can’t afford to seek medical treatment/without health insurance, or who don’t use air transport, the internet, or electronic banking transactions. 

(3)  The market replaces the contract. If classical liberalism conceives of society as organized by a (hypothetical) contract, neoliberalim treats society as an economic market. As economist and social theorist Jacques Attali explains, traditional notions of equality and “harmony” eventually “giv[e] wa to statistics, macroeconomics, and probability” (Noise, 65). In this new actuarial regime of statistics, “society…desires to make its simple management the matrix of its meaning” (Attali 113; emphasis mine). This management takes the form of “the statistical organization of repetition” (Attali 114; emphasis mine).  But what do statistics “manage”?  “The administrator in a repetitive society” is tasked with “managing chance” and “monitor[ing] unexpected forms” (Attali 114/5). This management and monitoring sounds a lot like what Foucault identifies as the biopolitical management of risk. The point here is: neoliberalism uses statistics to normalize populations. It wants to control for potentially “random” or aleatory events, to standardize every deviation, so to speak.  Neoliberalism is the order of the bell curve, the statistical average, etc.

So, that’s a sketch painted in very broad strokes. But, I’m not primarily interested here in defining neoliberalism, but rather in considering how we can subvert it.

My class talked about Foucault’s claim that traditional models of resistance and opposition don’t work for both forms of the “power over life” (discipline and biopolitical administration). “Resistance” and “opposition” are critical responses tailored/appropriate to power that represses: if there’s a boot on your neck holding you down, you need to fight back, to get out from under it. However, the power over life is not repressive, but productive, so, in this context, “resistance” and “opposition” don’t make sense as critical strategies. Judith Butler, with her concept of subversive repetition, has, as I have argued elsewhere, given a good account of an effective critical response to discipline. As the classic example goes, one subverts disciplinary gender norms by repeating them with a difference: drag queens perform normative femininity better than either Butler or I, thereby laying bare the ultimate constructedness and contingency of cultural ideals of “femininity.” But what about a critical response to biopolitical administration, this statistical rather than disciplinary norm?

I’ve thought about this a bit before, here. However, after having some conversations with my class about this (special shout-outs to Brad Gray and Eric Virzi for especially productive contributions on this point), I want to push things a bit further. I also want to respond to Alexis Madrigal’s new article in The Atlantic on “Big Data Jammers.”  This is all still fairly preliminary, so I’m going to stick to bullet points:

(1) Era Pope was especially helpful in articulating this point: Subversion of biopolitical administration involves skewing the statistics. That’s one thing that Madrigal points out in the article: 

I foresee that activists might find the best way to disrupt corporate power on the Internet is to be begin interacting with the ads they're being shown and muddying the data that's being collected. But beyond the immediate financial impact this kind of action could have on marketing budgets, if the collective action became large enough, it could begin to impact the quality of the data that Google and other data intermediaries are collecting about each and every Internet user. If enough people started to seem interested in home mortgages who were not actually interested in home mortgages, it might start to disrupt their ability to efficiently target users with behavioral advertising. This would be statistical noisemaking as a form of protest.

By deliberately skewing someone’s algorithm (e.g., by searching for things people of your demographic shouldn’t normally search for)[1] you make the statistical average less average—or rather, you shift the shape of the curve. In class, Era mentioned how we could change statistical norms about dimorphic gender, and the “outlier” status of intersex babies, by accurately reporting and not “fixing” intersex kids. The more intersex babies there are, the more intersex people there are, the less “average” maleness and femaleness become. You skew the statistics by creating and reporting more “deviant” instances; that very act makes them less “deviant”, because it shifts the curve. (My earlier discussion of Martha Rossler’s “Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained” is another example of this sort of subverting stats at their own game or in their own language.) I think Era’s example shows what’s valuable about Madrigal’s proposal. In the case of intersex babies, this is more than just about making noise for big data—it’s about  shifting our understanding of what counts as a “viable” life. Generally bodies have to be appropriately male or female in order to be considered viable, livable, healthy, etc. But plenty of bodies aren’t “appropriately” male or female. Parents and medical professionals inflict brutal “treatment” on intersex kids because this is supposed to bring them a “viable,” healthy, easier and more livable life. But by re-jiggering the various statistics and measurements used to determine “average” genital size for male and female babies, or the relative frequency of male, female, and intersex births, we might make intersex lives appear less deviant, more intrinsically viable, healthy, etc.

(2) Now, some will object that this is just submitting to power, accepting its terms, and that we ought instead to step outside of it, work beneath it, wash our hands of it, etc. This is only a viable option for people and groups with enough privilege to make up for the deficits and penalties one will incur by excluding oneself from the rituals and mechanisms society uses to optimize, foster, and flourish life. Remember, this is the power over life, and it produces life, flourishing, viability, etc. You already have to have somewhat of a cushion if you want to forego the advantages or incentives conferred by biopolitical hegemony. Here’s a lame example: if you want to opt out of the industrial food chain, you need some combination of financial means, access to product and to retail outlets, or access to the means of craft production themselves (land, seeds, education, etc.). If you’re working a minimum wage service-industry job (or jobs), living in an apartment in an area without easy access to low-cost organic and craft foods, then it’s really difficult, if not impossible, for you to opt out of the industrial food chain. Similarly, hipsters can “slum it” because they have enough privilege—usually racial, but also socioeconomic—to mediate if not overcome any adverse effects they might incur based on their appearance, place of residence, etc.

(3) You can subvert the “statistical organization of repetition” (to use Attali’s phrase) not only by generating a lot of noise and feedback, but also by tweaking the instruments (of measurement, of sound/signal production) themselves. In tweaking the instrument, you allow it to produce signal of intensities and qualities that it is otherwise not able to produce. This is what Tricia Rose calls the “into the red” aesthetic in hip hop. Let me try to connect the dots:

 If statistically organized repetition is something like a bell curve or a sine wave (a sine wave being a repeated pattern of peaks and valleys, a bell curve being a chunk of a sine wave), then all instances occur within an upper and a lower limit. At issue here, then, are asymptotes: the limit which the curve can approach, but never touch or cross. Say you are a recording engineer, working with an audio signal. You can apply patches, effects, filters, generators, or whatever post-production process you want to a sine wave (i.e., an audio signal). By twisting a knob, pushing a button, or running your finger on a track pad, you modify the audio signal enough to push it beyond its ‘original’ asymptotic limits. For example, vocoded or talk-boxed vocals have different timbers, and often different pitches, than the original vocal signal. More interestingly, hip hop (and now dubstep and other hip hop inspired dance music) producers will often push the bass “into the red”—i.e., it’s too low for humans to actually hear, but it can be felt (standing in front of speakers in the club, listening in the car, etc.). By taking the bass signal into the red, there is a qualitative shift in the signal. As Tricia Rose explains:

Using the machines in ways that have not bee intended, by pushing on established boundaries of music engineering, rap producers have developed an art out of recording with the sound meters well into the distortion zone. When necessary, they deliberately work in the red. If recording in the red will produce the heavy dark growling sound desired, rap producers record in the red. If a sampler must be detuned in order to produce a sought-after low-frequency hum, then the sampler is detuned…Volume, density, and quality of low-sound frequencies are critical features in rap production” (Rose, Black Noise, 75).

These producers are playing with “volume, density, and quality”. This strategy makes sense, especially if, as both Puar Jeffery Nealon, and others argue, neoliberalism manifests in/as the organization of intensities.[2]

 

            SO, it seems to me that this idea of modulating something “into the red”—modifying the intensity of a signal so that it effects a qualitative shift—is a good way to start thinking about how to subvert neoliberal biopolitical administration. This  form of power manifests as the regularization and regulation of frequencies, the stabilization of a signal. You modify signal with signal (e.g., an electric signal made by turning the potentiometer on a volume knob makes the mp3 play back louder or softer). Subverting signal means, a la Ghostbusters, crossing the streams—or, pushing signal into the red. 

            I still need to think more on this crossing the streams/into the red point or model. But I think it is a very productive one, not just because it’s on the right track, but because there are plenty of musical examples I can use to help me understand what these practices might look like politically.

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[1] e.g., I post a lot of things to Facebook about race and African-American culture, because, you know, that’s what I study, so I, someone Facebook knows is white, and in a relationship with another white person, get ads for get “targeted” ads for the “Talented Tenth Boys Academy,” complete with a picture of a smiling young black student in a uniform. So, obviously Facebook thinks I am likely to have a black child, maybe because I sometimes quote Du Bois in my status updates. My point is that Facebook’s algorithms can’t handle the idea that a 34-year-old white woman might care about race, African-American culture, etc., so its attempts at targeting me actually really, really miss the mark.

[2] As Jason Read puts it, “Neoliberal governmentality follows a general trajectory of intensification” Read, Jason. “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the PRoduction of Subjectivity” in Foucault Studies, No 6 pp. 25-36 February 2009. P. 29.

Music Geek-Out #11: Luscious Jackson's "Naked Eye"

Just to remind everyone, I'm doing a series on the playlist I curated for the dinner at philoSOPHIA 2012 at Miami U in Oxford, Ohio. The playlist is Oxford-centric, and feminist-centric. In homage to the old Oxford radio station 97X WOXY, I drew largely from their playlist in the 90s, when I was a student at Miami.

So after the Breeders I went with another fabulous 90s indie girl-band, Luscious Jackson.  WOXY played them so much, and gave them so much love I thought they were local, even though they aren't. They're from NYC. In fact, the Beastie Boy's original drummer, Kate Schellenbach, was part of the group. Their fansite has a HUGE list of articles here. 




Two notable things about the video: (1) It's really interesting how they portray the female protagonist. The video suggests that all the band members are not distinct characters, but in fact the same one. There's one female character, portrayed variously by each band member. This evokes a lot of critical ideas about, e.g., the role of women in patriarchy, the function of female characters/feminized elements in narrative, etc. (Though, one thing that complicates the latter is that the story is apparently the woman's (she's at the beginning and at the resolution, the male character is the one who leaves in order for her to come to resolution)--however, this may just be another example of what Rey Chow suggests is the "Jane Eyre" logic--it's a story nominally about a woman, but the narrative still centers the male protagonist.). and (2) If you watch the end of the video, it is clear it was made in an era when it was entirely plausible to park on the curb at the airport, leave your car, and come back to it. We in the US haven't been able to do this in over a decade, so this, above all, is what dates the video.

I chose "Naked Eye" specifically because its aesthetic follows well from "Cannonball": there's the same general "sound" (with the softly pulsing guitar work, the drumming), and the effected female vocals are a very strong sonic similarity.  There's also some quasi-rapping in the verses: they're not strictly sung, they're not really sprechstimme, and the rhythm and rhyme pattern evokes rapping, but the delivery is so laid back that it doesn't really feel like rapping (which is usually more enthusiastic). More specifically, white girl rap is more monotone than conventional rapping: there's not the rise and fall in pitch, there is relatively little use of (musical) accents (e.g., "hitting" a particular syllable with emphasis), etc. Mainstream rapping uses all these things to produce a more complexly textured vocal delivery. This sort of laid-back half-rapping is really characteristic of a particular strain of indie white girl rapping in and following immediately from the 90s: think of Chicks on Speed, some early Le Tigre, etc. Then sometime in the mid 00s white female party rappers (think Peaches, then of course Ke$ha, even Uffie to a certain extent) started using more conventional rap expressivism. So, while I don't have the time to examine this more right now, it's definitely worth asking (if somebody hasn't already) after this 90s indie-white-girl rapping aesthetic. Why did it take this shape? What encouraged white indie female musicians to deliver raps in this way?

Intensification vs Intersection: “Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln”

Intensification vs Intersection: “Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln”

In this post I both unpack the slur in the title, and use it to explain how discourses of "difference" (race, sexuality) function in neoliberal Western democracies.

 

So some on the American right want to attack Obama by calling him a “Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln.” In today’s NYTimes, Charles Blow does some preliminary deconstruction of the attempted slur. He talks about the ways that the term “metrosexual” feminizes and queers its object, and he hints at (but does not overtly name) the fact that Obama’s race contributes to this feminization and queering.[1] Blow remarks,

In its truest sense, President Obama of mom jeans infamy — as he told the “Today Show” in 2009, “I’m a little frumpy” — is far less metrosexual than Mitt Romney of the perfect hair, copper tan and Gap skinny jeans.

Frumpy but black Obama gets read as metro, while slick, painstakingly well-groomed but white Romney is not considered “metro,” even while practicing many of the behaviors, features, and stylistic choices associated with “metrosexuality.” So here we have an example of race and sexuality mutually intensifying one another: Obama’s racial unruliness augments his sexuality, pushing a rather, uh, vanilla style of masculine comportment into the register of sexual unruliness. This racialization-via-sexualization/sexualization-via-racialization logic is what Jasbir Puar identifies in her book Terrorist Assemblages. She argues that race is used to disaggregate “homonational” gays and lesbians from “queer terrorists.” The racial “ruliness” of white or white-conforming gays and lesbians qualifies or diminishes their perceived sexual unruliness, just as the racial unruliness of black or brown (mainly) men amplifies their perceived gender and sexual deviance. 

In the “metrosexual black Abe Lincoln” slur, race and sexuality don’t overlap so much as modulate one another, like two different frequencies who, when played together, produce specific sets of harmonics or partials, which in turn modify how we perceive the original tones. In this instance, race and sexuality are not overlapping identities, but “channels” (in the sense of a TV or radio channel, which is the name of a frequency, e.g., “97X” or “Power 98”) of or for patterns of relationships.  Or, as Jasbir Puar puts it, in instances such as this one, what is significant about “identities” like race and sexuality is “not the entities themselves [their ‘content’ or definition, e.g., the specific attributes of blackness], but the patterns within which they are arranged with each other” (IRBCTG 6). So, this slur does not use race or sexuality as the basis of inclusion or exclusion (right, b/c Obama is already president, he’s in the system, he is the system);[2] it does not say that he is ineligible for the presidency (as the birther movement did by appealing to his supposed failure to meet the born-in-the-USA qualification for POTUS), that he is already on the “outside.” Rather, it says he is too extreme (e.g., that he is “elitist”). In fact, this largely “Republican” attack compares Obama to a Republican president—Abraham Lincoln.  However, the adjectives “metrosexual” and “black” indicate that Obama is comparable to Lincoln (thus not “orange” to his “apple”), but just too extreme. Obama is not of a different “kind,” but of a different “degree”; this is what Puar talks about as the difference between classically liberal disciplinary paradigms (which work via “exclusion and inclusion” and neoliberal control paradigms (which work by “modulation and tweaking”) of race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of “difference” (IRBCTG 7).  So here race and sexuality aren’t used as the basis of inclusion or exclusion (racial identity as positioning BO already on the outside), but are themselves the tools or instruments used to locate or transport a specific subject to the fringe.

So, not only does this difference between “intersection” and “intensification” help us understand how exactly the “metro black Abe Lincoln” slur works, but the slur also helps us understand how exactly discourses of difference function in contemporary neoliberal democracies.

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[1] Blow also completely overlooks the queering work accomplished by the association with Lincoln. Regardless of its empirical/historical validity, people associate him with possible, alleged queerness—commonly enough to warrant a dedicated Wikipedia page.

[2] Puar rightly cautions against treating identity and intensification (or discipline and control) models as mutually exclusive, and acting like control has thoroughly replaced discipline: “discipline and punish may well still be a primary mode of power apparatus” (IRBCTG 8). The fact that Obama skips over “discipline and punish” can thus be seen as evidence of his relative privilege and inclusion—he’s not always-already excluded, but rather folded into life in some very specific (often class-based) ways.

Music Geek-Out #9: Pixies "Monkey Gone to Heaven"

Again, there are many reasons why I chose this song for the philoSOPHIA dinner playlist at Miami. As I mentioned, I was doing a little "awesome female bassist" subsection of the set. AND, at a school an hour away from Dayton, Ohio, I would be seriously remiss if I didn't include some Kim Deal. Kim was/is the bassist for the Pixies. And, for me growing up as a teenage modern rock chick in between Cincinnati and Dayton in the 90s, Kim Deal was IT. She was proof that local girls could get out and do something interesting.

I picked this track specifically because it shows how important Kim was to the Pixies (in)famous "loud/quiet/loud" aesthetic. Her vocal harmonies appear mainly in the "loud" sections, but as something softer and warmer than Black Frances's angsty, more cutting vocals. So, she uses softness to make the loud sections loud.

Music Geek-Out #8: Talking Heads "Psycho Killer"

Not only is this song a classic in the Modern Rock canon, it also has some specific significance in my grad school experience, and it plays nicely off one of the first songs in the "dance party" portion of the evening (Tiga's "Burning Down the House," which is a cover of a Talking Heads track). I wanted to pick a Talking Heads track as the first in the "awesome female bassist" subsection of the playlist (Kim Deal will be on the next two tracks).  Tina Weymouth is amazing, and I definitely wanted to feature her work at a feminist conference; I thought people would be more familiar with Talking Heads than with Tom Tom Club, so I chose this song (though, I did consider Chicks on Speed's Wordy Rappinghood, which is a reworking of TTC's original, which would pair nicely with some Slits, actually.)


So, for most of my teens and early twenties, I had no idea what half of what David Byrne was mumbling in this track: "Psycho Killer garblegarblegarble huh?". Then, when Heather Ross and I were taking a French class at DePaul (to prep for our translation exams), we learned the phrase "Qu'est-que c'est?", and spent the whole class period talking about this song, and how it suddenly made a lot more sense. So, given that this was a continental feminist conference I was playing for, and that the theme was "Translation," this seemed like a particularly appropriate choice for the venue.

 

Music Geek-Out #7

Next is XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel".



This track was always on 97X's Modern Rock 500 (a countdown of the 500 best modern rock songs, held the same weekend as the Indy 500, which was about a two hour drive away). I wanted this track to transition, musically, between the Afghan Whigs track and the Talking Heads "Psycho Killer."

Lyrically, though, it's an interesting contrast to the previous tracks about deindustrialization and punky "no future" sentiment. This song is about "Nigel," whose "future is as good as sealed" in "British Steel" (presumably as a foreman, as a sign in the video suggests. Also interesting is the way the repetition of "steel" in the break brings out the homophony between "steel" and "steal"). So, perhaps my UK readers can correct me on this, but I'm assuming that "Nigel" reads a bit middle-class, and the fact that his "future" is all set for him (handed to him, pre-planned for him) is of a piece with his class status.

Music Geek-Out #5

Sorry for the hiatus--the end-of-term hustle gobbled up my life for the past few weeks. So, back to the philoSOPHIA/WOXY dinner playlist:

Next is another Ohio band, Cleveland's Pere Ubu. Keeping with the post-industrial theme, I chose their "Final Solution." I also chose this because there's something going on in this song about masculinity ("The girls won't touch me 'cause I've got a missed erection"), which gets taken up in Peter Murphy's cover--which, actually, I think is better than the original.

So, Pere Ubu's "Final Solution":



If the heart of rock 'n' roll is in Cleveland, this song gouges it out and drops an H-bomb on it. This track was released in 1976, the same year that punk broke in London. Not only does it sound like it would fit in quite well on a Sex Pistols/Throbbing Gristle bill, but there's also the resonance with Nazi imagery ("Final Solution") that was common in UK punk (Nazi imagery functioned in the UK in ways similar to the way blackness functions in the US. For the generation of late 70s British punks, their parents fought in WWII and lived through the Blitz. What is the one thing that would make these parents more angry, shocked, and outraged than anything else? Nazis. In the US, white parents were more incensed by blackness than by Nazis, so white kids tended to appropriate African American culture instead of Nazi chic.) Pere Ubu didn't intend the resonance, but it's there nonetheless.

But, for as great as Pere Ubu's original is, IMHO Peter Murphy's cover is that much better--both musically, and in the allusions to AIDS. (He didn't really change anything to make the allusions, in the early/mid 80s the song's lyrics resonate differently, given the different political context.) Murphy's training as a dancer is also evident in this video.



And, for those of you who know me personally, just watch this video. It's seriously uncanny. You'll know why.

Music Geek-Out #10: The Breeders "Cannonball"

When I was a teenage girl growing up in John Boehner's congressional district halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton, OH, Kim Deal was the ish. She was from where I was from, but she managed to escape post-Mapplethorpe crazy Republican land and be the Modern Rock Chick par excellence. AND she had a sister, Kelly. AND they had a band, The Breeders. AND their song, Cannonball, broke the mainstream pop charts. I taped this song off the radio and played it in the tapedeck in my car. I would also tap out that sticking pattern in the very beginning on every imaginable surface, with every imaginable implement (fingers, pencils and pens, mallets, chopsticks...).


So, I picked this song for the philoSOPHIA playlist because in terms of women musicians from the general Oxford, OH area, the Deal sisters are probably the most well-known. WOXY used to run a promo featuring their mom, which went: "Hi, I'm Ann Deal, the breeder of the Breeders, and you're listening to 97X, BAM! the future of rock n roll".





 

Shady and Coercive Pro NC Amendment 1 Practices at the Church That Is Also My Polling Place

So, I just got back from voting in North Carolina's primaries today. As a registered Democrat, the only really interesting primary is for the NC governor's race. However, as readers of this blog are probably well aware, the big issue in NC this election is Amendment One, the gay marriage ban.

Amendment One is actually about a lot more than gay marriage--it effectively restricts the benefits of marriage or civil partnership only to heterosexual married couples. There are lots of ways this effects non-LGBTQI populations. For example, much has been made of the impact this can have on domestic abuse among cohabitating but unmarried partners, or, you know, on the children of unmarried het and queer parents.

BUT, today I want to talk about the shady, coercive, UNETHICAL (if not illegal--does anyone wanna check on this for me?) practices at the church that is my polling place. I'll make the case as to why this is unethical below (and, as a philosophy professor who teaches a lot and publishes a little in applied ethics, I think I have some expertise in this area). But first, let me describe to you what happened.

I've been going to this polling place for about five years (since I moved into my current house in 2007). It's always been Charlotte location #63, housed in New Hope Baptist Church on E WT Harris Blvd. The church does not seem to have a website, and it should not be confused with New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, which is in another part of town. I've voted at this location many times, in primaries and in general elections. So, I'm very familiar with how they usually run things at location 63.

So, I was very surprised when they moved the polling place from the detached gym where it usually is to inside the church itself. I was confused for a second, b/c I was half on autopilot, just walking to where I usually go to vote.

So, I enter the church, and I do the usual check-in. That's in one office. The voting machines are in the office next door. In this office, which has been cleared of all furnishings except the voting machines, are two Bible verses on a vinyl banner, and a printed word processor-produced sign about God and Jesus being Lord. They do not appear to be regular fixtures of the room. For example, the printed sign is not faded, as you would expect of a computer-paper document that's been posted to a wall for a while. And, they removed everything else, so why not also take down these signs? You can't miss these signs. They're on the main wall that you face when you walk in the room.

Add to this the content of the church's front sign, which I pass every day on my way to school, the gym, the grocery, etc. It said: "Vote Yes Obey God" They took the sign down for election day, but it was up for at least a few weeks leading up to the election. So, knowing that the church had been actively and publicly advocating for this amendment, and framing this advocacy as a matter of obedience to God and scripture, the two other tweaks to the polling place (the changed location and the indoor signage), it is pretty obvious that they're using these tweaks to influence voters. 


And I think at least the indoor signs are possibly illegal--it's illegal to have political signs INSIDE the polling place (that's why there's always such a mess of signs outside them). Now, while these signs didn't DENOTATIVELY address Amendment One, the CONNOTATIONS AND CONTEXT pointed directly to A1...The church's outdoor sign, which was up for weeks, makes it obvious how the indoor signs are to be interpreted.


So, while all this may or may not be illegal. It's unethical. It is unethical to try to persuade or coerce voters inside the very room where they're casting their ballot. This should be a place that is overtly neutral, a place where no one is made to feel marginalized, uncomfortable, or uneasy for voting in whatever way ze chooses. I mean, they ban cell phones in the voting room (that's why I don't have a picture of the signs), so they can at least ban not-so-thinly-veiled political signs, and other shady manipulative moves like the location-switch.


So, shame on New Hope Baptist Church for their unethical polling practices. I understand that they feel strongly about Amendment 1, but in their role as a polling place, they are not a church, but a public institution. So not only are they obliged, as a polling place, to uphold the public trust, they ought, ethically, to refrain from coercion and manipulation. Voters have a moral and legal right to vote in an environment free of coercion and manipulation.

Hipster Racism

After Jezebel's recent post on Hipster Racism, the topic is newly hot in the feminist/race blogosphere. And that's great! We really need to be talking about the ways racism and white supremacy inform the everyday practices of "good, white liberal" kids.

I want to emphasize that racism and hipness (the logic, discourse, or structure of hipster-ism) are not just contingently related. It is not just that some hipsters happen to trade in racist fashions. The logic or structure of hipness is itself grounded in white racism. Hipness is a practice grounded, both historically and structurally, in racism. It is a form of cultural/racial appropriation wherein white people use their interpretations of non-white cultures/identitites to demonstrate their elite status among whites. And obviously gender and sexuality are also factors. Hipness is a racist, sexist, and heterosexist practice.

Want some proof of that claim? I've written about this topic extensively:

For the academics and intellectuals among you, here are my scholarly articles.

"On Taste, Hipness, and White Embodiment"

  To be “hip” is to be in, but not “of” dominant culture in the sense that a hipster rejects various hegemonic norms while at the same time being privileged by them. Alternately, to be “hip” is to be “of” dominant culture but not “in” it in the sense that one might have rather mainstream origins (e.g., white middle-class upbringing in the Midwest) but no longer actively participate in the culture of one’s birth. If it is the case that hipness ultimately desires to be “in but not of”/“of but not in” the dominant social body, then hipness can be read as a characteristically white relation to the (white) social body. In hipness, the individual’s quitting of the dominant social body is achieved through a specific relation to his or her own body: ex-corporation is both exclusion (from the body politic) and disembodiment (a white relation to one’s own body, the desire to ultimately not “be” a (mere) body). One excorporates oneself from the social body by affectively situating oneself “outside” mainstream whiteness; this in turn is achieved in the performance of the stereotypical bodily styles of hetero black masculinity.

"The Case of Postmillennial Black Hipness"

 “White hipness” is the appropriation of stereotypical black masculinity by white males. Looking at recent videos from black male hip-hop artists, I develop an account of “postmillennial black hipness.” The inverse of white hipness, this practice involves the appropriation, by black men, of stereotypical white gay masculinity and/or non-American, non-white femininity. I also argue that Shephard Fairey’s recent images of (mainly militant) non-Western women of color can be read as a new form of white hipness that revises the traditional logic in two ways: (1) by appropriating non-white femininity rather than masculinity, and (2) by adopting the practice of postmillennial black hipness itself.

And for those of you would like a more accessible version of those articles, here are relevant blog posts:

White d00ds posing as queer WOC

Janelle Monae vs Shephard Fairey

Gucci, Gucci: Thoughts on the Biopolitics of Cool