AKMA’s Random Thoughts

End of the Day

I said it over at Invisible Adjunct’s and I’l say it again here: with all due respect to Steve and IA, both of whom I esteem highly, I don’t see the problem with “star” scholars getting paid high salaries. I’ve been around the academy long enough that I can offer empirical data to suggest that this isn’t a self-interested argument; I’m not going to make more than scale for my position. But if one of my brilliant colleagues — think, perhaps, of Naomi, who could within a few years be weighing competing offers from various reputable institutions — represents such a presence on campus that several universities want to bid for her affiliation, I decline to fuss about it.

That’s a different position, by the way, from saying, “I don’t have a problem with intellectual frauds getting paid more than they’re worth.” That does indeed bother me, but I’m just not as clever at recognizing intellectual fraud as some people. I’m so shallow that I learn a good deal from many among the most notorious bamboozlers, and if I’m put out at the salaries given any “stars,” I’m probably more piqued at Named-Chair facile debunkers who appeal to anti-intellectual ressentiment instead of joining argument and respectfully exploring unfamiliar ideas. But that probably just demonstrates my own deplorable credulity; I was dropped on my head at an early age, and now I mindlessly repeat anything that’s told me by someone with a French accent.

Yes, absolutely, adjuncts are underpaid, and yes, absolutely, too many institutions rely far too heavily on adjunct, thus undermining the very profession they depend on. As far as institutions expand their reliance on exploitation as a way of sustaining their academic programs, so far they degrade the integrity of those programs.

On the other hand, I rejoice that someone, somewhere, thinks that intellectual brilliance is worth paying for. I’d rather live in a world where too few professors are paid generously than one in which none at all are. That doesn’t prevent me from resisting adjunctification; it’s precisely in the name of people being able to earn a culturally-coherent salary that I acknowledge without carping the perks that go with fancy academic appointments. They still make less than a mediocre infielder who can barely hit a curve ball, and I respect the most prominent academic scholars no less than I respect the 25th guy on a major league roster.

DigID Reality Check

Courtesy of honorary postmodernist Phil Windley, a link to an interview with bioinformatics researcher James Wayman.

The key moment for observers such as I comes when the interviewer asks Wayman how she could tell whether he really was James Wayman, and Wayman answers, “Right now, your best information that I am who I say I am is what I know.” It’s exactly that diffused notion of identity that comes closest to getting at who we really are — but it’s going to be devilishly difficult to devise an algorithm for checking who I am by asking where I used to sit in my family living room (behind the couch by the radiator or at the end of the other couch, with my files of baseball statistics), or who I hung out with in high school (mostly Nina Amenta, Rob Croop, Becky Goldburg, David Barbrow, Linda Austern, and David Kalla), or what make my first 10-speed bicycle was (Bottecchia, but I didn’t advise them to adopt the annoying Flash intro screen) —matters which (up to now) were not available on any particular database, but which identify me as positively (and more truly) than my whorls. I am that guy who rebuilt his bicycle part by part, who polished his adolescent wit by bantering with geeky comrades, who taught himself probability theory at roughly the same time he was barely passing Algebra II; I don’t know if I could say the same about the patterns on my irises or fingertips.

Apple Store

Many people seem to be coming by here looking for my Apple Store comments, which are just down a little ways on Friday’s entry. Since this has become a minor attraction, I’ll re-emphasize how deeply, intensely snazzy the iSight is; the experience is almost exactly like what sci-fi movies have been showing us for decades. I just had an AV chat with Pascale Soleil (in which she could hear my voice, but her DV camera kept flaking out on voice or video or both); during the interval when we both could talk, and I could see her frown or laugh or reach around the back of my head (as it seemed) to turn the camera on and off, I caught a glimpse of what's so captivating about this technology. And Pascale and I have only just met, as it were; ’twould be even more thrilling if I could iChat with Margaret during her travels, for instance.

So I’m wondering how to rationalize adding another gadget to my desktop.

The rest of the store is mostly like other Apple Stores, but bigger. We may buy Margaret a sleeve for her iBook, and it’s great to know that there’s a place downtown that’s more or less guaranteed to have standard Apple stuff in stock (much more convenient than the store out west in Schaumburg, and with wider selection than Nabih’s here in Evanston). The staff were convivial and hyperactive, the equipment was first-rate, and the store itself is handsome. (One of the employees suggested that the transparent staircase itself was worth the wait. Call me jaded, but it didn’t particularly move me.) Four blocks from an El stop; stuffed with Mac-centric goodies; near the Cathedral of St. James (so I can combine ecclesiastical with electronic errands); all in all, highly favorable marks.

On Faculties

With a growing community of dissent over at Invisible Adjunct’s column, with an increasingly sympathetic correspondence with Dean Kriss, and with some turbulence on the academic home front, it’s probably time that I stake out some of my own thinking about the academic vocation, about graduate study, about tenure, and about specifically Christian academic work (as that’s one of the bases of Dean Kriss’s critique of tenure).

As far as “academic life” in general, I’m willing to grant that the privilege of enjoying one’s daily work might, just might, warrant accepting less-than-ideal circumstances for undertaking that work. That slender possibility narrows considerably, however, when one reflects on the likelihood that any particular academic job will actually offer the features of “academic life” that attract many of us in the first place: the atmosphere, the opportunity, and indeed the responsibility to read broadly, deliberate deeply, and to engage students and colleagues in a searching consideration of the subtleties that reward our patient attention to history, literature, human social interactions, philosophy, art, and, of course, theology. Once one adds in administrative responsibilities, the impedimenta of classroom instruction (constructing and evaluating assignments, record-keeping, class management), the ways that our personal responsibility to students occupies time, extra teaching to balance out the generally low pay for educators, and the thousand natural shocks that academic life is heir to, the time remaining for the life of the mind dwindles dramatically. Most of those who point to the benefits of academic life aren’t themselves enjoying the full experience.

Academics are almost universally overworked, underpaid, condescended to, offered fustian flattery in the place of velvet respect, and flat-out ignored by a culture that depends on their work for sustaining the wisdom, balance, perspective, and critical insight that build and enrich our shared culture.

Now, while it’s true that graduate programs often admit more students than can realistically expect to attain tenured academic positions, please let’s take a step back and assess what to make of that fact. After all, some people really do pursue academic studies for the sake of the knowledge and discussion itself, and they can end up in non-teaching academic jobs, or in related-but-not-academic positions (perhaps in publishing, with foundations or other NFP organizations). That doesn’ mean, “Hey, disappointed grad student — just buck up and take a job at a benevolent NGO” (as though it were that easy anyway); it does mean that we can’t look on advanced studies simply as a conduit toward tenured faculty positions, a conduit that’ faulty if it doesn’t convey one hundred per-cent of its graduates to those positions. Yes, most grad students want faculty jobs, and yes, most advisors think only in those terms, but we simply can’t take some step as drastic as [hypothetically] limiting grad-school admissions to balance out retirements. If someone wants to get a theology degree, then go be a screenwriter, that should be an open possibility.

But there’s the rub — for if we admit people without regard to the likelihood of their obtaining a tenured position (after all, they might be florists at heart), we comply with the circumstances that have constructed the gruesome labor scene that presently prevails in academia. If we treat graduate school strictly as a pre-faculty training process, we turn away bright, interested students who don’t particularly want to deal with academia’s frustrations.

It’s worse than that, though, because there’s no way reliably to tell which entering students will be the ones who will, at the end of their programs, be most employable, and which will be bright, insightful, and not at all faculty material. The difference between an application from a college senior and the embodied learning and pedagogical outlook of an ABD or a new Ph.D. plays a tremendous part in the tangle of finding places for scholars and would-be scholars to work. No one can make that determination from a masters-degree admissions folder, so the notion of restricting admissions in order to head off an oversupply of PhD’s just won’t fly.There need to be more masters students admitted to programs than there will be tenured positions at the end of those programs because not everyone admitted should be a professor. So although a top-flight program could afford to make the pledge that I proposed, to carry a graduate until he or she got a steady gig, that would only clarify which institutions were willing to put their money where their mouths are — it wouldn’t be possible for less prestigious institutions to make that commitment, and they’d still be producing more graduates than could attain tenured positions.

I don’t think tenure is the problem, though it plays a role in the dreadful situation we now have. To put it another way, if tenure suddenly disappeared, I expect most faculty would work hard to re-establish it, for the same sorts of good reason that engendered the practice of granting tenure in the first place.

Not to let academia off the hook, but I see the outstanding culprit as a culture that can find no use for extremely capable, insightful, academically-sophisticated workers. It speaks volumes about the way of life in the U.S., and about our long-term economic future, that Ph.D. holders with strong academic careers would not be a massively attractive pool of job candidates. Of course, if the culture showed more interest in scholarship and learning, there would also be more jobs available in academia.

Are academics at fault? Not for being too egg-headed, no matter what populist appeals to common sense and plain language cry out. Some jargoneers are frauds, and some plain-spoken observers speak plainly because they can’understand complicated ideas. Some jargoneers are trying arduously to extend language to express insights that don’ already fit squarely into conventional patterns of expression, and some plain speakers have a gift for communicating disorienting insights in deceptively lucid prose.

More culpable, I reckon, are those teachers who sustain the romantic possibility that everyone could be an academic star. Teachers ought to be more honest about the prospects of getting the academic jobs that most PhD students will hunger for, both at the college applying-for-masters level, through the progress toward a masters degree, and especially as students draw closer to the sacrifices that a doctoral program requires. Sentimental urges to boost students’ self-esteem, to boost the teacher’s self-esteem by giving birth to intellectual progeny, to conceal the relative weakness of one’ home institution by pretending that it can justifiably send off a high proportion of its students for doctoral study, all these buy some comfort at the expense of the students themselves. It’ hard to tell students, especially friendly, ambitious students, that they’e looking for self-esteem in all the wrong places, but someone has to do it.

Tenure? It’ certainly a problem, and less of a problem (in some ways) than I’d reflexively have assumed, but I still mistrust administrators’ sense of what’s best for an institution, and what they owe to faculty who have worked hard to support that institution. Perhaps this is just a classic instance of labor versus management, but I still sense a peculiar vulnerability of teachers, which vulnerability tenure exists to counteract.

The bigger villain, oddly enough, is the nature of the academy as an institution — such that one must own buildings, a vast library, and a broad array of infrastructural devices in order to count as offering “education,” whereas a conspiracy of bright allies could probably cobble together an earth-shaking faculty of academic outcasts and margin-dwellers if only they could just set up shop and teach people.

Should an ostensibly Christian institution offer tenure to its employees? Dean Kriss suggests that there is a principled reason for eschewing tenure, in that it presupposes a degree of mutual mistrust that’s antithetical to shared discipleship. I suppose that’s true, and I just admitted that I don’ trust administrators (as a category — I know one or two whom I trust — one, anyway — most days). How would one begin to cultivate the trust that Dean Kriss stipulates as requisite for institutional discipleship? I think that putting faculty at constant risk of being fired would not encourage the sort of atmosphere for which my estimable correspondent hopes (as do I!). Especially in an situation where any of several issues might constitute a vocational third rail, teachers without tenure would not be free to promote the fullness of intellectual engagement with sensitive issues, but would be obliged either to parrot the administration’s party line or risk unemployment.

What would it take, to make possible a seminary without tenure? I could imagine a seminary in which the faculty was relatively free to govern itself, such that a dean (if there be one) would emerge as an effective leader from within the faculty (this is beginning to sound like the Gospel of Matthew’s ideal of community life); the trustees would serve not so much to manage as to protect the institution’s well-being; the seminary’s mission explicitly named its accountability to high standards of mutual obligation; and the remuneration and benefits were such that it drew faculty who were making a reasoned judgment of risk, so as to avoid simply taking advantage of the surplus of nominally-qualified jobseekers. For such an institution, though, I would not by any means ask the faculty to make the first move.

To sum up these miscellaneous ruminations, I resist blaming academia for not dealing effectively with its cultural degradation. Yes, the academic world certainly ought to do better, must do better by its prospective participants — but the battered spouse of commercial culture isn’t to blame for the embarrassing bruises and black eyes it endures, and is not even fully guilty when it unthinkingly passes on abusive assumptions to the next generation of academics. A bigger cultural change, with more expansive ideals, will have to come before academics have access to the resources that would make possible a truly humane academy.

Does This Bus Stop at Rome?

Evidently Google knows something I don’t. Using Aaron’s AdSense tester, I found out that Google would paste advertisements oriented strongly toward Roman Catholics, enticing clickers to educational institutions (for obvious reasons) and to religious orders.

For the record, that’s Anglo-Catholic, and Margaret would have a conniption fit if she thought I was anywhere near Rome. She gets stern when I so much as joke about it.

Now, of course, having been explicit about this association, Google will think me all the more appropriate a site for their Rome-oriented theological ads. I went ahead and mentioned these topics ’cause I don’t mind that much, but I avoid several topics that show up frequently in my referrer logs (involving a well-known spokesman for generalized mythological spirituality and his unfavorable outlook toward Judaism, and the New Yorker author who made a fuss about him) since I don’t particularly care to emphasize that single post). I got some unusual search-engine attention when I quoted a line from the B-52’s “Rock Lobster”

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. . . .

Recuperation

Deliberately lazy day, regrouping and clearing my head from the whirlwind of the preaching class. I didn’t try to fend off the backlog of mail or links, but I didn’t let it get any worse. Watched Goldfinger (Pippa and Margaret love James Bond movies) and read most of Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels, which I’ll be reviewing for the Trenton Times. I’ll ask my editor if I may reprint the review on the Disseminary “reviews” page.

Tomorrow I have to get back to work, but it felt good to give myself a day without obligations.

iTunes Report

A few weeks ago, I centralized all my MP3s on my external hard drive. It seemed the only plausible way of dealing with file management and my iPod. The process lasted several days, but I finally got ’most everything categorized, sorted, and deposited on my external.

Now, however, whenever I start iTunes, the application assumes that it has ready access to my main library — and when I’m not at my external drive, iTunes figures all those files are lost somewhere. The next time I connect to my hard drive, iTunes doesn’ seem to see the files it had thought “lost” earlier.

So now, I’m just dealing with the annoying library system and waiting for Apple to iron out their implementation of iTunes’ file organizing capacities. But when the day comes that one can easily just choose which library one wants to work from (without the annoying assumption that a particular ur-library will always be accessible), I’ll be an enthusiastic early adopter.

At Last!

Made it! I survived class today, after which Frank dropped me at the Apple Store, where I would meet Si for the grand opening. I walked to the door, followed the line to the corner of Huron and Michigan, turned east and walked the whole block to St. Clair. I turned south on St. Clair, again following the line, and beginning to wonder whether Si had gotten there at all, when a woman somewhat older than I called out, “Dad!”

As I gazed at her in bewilderment, she pointed to her feet, where Josiah sat eating the sub he had bought for dinner.

By 6:00, the time the store was scheduled to open, the line stretched all the way around the block and lapped over the whole length of the Huron St. side of the block. We spotted Aaron Swartz while we were standing in line, and Si introduced himself later on. Eventually we made our way in, look around, tried in vain to win an iSight (I was very, very impressed at the image quality they generated, much better than any other webcam I’ve seen), and picked up our free T-shirts. (Pictures at my dot-Mac address.)

I was going to come home, eat popcorn, watch a movie, post my pictures, and drift to sleep — but I didn’t really have time to watch the movie, and though I could have eaten popcorn while I typed and image-edited, I hastened through the process so that I could sleep all the sooner.

Last Day of School

After more contact hours than in an ordinary class’s semester, today will bring to a close the preaching seminar on which I’ve been working. It’s a good bunch of preachers, and we’ve had some exciting discussions, but I will deeply relish the opportunity to sleep late tomorrow morning. Oooooh, yeah.

When I’m done with teaching and Si’s fulfilled his many social obligations, we’ll meet on Michigan Avenue for the opening of the new Apple Store (I’d link to Si, but he’s packing and moving to a new location). We had been talking about going to a Cubs game, but we reasoned that the Cubs play 81 home games a year, but the Apple Store Grand Opening comes only once. Plus, OK Go (a band that Si likes, whom assures me, earnestly, has improved since I saw them) will be playing, and they’re giving away 1000 T-shirts and 20 iSights. I’ll be the one staggering around with bags, duffel bags, under my eyes and a good-looking teenage man-boy steering me.

Realizing the Obvious

I was wondering why I felt so exhausted at the end of my ten-hour teaching shifts; after all, teaching isn’t so physically demanding an occupation. I was wondering, until I ate lunch today. I went down to the cafeteria late, and rather than break into a table with an ongoing conversation, I sat down by myself.

It was only as I was giving thanks for a few minutes of solitude that I caught on that I was an introvert living by a schedule that only an extrovert could have devised. Whereas on an ordinary day, a couple of classes (totaling three or four hours) or masses (another three or four) knock me flat, I’ve spent the last four days socializing non-stop from 7:15 to 6:30.

Now I don’t feel puzzled — I feel dumb that it took me so long to figure it out. At least I get out a little early this afternoon. I can go home, hide, and take a nap.

Another Quotation

“Die Sprache verkleidet den Gedanken.”
Language disguises thought.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus 4.002

Trevor (of ) thinks this goes well with

“Voice is truth’s body.

Maybe.” David Weinberger
(Not: “maybe David Weinberger” but: “Maybe.” David Weinberger)

I don’t know about pairing the two, but I like verkleidet, “disguises,” for language’s relation to thought. . . .

You Know

. . . . I’m busy when I squeeze in time to blog twice in a day, and they’re both about spam instead of the Holy Spirit or DigID® or responses to any of the friendly, insightful visitors who ask questions about what I write, to help set me straighter. Frank thinks we get out of school early tomorrow, so I may catch up a little; and Si won’t be home at dinnertime, so I can put together a very casual meal — but even then, I’m behind on reading (and listening to) assignments from my class.

No Thanks

“Sherbert Floy” offers me the opportunity to “get a degree in any experienced field.” It turns out that “It is a well known fact that people who posses [sic] a degree are looked upon as the elite. If you have a degree, you are almost assured to gain leverage in the work place. There's no testing required.”

No, thank you very much; I don’t work for the Department of Homeland Security.

Strange Spam

Did the rest of my Blogarian sisters and brothers receive the same emailed opportunity I did this morning? A representative from a website for the Carthusian Order called my attention to his site (I usually don’t link to spam, but I’m a sucker for religious orders).

Some questions: first, how did they choose my name? These can’t be the same people who worry about my anatomical dimensions, my pharmaceutical needs, my relationships with depraved college women, or any of the other causes that try to make an unsanitary landfill out of my inbox every day. I’m a fellow-traveller of the Dominican Order, but with no special attraction to the Carthusians. How did they choose me for their mailing list?

Second, the spam itself is written in good clear English, but the site is in French — so they’re targeting a bilingual (or even multilingual, since the site points to Italian and German links) audience. Again, that’s not your average spam list.

They must have harvested my email from the Catholic BIblical Association list. I’d ask about it at the annual meeting, but I can’t go this year. . . .

Strange Homework

One of the assignments I frequently require for Scripture classes involves reading aloud ___________ (fill in the name of a text here) on an audiotape or, now, an MP3-format file.

This accomplishes loads of positive things, on which I won’t discourse for the moment, but checking this homework becomes complicated. I can’t listen all the way through an indefinite number of multi-hour audio tapes or files, so I end up skipping around a lot, just randomly dropping in to see how my student did when s/he got to Matthew 13, or Galatians 3, or whatever.

So tonight I’m sitting groggily in bed, with my portable tape player, listen to snippets of Matthew’s Gospel read in various different voices. It’s a pretty peculiar experience. Luckily, they’re all good readers so far.

She’s Almost All Right

Leslie Harpold: “Possible Scenarios for Heaven”

I hate to split hairs, but wouldn’t it be more heavenly if the scenario weren’t “You are always a size six,” but “No one cares what size you are,” perhaps adding “and everything fits and is comfortable?”

Beat

I’m utterly exhausted, and this was only a one-afternoon shift. I can’t believe that they expect us to teach tomorrow, 8:30 to 11:30, and 1:30 to 5. I’ll spontaneously combust.

Preaching Teaching

Between community worship and the beginning of today’s class, I found an empty ethernet port and plugged in. The seminary sent instructions to summer faculty saying where we could find phone outlets into which we might plug our modems, but didn’t mention a thing about the campus network. Don’t even think about wireless.

This’ll be an odd experience; we have four days of all-day classes (beginning this afternoon, ending Friday midday), so that by the time I get a sense for what-all is going on, the course will be over. Let us hope that the group can come together quickly, so we can get as far and as deep as possible in the short span of time allotted to us.

Resume and Information Design

I’ve had some kind offers of help, and I’ve done a fair amount of looking around, and I haven’t yet seen evidence that the conventional resume has been tackled to a significant extent as a problem in information design. Even brilliant designers of snappy websites get all conventional when it comes to presenting their credentials.

Now as I said before, part of this has to do with the audience: many resume-readers want to see a good old-fashioned presentation of experience, credentials, goals, and so on. But I observe so many kinks in the conventional resume as a solution to a problem in information design that I remain convinced that there must be some better way to represent oneself to potential employers.

Either it has been solved, and kept secret — or it’s awaiting a new solution.

For Arete

Travailler, c'est entreprendre de penser autre chose que ce qu'on pensait avant.

To work is to undertake to think something different from what one thought before.

Michel Foucault; epigraph to Une histoire de la vérité, Paris: Syros, 1985.

Cheers, Arete!

Preaching and the Spirit IV

Why don’t I just come out and try to convert the lost sheep of the École Normale Supérieure? Do I really mean it about conservative worship (I can’t find anything I even said about conservative worship, but I’ll try to answer the question anyway)? Can one bespeak the Truth without so intending? I don’ have as much time as I’d like, and I’m a very slow thinker and typer, so this’ll be sketchy. I’ll mix in some other stuff I’m thinking about preaching, as I get ready for tomorrow’s (gasp!) class.

Why not “convert the postmoderns”, Tutor? Because converting people isn’t my job. That’s just not theologically sound; conversion is the Spirit at work. My job, and maybe all the work of preaching, maybe even all the work of discipleship, means trying to cooperate with the Spirit — as it were, to make the Spirit’s job easier. To soften people up for the Spirit. To find the open passing lane so the Spirit can sneak in for a lay-up. To do all I can to defuse people’s objections to what I profess, and to exemplify someone whose life permits both a steadfast commitment to the Truth and a functional brain, hearty laughter, and broad sympathies. I don’t do Edwards well (at least, not the apocalyptic Edwards; I have some attraction to the deliberative Edwards). If I were to try to preach “Sinners in the Hands,” I’d sound like somebody imitating a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, probably not a convincing imitation at that. If on the other hand I be permitted persistently to make my own patient case for the joyous, life-giving Way of the gospel, and for the anesthetic (or worse) alternatives to that gift of freedom and peace, I may better prepare someone to hear the Spirit speak of the deep things of God, teaching us in wordless depths. If someone whose sympathies stop at a postmodern creed doesn’t hear Truth when I preach in the idiom within which I work most truly to my capacities and fluencies, then invoking the furnaces of Gehenna won’t change their hearts either. I’ getting the sense that I know someone who may be called to be the theological bad cop to my good cop.

Conservative worship? I’m not sure what that means, but I should admit that I’m a firm adherent to the Anglo-Catholic tradition of worship — not because I think that it is or should be the only way anyone ever praises God in worship, but because I find in some representatives of that tradition a practice of transgressive beauty that I haven't met as reliably elsewhere. Some Anglo-Catholics are prissy control monarchs; who needs that? But I was taught my most precious lessons in catholic worship at an inner-city Hispanic/Caribbean-American congregation in Tampa. Do I thereby anathematize ways that other people worship? By no means (as the Apostle saith)! Any way of daring to draw near God in ways we devise entails a risk (which is one reason many congregations avoid the issue by not even trying to draw near God) — but the number of ways in which God takes delight in our praise can’t be numbered. (I just don’t understand many of them.)

What then (speaking of variety) about an atheist communicating the Truth unawares, perhaps despite herself? It seems plausible to me; I certainly don’t exclude that possibility. But at the same time, I’m obligated to take seriously an atheist’s rejection of the Truth that I profess — otherwise I’m just flat-out not listening. I used to have a French teacher (an Algerian Jew; maybe she grew up with Derrida?) who insisted that there are no atheists: “Non, M. Adam; everrhy man has hees God, whethair he knows eet orrrh not!” Well, in a certain sense, I guess; but I sure wouldn’t want to try to tell Jean-Paul Sartre or Jesse Ventura that really, they did believe in God. Do I hear notes of the Truth in Sartre? Yes, though they be heavily muffled (sorry, not in Ventura, but then I haven’t read much Ventura). I’m utterly convinced that the Spirit can make the Truth heard in unexpected ways — is that what you’re asking, Danya?

The “deliberate” part of the narrower definition, about which Danya may be concerned, should apply only, I suppose, to those of us who might aspire to speaking with the Spirit’s support; but your challenge brings to view so many problems with that stipulation that I may have to withdraw that part of the definition. I’m guarding against the presumption that some preachers bring to their task, where they reckon that simply by wearing outlandish garb and standing up in the congregation, they must be in the Spirit, so anything they utter is good. There’ a more precise way of getting at that, though.

Well, phooey, it’ getting late, I must sleep well tonight since I have a long teaching shift tomorrow, and I haven’t been able to get back to the topic. Permit me to close this phase of the discussion by observing that gut-wrenching experience has convinced me that the Holy Spirit has a different theology of preaching from a lot of preachers, who evidently think that if they trust in the Spirit and talk for a long enough interval, something edifying will have been said.

Excursus: Danya and I have already opened the topic of preaching from a manuscript vs. preaching without a predefined text — in deference to her and to the other forty-three (or however many) good extemporaneous preachers in the world, I insist that I’m not declaring that everyone should preach from a manuscript. No, no, no! It’s just that people who don’t preach well extemporaneously, which is “many who try,” should work from a manuscript, which at least gives you a basis from which to amend your folly. Of course, if the preachers in question were conscientious enough to examine their sermon manuscripts to see where they could be improved, they probably wouldn’t be preaching badly, extemporaneously, in the first place. But Danya and the other good extemporaneous preachers, God bless ’em, and stick with what you do best.

Now I’ll wrap up before I go off on a long tangent and lose all sleep tonight. . . .

DRMA: Radio Paradise (I’m away from any CDs or my external hard drive/MP3 trove); then "Making Contact" by Bruce Cockburn; "Absolutely Fabulous" by the Pet Shop Boys; "Andrew Duffy’s Jig" by Jonatha Brooke and the Story; "Lounge Act" by Nirvana.

Michel, Meet Phil

I had a great conversation with Phil Windley at DIDW last October, which included his touchstone observation that the state has an intense interest in the question of identity: “we have an entire branch of government that is devoted to establishing links between identity and a physical body: the courts.  Trials are largely about proving that a particular physical body has a particular identity.” I like him a lot and read his blog regularly — but I never thought I would encounter him discoursing on “self-fashioning” and “technologies of the self.” Maybe next year we can have a good ol’ round table on différance, justice, and undecideability.

And although Clay Shirky has resisted having a blog in favor of publishing a monthly column, his participation in the Corante Many-to-Many collaborative blog (with friend Liz and Ross Mayfield, Sébastien Paquet & Jessica Hammer) ends up with him blogging as much as many people do on their personal pages — which is a good thing.

Preaching and the Spirit III

What difference does all that rigamarole I’ve been propounding make?

In answer to Naomi’s question — I haven’t forgotten it — I’d say, I’m not in a position to assert whether preaching (narrowly defined) is an exclusively Christian phenomenon. I can well imagine a symmetrical convergence of circumstances in non-Christian congregations in which different people might identify someone/something like the Holy Spirit at work, but it’s not my office to try to adjudicate the Spirit’s activity in those cases. As a Christian, I can only affirm the activity of the Spirit (provisionally) where I encounter the fruits of the Spirit; that may not involve an explicit proclamation of the gospel, but (again, in the full faith of my Christian self) I would say that in those circumstances, the Spirit must be at the work of the gospel in obscure ways.

In other words, I’m unwilling to say that people are “preaching the gospel whether they know it or not,” in a sort of Christian-imperialistic, Rahnerian “anonymous Christians” kind of way (Karl Rahner, extremely important, subtle, dense, twentieth-century Jesuit theologian). If people want to live by and to propound something other than what I can recognize as the gospel, why, it’s not my business to force anything down anyone’s throat. And here my understanding of the Spirit enters in: it’s by preaching in the narrow sense (which still may be non-verbal, a matter of how one lives, what one loves, one’s way in the world) that one articulates and commends the faith that’s more than only one’s personal outlook on things, but may touch on, resonate with, a multi-subjectivity so profound as to presume the designation of the Truth. Where we open ourselves to the truth that is greater than we, and permit that truth to operate in and through us, I trust that the Holy Spirit conveys the truth, protects us (to some extent) from the scarifying effects of that truth (thanks for the tip, Bob Carlton), supports us in that truth, and amplifies that truth in us and in our expressions of it.

Problem: lots of nice, well-intentioned, politically-correct, Christians don’t want to get anywhere near that truth. In (officially-designated, broader-sense) preachers, this often issues in sermons that catalog a long list of things you don’t really have to believe in, or cloying anecdotes, or assurances that Jesus was a Swell Guy who would have voted Democratic Just Like You (Republican Christians have different ways of insulating themselves from the truth by imagining a Jesus Just Like You who urged people to work for what they earn, to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, to blow the smithereens out of dictators who might have weapons of mass destruction or maybe not but surely are brutal, and control lots of oil). Truth — being more complicated than that — imposes a greater burden of responsibility for one’s thinking and talking and living. Truth raises the stakes, and very many people would prefer to stick to penny-ante living, where our dumb ideas and deceptions and careless talk and our self-interested actions don’t make a difference.

They do make a difference, though, whether we say so in the name of “mindfulness” or “authenticity” or “tzedekah” or even, perhaps, “endeavoring to walk in a narrow way that leads to salvation.”

I’ll stop there for today, leaving in suspension questions like “What does that have to do with preaching?” and “Is that really postmodern?” or “What about grace?” or dozens of others. Much to do today — but I’ll come back to this one, promise.

DRMA: "Ain't Misbehaving" by Leon Redbone; "Ain't Hurting Nobody" by John Prine; "Keep on Trucking" by Hot Tuna; "Law and Order" by Phil Manzanera; "You Turn Me On (I’m a Radio" by Joni Mitchell; "Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies; "White Punks on Dope" by the Tubes; "After the Gold Rush" by Neil Young; "Night and Day" by Django Reinhardt; "Thunder Crack," by Bruce Springsteen; "Coolsville," by Rickie Lee Jones; "Temptation," by New Order.

Intensely Amusing

[take the test] - [by krystaljungle.com]

Interruption

If Trevor and I were to install wiki software on the Disseminary site, what would the multitudes of experts out there recommend? Are any (a) relatively inexpensive and (b) amenable to at least minimal design enhancement?

Preaching and the Spirit II

I left off yesterday observing the broadly-defined preaching need not be problematic. We’re constantly trying to engender goodwill for premises and causes that we support, and that’s certainly fine.

We’re also tangled up in what we might call commercial preaching, or “marketing,” wherein we try to gin up support for a premise or cause not because we’re already committed to it, but because its proponents pay us so to do. Likewise, some of our energies intersect with the practice of bolstering support for participants or causes in political campaigns. We might observe that this differs from all the other sorts of preaching I’m talking about by noting that the motivation for this preaching discourse depends not on the inclination to promulgate or further our own ideas, but from the motivation to do well at persuading (regardless of the cause). I’m not going to get into a discussion of whether that’s problematic — hey, although I’d never have foreseen it, I now have to say that some of my best friends are marketers — but I think it’s plainly different, and certainly some people will challenge the integrity of anyone who make their capacity for persuasion available for pay. That’s one of the things that got the Sophists in trouble.

So I’ll take stock, for a second, before I take Josiah for his check-up, and then return and set about staking out the narrower version of preaching.

We can speak intelligibly about preaching in a broad, loose context that includes most forms of public persuasion. This includes (in one area) people who address religious congregations about spiritual topics, and (in another) people curry favor with mass-media interests by trying to hobble the productivity of the internet. This constitutes a big, loose category that I distinguish here mostly from “acting” (where the social contract of acting involves a consensual recognition that the persuasion involved is short-term and fictive), “coercion,” and “nattering” (in which one ascribes no real weight to one’s words).

Now, on to the narrower definition. In this narrower sense (which I’m resisting calling “real preaching”), preaching involves a particular kind of proclamation, exhortation, encouragement, invitation. The particularity resides in this preaching’s deliberate self-location within discourses that invoke the premises, the authorization, and the judgment of the God made known to Abraham (here I’ making room for the possibility, but not the flat claim, that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God; it’s obvious, in some respects, and not so obvious in others).

In other words, someone in funny clothing who stands up in front of a congregation but specifically disclaims being accountable to God for what s/he says, or someone who makes no claim to be preaching, or who dissents from the premises that the congregation upholds, such a person can justifiably be excluded from the narrower sense of preaching. I’m setting up my point this way because often enough, a “guest preacher” really doesn’t intend to be preaching-in-the-narrower-sense, and shouldn’t be held accountable as though that were the intent. On the other hand, one might well preach to a gathering of observers who don’t assent to the preacher’s faith; that pretty much has to be possible. But such preaching then draws on the premises, authorization, and accountability that the community ascribes to the preacher.

Having woven my intricate and abstract set of rationalizations and distinctions, I’ll say that preaching in this narrow sense involves some necessary connection to the Holy Spirit, as Christians ordinarily regard preaching and the Spirit. In other words, I’m not saying every such sermon gets the full Holy-Ghost spiritual dosage, or that a rabbi or imam necessarily operates on that basis (what do I know about that?). At the same time, I would think it odd to suppose that a (Christian) theology of preaching acknowledged the preacher’s disciplined adherence to the community’s faith, the preacher’s vocation to speak, and the preacher’s willingness to stand under judgment for the words of the sermon — but then suggested that the Spirit might not have anything to do with the preaching. Without intending to limit the Spirit (per impossibile), if you can’t reckon on the Spirit’s activity under those circumstances, I wonder whether one can say much about the Spirit at all.

What-all difference do I think this makes? I’ll try to spell out some of that tomorrow. Tonight I want to read a little and go to sleep.

Preaching and the Spirit

I’ll try to make this interesting even for good, empirical, disbelievers — but I can’t promise to be successful, so they may want to skip this one.

A long time ago, Naomi asked whether “preaching [were] an exclusively Christian activity, and does it necessarily imply ‘the gospel’?” In response, I’d make a distinction between a narrower sense of preaching, and a broader sense. (The broader sense involves what ought to be interesting to readers-in-general; the narrower sense involves premises that stand to enrich thoughtful engagement with theologically-interested conversation partners, whether dissenters or adherents, but not dismissers.)

In the broader sense, preaching has nothing whatever to do with the Spirit, and anyone can (and does) do it. “Public speaking,” “rhetoric,” “ethics,” “politics” all might fit under a broad definition of preaching (politics and ethics as lived advocacy of particular ways of life). If what we’re talking about is “making a case, even a very thin case, for a trusting, thinking, feeling, acting, in particular ways,” then preaching embraces everything from marketing pitches to campaign speeches to talk-show tomfoolery (and also intense, deep, articulation of philosophical and theological claims).

Now, so defined, preaching seems uninterestingly broad — but I want to hold up this almost trivial version as a foil for the alternative I propose because (a) it’s much more prominent in the culture, (b) much of what represents itself as theological-philosophical preaching amounts only to pitching-ideas or free-associating about one’s feelings, (c) the thin version still involves some important dimensions of what remains pertinent in the deeper version, and (d) I haven’t thought of (d) yet, but I’m holding space for an edited version here.

(C) first. At the broad level, all of what we do to affect others’ behavior partakes of preaching, and that affects both the narrower and broader definitions, partly because it provides an angle of view that conflates the two in unproductive ways (“Sermons — they’re just marketing for churches!” or “The church can teach Madison Avenue about marketing; it’s been doing it for two thousand years”) (speaking of whic, whatever happened to “Madison Avenue”? I mean, as a metonym for advertising/marketing?), and partly because the unproductive comparisons interweave with some true and relevant congruences.

(B) second. A lot of the time, preachers are just talking; something informed by the Spirit may happen when they talk, but if I have to believe that everyone who stands up in front of a congregation is therefore preaching in the Spirit, well, that’s a version of the Spirit that would tempt me to get very skeptical, very suddenly. (I have the feeling that a theologian will bust my chops about that, but I’ll venture it for the time being.)

(A) last (I’ll squeeze in a (d), if I come up with one, above). When there’s so darn much public persuasion going on, when in certain respects spin-doctoring, advertising, marketing, hyping, and soft- and hard-selling have become ubiquitous (“Welcome to TutorWorld!”), it’s important to acknowledge that ubiquity before trying to isolate anything possibly different about the narrower sense of preaching. As the discursive space within which narrowly-defined-preaching operates has been claimed and in many cases usurped by advertising/spin control, the very possibility of narrowly-defined-preaching seems to dwindle.

Now, the broader version of preaching doesn’t need to be pernicious; raising children, for instance, involves lots of suasion that’s not necessarily determined by spiritual interests. Inculcating the importance of “Don’t cross against the light” doesn’t depend on faith.

[I’m going to call it a night and get back to this tomorrow. I dropped off the ladyfolk at the train station, am tired and will probably just watch a movie and go to bed. But I will return to this topic.]

Let’s Get This Straight

So, those who remember the Bush Administration as asserting that Iraq had to be conquered in order to fend off the imminent use of weapons of mass destruction have now become “revisionist historians” if they wonder where those weapons might be? Exactly who is rewriting history here? Were the news reporters rewriting history even as they transcribed speeches? If so, why did it take so long for the Bush Court to correct these distortions? They might have said in February, “No, no, this whole WMD thing isn’t the issue at all. . . .”

I have a fantasy that one day Bush and his flacks will stand before the press, and the very words they try to speak will resign and tell what it’s really like to be so abused. . . .

Redemption and Release

I do want to write down some thoughts about preaching in the next day or so, partly in response to Naomi’s intriguing query, partly so that I’ve articulated and catalogued some of my thoughts in preparation for next week’s classes. Just now, though, I’m spiritually becalmed, having spent the morning at the bedside of a colleague in a Skokie hospice. Jeff’s vigil is over, now, as our friend died peacefully, escorted by prayers from everyone here at Seabury and from very many others in the Episcopal Church.

A Midsummer Nightmare

Tom imagines a third option in parsing politics, but it’s a vision so fine and rich that a keen-minded producer should instantly commission him to write it into a screenplay. “Bottoms in reverse, they conceal asses ears under human masks” — who’s the filmmaker witty enough to equal the screenplay that Tom would write?

Bloomsday

—You aren’t a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.

—There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Law and Justice

The Tutor asks for more on Derrida and justice. I can only begin, only point toward some texts that index Derrida’s increasing occupation with matters of law and justice and the distinction between them, but here goes.

Derrida published lectures and essays touching on justice all along. I’m thinking at the moment of “Violence and Metaphysics” and “Before the Law,” though I’m sure it comes up elsewhere. More recently, he has published several works that thematize problems relative to justice — Politics of Friendship, Cosmopolitanness and Forgiveness, Force of Law, and various aspects of the “gift” theme in Archive Fever, Given Time, and The Gift of Death. I haven’t read all this; I can’t even keep up with reading Derrida on religion, much less law, not that it’s possible successfully to parse his analyses so neatly. My sense of that to which I alluded before, Derrida’s strong commitment to justice, runs thusly:

Justice escapes being captured by any particular act; justice is always greater than our instantiations of it. So deconstruction, which aims largely at undermining inflated philosophical (theological, literary, and even legal) claims, is not opposed to justice, but is in fact justice’s partner — since, to be just, one must always acknowledge the residue of injustice in all human efforts toward justice.

Our knowledge, after all, falls short of the certainty that justice would require. If we don’t know enough to ascertain guilt or innocence, we can readily enough approximate justice — but the newspapers regularly report instances in which the judicial system’s approximations of justice cost innocent citizens years of prison time. And that time cannot be compensated for; the stakes of error are so high that even a trial is, in a sense, an injustice, since it presupposes some degree of doubt relative to the accused’s guilt (but since the accused may not be guilty, the trial robs her or him of time that no compensation can restore).

That’s grossly rough-cut, and I don’t know if it will preach or inspire the electorate. I wouldn’t deploy it for either function, though that doesn’t make it not-worth-my-time to have thought about justice in Derridean ways. When I want to preach about justice, I begin with the Sermon on the Mount, the Epistle of James, and Chrysostom’s “On Wealth and Poverty.” It’s been a long time since I tried to stoke the energies of liberal democracy as such, but one can usually do that best by citing such radical works as the Constitution and Bill of Rights, although I gather that the Department of Homeland Security might track you down under the “Patriot” Act for so doing.

Reading Derrida, though, puts me on account for all that I casually take for granted, and where I demur from his conclusions, I am almost always stronger for having wrestled with his reasoning.

Reference Note

I don’t think the full lyrics of Washington Phillips’s “Denomination Blues” appear anywhere online; three or four sites have a version of Ry Cooder’s performance of it, but that leaves out a number of verses, and I disagree with some of the interpretations of Phillips’s lyrics. So I thought I’d list the lyrics here, and we can refine my hearing of them, and perhaps you can nominate a few more verses.

I want to tell you the natural facts

Every man don’t understand the Bible alike

But that’s all now, I tell you that’s all
But you better have Jesus, I tell you that’s all (repeat after each verse)

Well denominations have no right to fight
They ought to just treat each other right

The Primitive Baptists they believe
You can’t get to heaven less they wash your feet

The only Primitive that has any part
Is the one that does the washing with fear in her heart

Now the Missionary Baptists they believe
Go under the water and not to wash his feet

Now the A.M.E. Methodists they believe
Sprinkle the head and not to wash the feet

Now the African Methodists they believe the same
Cause they know denominations they the same but a name

Now the Holiness people when they came in
They said “Boy you can make it by living above sin”

Now the Church of God has it in their mind
They can get to heaven without the sacrament wine

You’re fighting each other and you think you’re doing well
And the sinner’s on the outside and going to hell

Now the preacher is preaching and they think they’re doing well
But all they want is your money and you can go to hell

Now, another class of preachers they’re high in speech
They had to go to college to learn how to preach

But you can go to the college, and you can go to the school
But if you don't have Jesus you’re an educated fool

That kind of a man he’s hard to convince
A man can’t preach unless’n he sin

When people jump from church to church
You know the conversion don’t amount to much

When Jesus come on that Divining Day
Gonna call the sheep to enter, turn the goats away

It’s right to stand together, wrong to stand apart
Cause no one’s gonna enter but the pure in heart

[Thanks to Jesse Deane-Freeman for help!]

Minor Question

Why does a site sometimes show up in my referrer logs when it has no link to my site? This morning, megnut (I just have to interrupt and say that Meg’s subway-tile banner design is tremendously clever use of pixels; every time I see it, I wish I’d thought of that) showed up in my referrrers log, and Meg doesn’t know me from, well, anyone else, nor is there any particular reason for her to. I can’t see a link to my site there. How’s that work?

Once I saw a page from the Guardian in my referrer logs. I knew that had to be a fluke — but how?

While I’m just meandering this morning, I want to join the many readers who’ll miss Jonathon Delacour’s contributions online, to wish well to him and to all whom he loves, hoping that he won’t long be able to resist the temptation to re-ascend to his title as the Duke of Dishmatique, the Tetrarch of Tim-Tams, the Baron of Blogo-fictivity. Keep in touch, Jonathon — we miss you.

And I’m on a wavelength, I think, with Dave (Time’ Shadow) Rogers’s response to postmodernism in light of his reading in Nagarjuna. I’d hesitate to say “they’re getting at the same thing,” partly because I don’t think I’ve read any Nagarjuna in twenty or so years, partly because I’m hyperbolically cautious about using the phrase “the same,” and partly because I want to respect the likelihood that the conceptual streams in Nagarjuna and (for instance) Derrida flow quite differently (especially as I’m confident that the whole phenomenon of postmodernism looks different depending on which books one’ reading). But my hunch is that there’s an important shared insight operating in both settings.

Incidentally, Derrida is very concerned about justice, and believes he can get at some general (probably not “universal”) characteristics of justice from his “postmodern” philosophical way of reasoning. But that’s for another time.

Flesh and Blood

Disagreeing with David Weinberger is so much fun that I hate to forgo that delight; really, very few interlocutors provide so generous and engaged a conversation that I’m sometimes tempted to pick a fight with him just for the pleasure of participating in a good intellectual fencing match.

But this morning I just can’t argue with him, because he’s so very right on such an important topic. Michael Swaine construes David’s position in Cluetrain and Small Pieces as a version of the noble lie (I’m relying on David’s characterization of Swaine’s review, since the review is available only for paying customers at Dr. Dobb’s Journal); he suggests that David knows better than to believe that “the fundamental unit of human being is the group”; presumably, Swaine thinks that individuals in their isolation are real-er or truer than the groups that he characterizes as “abstractions.”

David, however, has his staunchest defenders in people such as Trevor and me, who devoted the first two presentations at the Digital Genres conference to making our case(s) against the premise that the isolated, flesh-and-blood individual provides some privileged access to reality.“We have always been digital,” I argued, and our identities are constituted in large part precisely by our relations to others. Likewise Trevor argued that the relational character of blogs (for instance) provide the web of performed identity that makes a locus for us to be ourselves, to perform our identity. We’re way on David’s side on this one.

I’d go further than David in resisting the premise that individuals are real-er than communities; I’m ready, for the time being at least, to argue that an asocial individual isn’t fully human. (I’m withholding hermits from the category of asociality because they may understand themselves to be participating in a spiritual sociality made the more intense and clear by virtue of insulating themselves from the distractions of carnal interaction — but that’s another too-gross oversimplification, and I may backtrack on it sometime.) Swainean individuality only becomes possible by virtue of, in the context of the social settings he dismisses as abstractions.

So, you go, David!

DRMA: Currently listening to "The Bristol Stomp" by the Dovells; "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead; "Baby I'm For Real" by the Originals; "Small Circle of Friends" by Phil Ochs; "Good News" by Sweet Honey in the Rock; "History Never Repeats" by Split Enz; "People Are People" by Depeche Mode.

Shhhhh. . . .

Margaret’s graduation-Mother’s Day-anniversary present is supposed to arrive today. . . .

[Later] It arrived, but she’s napping. The kids are antsy.

Night Out

Dinner at a favorite restaurant (veggies fajitas for two).

The Matrix: Reloaded. Finally, Trevor.

Sit on park bench, in the dark, and whisper.

Come home, greet the kids, IM with Nate.

Good night. Goodnight. . . .

Twenty-One

Last August, after the kids were away for a week, I said the following about Margaret (I thought I’d written it for our twentieth anniversary, but I mis-remembered; it was around the time of our twenty-fourth anniversary of meeting and falling in love). I affirm the same again, more heartily, after a year that’s seen some intense stress and strain on us — not, thankfully, on the marriage, but on us.

Speaking just for myself, I shall say that my fondness for, adoration of, attraction to, pride for, joy with, respect for, delight in, and passion for Margaret have grown hour by hour for nigh onto twenty-four years now. She’s just flat-out the greatest. Thanks, sweetheart.

I give thanks for innumerable blessings in my life, not least of which is the companionship of lovely souls whom I’ve met through this weblog — but Margaret’s love just makes me weak, and knocks me off my feet. Thank you, again, dearly beloved.

Pomo — No?

I’ve been distracted with trying to keep my composure through an increasingly ugly political drama at our parish church, and have had a hard time concentrating or working productively. Somehow, I managed to go two or three days without noticing the conflagration occurring among some of my blog-colleagues about postmodernism, Queer Theory, and so on.

Before I get to specifics, I’m going to oversimplify to the point of falsifying. Postmodernism, in one of its most important manifestations, a refusal to take anything for granted — that’s all.

So Queer Theory starts from the observation that most people most of the time take their own perspective on gender and sexuality to be natural, given, unquestionable, common sense, so obvious as not to merit further consideration. A Queer Theorist may begin by noting that matters of sexuality (aye, and of gender also) frequently seem natural and given within a particular culture, but may seem off-kilter and perverse from the perspective of another culture. If Pennsylvanians think J ideas of sexuality are natural and given, but West Virginians think K ideas are natural and given, what does that indicate about sexuality (and about our reasoning about sexuality)? The more closely one examines concepts that carry a lot of ideological weight (sexuality, patriotism, reason, human nature, to suggest a few), the more readily one may attain the conviction that these matters aren’t as clear-cut as common sense seems to dictate. Or one may insist all the more loudly that commons sense holds true, and that the Queer Theorist is simply splitting hairs, counting angels, wasting taxpayers’ precious money.

I give thanks that people devote time to thinking critically about such topics, even when their deliberations appear outre to me at first glance. At the very least, such study prepares people to think harder and more intensely, a practice that has stood homo sapiens moderately well over the years, and of which there is no superabundance.

One great stream of modern thought rested on the premise that race, gender, sexual difference, and other characteristics were irrelevant to Universal Human Nature, the noblest examples of which were straight(-acting), white, slave-holding men who kept wives (wives who couldn’t attend institutions of higher education or vote). I’d be willing to on record as saying that something’s wrong with that picture, but on the other hand there’s a long history of the humanist defenders of Universal Human Nature resisting the voices of abolitionists, feminists, and advocates for lesbian and gay people.

That really does oversimplify to the point of falsification, so no one should construe it as “what AKMA really thinks about postmodernism”; sometimes, though, some oversimplification serves the needs of communication. Besides, I’m sad and weary.

So, on to Krista (more here) and Frank and Jeff and Mike.

I’m all in favor of studying dead white guys, including Foucault. Not everyone need study or accept what we read in Queer Theory or postmodern philosophy courses, but someone who wants to bury postmodern thought had better equip himself (or herself) to argue the case, not just snipe at straw targets (“Hey, Bungalow Bill — what postmodern theorist did you kill?”). And as long as snipe-hunting passes for intellectual disconfirmation of postmodern arguments, well, looks like we’ve got some more ’splaining to do — much as I hate to think that we need more introductory books about postmodernism.

Frank apologizes for possibly coming across as having intended to denounce Krista and Jeff personally, so I’m not trying to restart a fight that Frank’s trying to wind down. On the other hand, a young scholar at the Digital Genres conference — he must have been awfully brilliant, since he stated his position with neither uncertainty nor humility — blamed “postmodernism” for the election of George Bush and the growth of the Ashcroftian Security State. When such superficial claptrap persistently represents itself as refutation, one ought not be surprised to hear serious students of postmodern thought respond peevishly when somebody doubts, casually if not outright flippantly, the legitimacy of their area of interest.

What’s It Called?

Trevor is here for dinner — he can’t resist Margaret’s soup, and who can? — and he asks me what an assortment of echo-bloggers would properly be called? He notes that it would be inappropriate to say “community,” since echo-blogging is in fact parasitic on more robust notions of community without attaining the goods of community life. I proposed something based on the metaphor of a crystal, characterized by rigidity, resonance, and symmetrical arrangement of component parts. Trevor says that’s too geeky (thanks, Trevor). He suggests “mobs,”but I rebut that Howard Rheingold has made mobs cool. Trevor agrees; “Then what about dumb mobs?”

DRMA: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" by Ma Rainey; "Jealous Guy" by John Lennon; "Trilogy: Sunlit Path/La Mere de la Mer" by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Hey, That’s Me!

Conclusive proof that I’m not an A-list blogger (not that anyone can have imagined so anyway) — but I think I’m one of the links in Doc’s or David’ section (does that mean B-list, or “A-list, once removed”?). I can’t believe they made up an A-list without Meg or Jason or Zeldman or Haughey, but it’s amusing anyway. It would be side-splitting if they’d done a finer job of catching the prose style of the authors in question; as it is, instead of reading as a parody it reads as “what someone thinks they sound like,” as in the famous Far Side cartoon about Ginger the dog.

There’s plenty of room left for a more precise parody, and it’ll be a relief not being a parody-worthy blogger when that day comes.

DRMA: "Not Fade Away" by the Grateful Dead; "Wrong" by Everything But the Girl; "The Other End of the Telescope" by Elvis Costello; "When You Give It Away" by Bruce Cockburn; "When God Is In the Building" by the Anointed Pace Sisters; "Fair and Tender Ladies" by Rosanne Cash; "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5.

Blood in Vienna

A while back, Phil Wolff urged me to read and comment on Rebecca Blood’s presentation from the Vienna Blogtalk conference. I had seen David Weinberger’s blogged report of her talk, so I had an idea what she might have said, and then she kindly posted the text of her address.

And it’s good. It’s for conversation (and if Richard Rorty and The Cluetrain Manifesto agree on something, it must be. . . well, an aberration). It’s for peace and understanding, (which are not so funny). So I agree in several respects, particularly when she highlights Slugger O’Toole’s efforts to engender constructive exchange of perspectives in Ireland, and Rashmi Sinha’s blog Dialog Now (which aims at comparable interaction across the India-Pakistan conflict).

I hope it’s not too querulous for me to dissent from Blood’s argument at a couple of points. Most important, I’m not convinced that there’s deep relevance in the contrast between the echo-bloggers she mentions (on one hand) and the mediators (on the other). The obvious differences go without saying: echo-bloggers aim at self-reinforcing din, whereas mediators aim at interaction across the lines of conflict. But how big a problem does echo-blogging constitute?

For one thing, few groups can subsist as tightly-sealed as Blood suggests. I don’t question her description of specific circles of mutually-supportive warbloggers and peacebloggers. I do wonder how typical they are: not in terms of their ideological emphasis, but in terms of their impermeable discourse.

I reckon — and I don’t think I regularly read echo-blogs, so I may be off base — that there can be too many monophonic blog circles. I read Josh Marshall, don’t read Instapundit, but I don’t encounter many blogs that echo Marshall. Most (not all) of the blogs I read remain staunchly anti-war, whereas Marshall was reluctantly pro-war. I didn’t stop reading Marshall when he made his case for conquering Iraq (though I don’t know how many of my online friends read him). One would think that echo-blogs would tend to collapse into fairly rigid, mutually-exclusive circles of self-congratulation, offering little reasons for anyone who’s not already one of the ideologically pure to join in. Blood herself observes, “In the summer of 2001, I began to notice that my usual round of weblogs had become rather boring.” One would think, then, that tedium would constitute an effective disincentive to echo-blog (except among those whose hunger for approval impels them to fawning repetition and hyperbolic approval).

Blood’s audience in Vienna was not, however constituted of people inclined to echo-blog, so far as I can tell. And I’m not sure that echo-bloggers who read Blood’s presentation would be likely to convert; the impulse to blog, for an echo-blogger, involves exactly the mutual affirmation that mediators eschew.

Now clearly, very few members of the set of all non-echo-bloggers sponsor mediating blogs. Most of the folks whom I read bounce around among the sites of some friends, about whom we mostly say favorable things. We’re friends; that’s how that goes. But there’s a quantum difference, I think, between a circle of friends and an echo-blog. Among the most significant distinctions, one can look at a circle of friends and observe points at which each particular friend diverges from most others. I don’t end up reading many blog written by postmodern Christian theologians. Mercy, I don’t even read many blogs written by people who’re explicitly Christians (apart from Seabury blogs), and some of my most common correspondents have spoken pretty forcefully against postmodern thought. And arguments across ideological lines don’t reliably produce insight more often than they produce flames and annoying repetition of non-points.

Moreover, I have a hard time thinking of more than a couple of bloggers who fit a single ideological profile (I can think of a few). And it’s just our constitutive diversity — the extent to which most bloggers bring to their writing a complex array of various interests and commitments. For or against the Conquest of Iraq? Dave Winer? Blogger or Moveable Type? Christian, Jewish, atheist, Buddhist? And among those who allow comments, the constitutive diversity rises significantly further.

I don’t think that’s what Rebecca Blood was worried about, so I don’t think I’m rebutting her argument; that’s why I suggested that tedious echo-blogging doesn’t necessarily overlap enough with mediation-blogging to make the case for Slugger or Dialog Now stronger. The value of mediation-blogging shines out brightly on its own, and the dead-end of echo-blogging bedarkens discourse by itself, and the rest of us draw various other interesting parties into conversation in unpredictable patterns.

If I were to sum up, I'd say that I wonder what's the effect of urging a pretty open-minded bunch of bloggers to be more interactive.

I’m all for interactivity, somewhat dubious about trying to talk people into it. I’m against homogeneity, but I don’t see that much of it (perhaps that means I'm a closeted echo-blogger in denial, or perhaps I’m boasting about my discursively-active friends). I’m for Slugger and Rashmi, and for circles of friends, and am excited that Blogaria makes both possible in new ways.

Day Off

Not even too busy to blog. Just didn’t get around to it.

Pentecost Sermon

Jane IM’ed me to ask to see this morning’s sermon, and Stanton was asking about sermon texts too, so I’ll post the text below. Stanton also asked about whether there was a place to see other sermons too. The answer to that one is yes, there’s a collection we put together as a benefit for St. Luke’s. The PDF for the book is available here; you can order a bound copy — makes a nicer gift that way — at Amazon (I was surprised to find that out).

This morning’s services went moderately well. The second service was sung, and I didn’t feel dead solid sure about my pitch, but no one complained. Lots of incense, a strong choir, and although there were fewer people than one might have hoped for at a lovely church in a thriving Chicago suburb, the people who came to church were very much alive, which makes preaching a more satisfactory process.

Anyway, here’s the sermon:

A big ol’ holy day like Pentecost, with a guest preacher, a substitute preacher; it’s a risky ploy. St. Giles gambles the glory of this annual feast of the Holy Spirit on the likelihood that this unknown quantity who, after all, doesn’t even preach all that often, might be just another tedious old windbag with a cute story, an unfunny joke, and fifteen “Finally”s before he actually gets round to wrapping up the sermon. The odds are against this daring congregation, but maybe, just maybe they’ll catch lightning in a bottle and they’ll hear the Holy Spirit make an ass to talk, make a professor to preach. After all, miracles can happen — especially on the Feast of the Pentecost.

Miracles can happen, as the staggering explosion of the Christian faith in the first years after Jesus was crucified. Miracles can happen, as the bonds of death gave way before God’s insistent promise that death cannot triumph over life, so that Jesus rose from his tomb by the power of God’s never-failing love. Miracles can happen, the apostles can speak in different languages, unsuspecting bystanders can fall in love with the grace-filled gospel of salvation, and even a theological lecturer may sometimes permit the Spirit to rule what’s spoken instead of compiling an intricate dogmatic treatise. Miracles can happen, and the Episcopal Church can shrug off the shackles of rivalry and partisanship and all work together to testify, in a harmonious, polyphonic chorus of praise, to the glory of God. Miracles can happen, and Pentecost can happen, and you never can tell when, ’cause that’s just the way grace operates.

Grace operates in miracles and surprises, if only we let it. This bugs the dickens out of me; I wish I could plan the kingdom into being, I wish I could reason the gospel into ßourishing among us here in Chicagoland. Many of us feel that mortal temptation to control creation, to let God enjoy a well-deserved a vacation while we conduct the eternal symphony of salvation — so, like little children turned loose att the Lyric, we grab the baton and conduct the divine orchestra, as angels and archangels and all the company of heaven modulate into a grim performance of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” with us starring in Mickey Mouse’s role. If the best-laid plans of mice and men go aft a-gley, what chance do our task forces, committees, and substitute preachers have?

A clue from the lessons for this morning: it’s not that we have a chance to build the kingdom, to forge by legislative fiat a community out of all the disparate parties that gather in the Episcopal Church. It’s not as if we can compose God’s symphony and lead everyone from the strings to the percussion section and the choir — heaven knows, the choir can sometimes be especially difficult. That’s not because we’re loathsome, slimy vermin. We can’t fashion heaven out of half-bricks; instead, grace seeps into our arrangements through the cracks that persist within our best-laid plans. When we don’t seal our ways into law, where we don’t claim for ourselves the prerogative to determine how God will build a kingdom, and whom God will bring in to join that communion, there the Spirit writes us into God’s vast, sprawling script of reconciliation and blessing. The lessons this morning remind us that what the unaided human effort produces remains limited by our humanity, but when we make room for the Spirit, something different happens.

Something different happens when we offer God our best intentions, our most careful plans, our most strenuous efforts, and then let the Spirit make from them a consummation entirely different from what we had anticipated. The Spirit gathers little circumstances that escaped our notice, and weaves them round into the forgotten blessings that hold us together. The Spirit takes the stone that the builders rejected, and — what? — makes of it the chief cornerstone. The Spirit makes up what falls short in our plans, in our intentions, in our love and commitment, makes up the difference with a little extra thrown in for good measure.

’Cause the Spirit’s tricky that way. The Spirit may put a little mousetrap of extra goodness exactly where you’ll step on it in the obscurity of moral twilight. A spiritual mousetrap, a divine banana skin, because at the same time that we feel ourselves tripped up, blindsided by God, we begin to see that we’re growing even better than we expected. We lose our balance, teeter, but then we put our feet down more firmly and solidly in the Way than we could have if we had decided what the right path must be. The Spirit takes our twisty waywardness and twists it again, harder, and all of a sudden the kinks fall out, the weight of our self-centeredness drops away, and we step out free from our bondage to the limits of our imagination. We catch a glimpse of what God imagines our life might be — and it’s good.

That banana-peel side-step toward goodness, unplanned and awkward, enters our repertoire of faith — and the Spirit-wind picks up around us, the sweet wind that whispers promises of fragrant blossoms, of fresh-baked bread and hearty wine. We take another such step, stumble, hesitate, and the wind pushes us onward. We fall forward, we stumble and with every step the wind picks up, whirling and gusting and leading us and when the times get dark and our path obscure, those tongues of ßame glow to illumine our way. It’s Pentecost, and we’re people of hope, staggering in the Spirit, and supposing, sensing, that this awkward way leads on toward where we should be. It’s Pentecost, and we’re children of fire, dancing and leaping ever higher, ever bolder and brighter as we climb to heaven.

It’s Pentecost, though, and much as that promises us the blessing of the Spirit in our lives, even more it promises God’s power to draw all things together into harmony. It promises that the hostility and suspicion with which people treat one another — factions or races, parties or nations — that hostility will not impede God’s call to harmony. Pentecost promises that where faith reaches out in patience and love, the Spirit will bring unity to a miraculous completion.

In the miracle of a faithful Pentecost, we recognize the differences that set us apart from one another — Gentile from Jew, Greek from Roman, Pakistani from Indian — we recognize our differences and celebrate them. We’re constituted by our differences, they make us the lovely people who we are; and if on no other day, then surely on Pentecost we owe it to our sisters and brothers to rejoice in those differences. In the fiery dance of Pentecost praise, we confess that our way, our party, our side is not able by itself capable of expressing the breadth and the depth and the length and the duration of God’s grace. Paul compares us to the parts of a body, but he knows and we know that there are some less-than-entirely-pleasant body parts. Doesn—t matter! We need —em all, and if you think that those other folks are the armpit, why they return the favor by thinking that we—re the . . . well, we—re some other part that no one wants to be.

That’s a very good thing, too, because we aren’t here to be right, as though St. Peter administers a 4,000-question multiple-choice exam at the Pearly Gates and you need a certain score to get in. We’re here to be true, and faithful, and that’s something we can’t do as well one by one as we can when sister and brother hold onto on another and say, “We disagree down to our very bones, about important topics, but we won’t let hostility and estrangement trick either of us into letting go, for in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

In one body, differences matter. In one church, differences matter. In one world, differences matter. And since differences matter, and since differences show no sign of going away, we have to cooperate with the Spirit and hold ourselves together, thanking God that we aren’t in this alone, and helping out our sisters and brothers in any way we possibly can. And that includes admitting that sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we get things wrong, and that we humbly hope that the friends to whom we’re hanging on will pray for us and forgive us where we err — as we pray for and forgive others when they sin against us.

Now, you may have noticed that that kind of humble, forgiving love doesn’t just spring up in fountains all over the place. That love, that humility, that forgiveness come down to us as a gift, and our best efforts can’t make that gift come. But we can learn to be ready, we can practice the craft of forgiveness, the attitude of humility, so that the Spirit finds in us a limberness for the labor of love. Indeed, when divine love meets spiritual limberness, why, there’s no end of the amazing things that can happen. You might even see a miracle once in a while, if you look hard enough.

We might hear a wind whispering, blowing in the doors and windows at St. Giles’.

We might see fires of truth flickering in the candles, over a congregation’s wise and humble and cooperative leaders, we might see a glorious blaze of truth brighter than any single color could make it.

We might hear, each of us, in our own native language, the good news of forgiving grace freely given to those with hearts to receive it.

We might; after all, it’s Pentecost, and miracles can happen.

Amen

Mopping Up

Ha! Broke the back of the sermon, and won’t have to stay up all night finishing it. I’ll post it tomorrow if it pans out.

Here’s Something

All the kind friends who are offering vocational encouragement — you know who you are, and thank you, really, from the depths of my heart (that’s a voluntary spatial metaphor, David) — if I were given as much positive feedback for my research and writing, I wouldn’t spend as much time blogging. And if I spent less time blogging, I wouldn’t have such rich friendships with many folks whom I know exclusively online. Not that “online” is second-rate!

Anyway, thanks y’all. And when so many are scrambling just to get jobs to tide them over, and so many are toiling thanklessly in the trenches of invisible adjunctitude, I’m thankful that I face no dangers relative to job security.

Speaking of all which, as I’ve been thinking about academic work and perils, my thoughts keep returning to one point: that the social and especially the financial context of academic labor exacerbates every problem endemic to the guild. While it’s easy to complain about academics with superstar salaries, we in the USA inhabit a culture that regards academic effort as a luxury, almost as a vice (always as a vice, when it leads to unpopular or hard-to-understand conclusions). The academy has suffered from the loss of able minds who (justifiably) leave to obtain order-of-magnitude greater salaries in business, and our culture suffers from the woeful anti-intellectualism that sees no bottom-line benefit to encouraging generations of students to think more expansively, more deeply, more wisely, more rigorously. It’s as though we complain about the wage scale and hierarchical structure of McDonald’s, when we went into our vocation out of a desire to nourish. . . .

Now, I should be working on a sermon for tomorrow.

She Did It

How proud am I, and how much in love with, this brilliant, beautiful woman? [Picture to come, when somebody returns the camera]. More than the Credit Card prank or the All-Natural prank is funny (even more than both put together, and more every day). Props to Tom Coates, to whom one can turn for provocative tech insights, engaging conversation on social software, and appreciation for the Bangles.

Margaret graduated this morning, is now the holder of an official masters degree, and will take a year off while screening opportunities for graduate study. (That last was written with a wry smile, in case anyone is coming here from the “horrors of graduate study” threads that are abounding these days.) She does anticipate applying for doctoral work, although she doesn’t plan on seeking full-time employment afterward (not unless I precede her into the Church Triumphant).

Once Again

Excuse me for repeating myself, but if I have bought a copy of, say, Al Green’s Greatest Hits on vinyl, is it illegal for me to download an MP3 of it? It’s hard for me to understand why it should be; it wouldn’t be illegal for me to do the cumbersome maneuver to rip the MP3 by myself.

But then, if the RIAA is sniffing out downloaders, how do they know whether I already own the LP? Aren’t they simply presuming guilt?

Cross Irate, and Restless

A little too much wakefulness in the Adam household — stress and sadness about developments here at Seabury, worries about the church, and then there’s Si staying up till hours trying to figure out how to burn VCDs from his new CD-RW drive. We woke up at about 3:30 last night, and fretted and worried almost till dawn. Then when we woke up, scarce had I completed a morning comment over in the conflagration at IA when Trevor dropped in to see how we were doing and, if possible, cheer us up. We chatted with him for a while, then had to run out — Margaret to rehearse for her graduation, I to pick up our college-days friend Helen with her son Jordan at the airport. Helen’s coming to cheer Margaret along the last few steps to her degree, and it’s great to see her.

Say, if you’re curious, Margaret’s thesis will be online as a PDF file for a week or two at this address. Its title is “The Interpretation of Forgiveness and the Forgiveness of Interpretation,” and if you’re curious about she’ up to, this is the answer. We’ll take it down in a while, but for now you may download your souvenir copy.

Tomorrow’ graduation, but that’s just the morning. I’l have plenty of time to think about digital bodies (and about what Tripp and Laura said about them in David W.’s comments) and to upload some pictures to complement Betsy’s photos of the canonically-obligatory bloggers’ dinner from Digital Genres.

And I’ll keep thinking about academia and tenure, if only because I’m so close to looking for a job outside it.

Between. . . And. . .

I promised Dean Kriss that I’d pick up my end of the conversation about tenure and seminaries, and then I allowed myself to get caught up in the Invisible Adjunct’s comments colloquium, and now I haven’t time adequately to figure out what I think about either set of issues. One note relative to IA, though: if one were to eliminate tenure in order to make it easier for academies to keep their faculty productive, two circumstances would almost necessarily ensue. First, there’d be a persistent drain-off of middle-aged or older faculty who’re beginning to get expensive, in favor of younger, fresher, cheaper hires. Some of those whom academic institutions now exploit unconscionably would wind up working full-time till they’re fifty or so, then summarily fired so that their department can keep salaries down. Second, administrators would take the opportunity to work their dependent faculty employees even harder; if you’e not willing to support the department, maybe you’d be happier elsewhere. Neither outcome seems a desirable one to me; they would, if anything, make the present dysfunction even worse.

Dean Kriss, I will get back to you. The notion that specifically Christian institutions should eschew tenure deserves consideration and more specific response. One quick word, though; I did not by any means “carefully avoid” your main point. In fact, more to the point, I carelessly ignored it. My litany of other (to my mind, greater) problems than tenure distracted me from the central point in the essay in question.

All this places me in an odd position, inasmuch as I cannot say that “Academia has been very, very good to me.” Not as brutal as it has been to some, but not a cornucopia of favors, either. So I’m not comfortable simply defending the academy, but still I cling to the utopian premise that academies ought to be as good as they may be, and the practical question of how we can best make them as great as possible.

A Feast

Today is the feast day of Peter of Verona, better known in some circles as Peter Martyr (not to be confused with Peter Martyr Vermigli, a sixteenth-century Italian Calvinist). His principal distinguishing characteristic is that he was assassinated by the Catharist heretics whom he persistently confuted. Not just “assassinated,” but his skull cleft in two; hence his somewhat startling iconographic depiction as a Dominican with a blade of some sort through his head (looking like a theological Steve Martin epigone). That’s him on the left.

I have a particular affection for Peter Martyr (not Vermigli), so today comes as a treat among some fairly unpleasant circumstances at work and at church. Now, I have to take my evening Naproxen.

Light Day

I hate it when real life interferes with blogging — it’s so inconvenient!

I wasn’t actually too busy today — I had an assignment that I didn’t quite finish, and it shouldn’t have taken that long, but I tried to work from home today — but I didn’t get around to blogging, even though David responded to my body post, Jack chimed in, Anne commented, Trevor put a couple of cents in, and Biella blogged, too. (We’re getting a good old-fashioned blogthread going, here.)

Tomorrow Margaret will go down to Peet’s to prepare to explain to Trevor’s class what her thesis research came to. I’ll be at home and running errands with my estimable helper Pippa. Watch out, world! And I’ll carve out a time to think more about bodies with this feedback from you-all.

Eric and Doc on What Lies Between

Eric Norlin and Doc Searls are having at it about “the nature of the web” and so on. Doc is advocating the World of Ends, End-to-End side, and Eric is saying, “Get real, Doc; the web is going to change. If you love it, set it free.” Doc’s wary that the BigCo’s are likely do to the Web what they’re doing to broadcast media: Engulf and Devour. Eric’s comfortable with business tailoring some of the Web to suit its ends, and leaving “unfiltered” Web-water for the rest of us.

I’m going to butt in with a few quick points.

• The time to fend off MegaCorps is earlier rather than later; if there’s anything important and worth saving about an end-to-end net, we can’t afford simply to stand back and see what they do first, then try to remedy the damage.
• There’s a difference between digital ID and a Web whose protocols are regulated to suit the business interests of telcos and ISPs. I don’t read Doc as dismissing the notion of DigID; I do see him fighting to stave off the predations of corporate forces whose sole interest has to be maximizing the profits of their investors (investors like Eric! — and the bank where my fifty cents of checking account reside).
• Part of the problem here involves the spatial metaphor, doesn’t it? If we were to think of the middle of the Web, the “between” of End-to-End, as capacity or a force of nature, some of the argumentative kinks would look a lot different. Ain’t no one going to stand still for corporations regulating the use of imagination, or the use of the air for propagating sound waves, or the gestures you can make with the fingers of your left hand. It’s that pesky space that people think they can regulate, as if it were property.
• Eric, that’s not a satisfactorily nuanced characterization of churches and doctrine, and you know that. I know, it’s only an illustration.
• Doc: “one answer is to find more ways to get more academic stuff on line as well as in libraries” (okay, it’s off-topic, but I wanted to squeeze it in here anyway) — That’s what we’re about at the Disseminary. Keep on demanding it — those of us trying to make it happen need the support.

Digital Bodies, Part One

Part of my talk Friday morning involved the argument that the unfamiliarity of online interactions has fuddled us into thinking that there’s a sort of given, inescapable difference between ourselves as physical agents and ourselves as electronic agents. (I’m not guarding my language carefully enough, so I expect I’ll muff some technical terminology; apologies in advance.) I’m not denying the obvious: we can’t touch each other physically online, and even digigloves won’t equal touch. We justly prefer to spend time in physical proximity to our friends. This is good, and touch is important. So I’m not propagating such absurdities as the notion that everyone should seal him- or herself in a garret and never have physical contact with another person. Please, let’s leave banalities out of the discussion. (This whole meditation proceeds in part from discussions such as those David Weinberger summarizes in last month’s “JOHO-the-Newsletter.”)

I called the anxiety that online interaction will displace and supersede other modes of interaction “replacement panic.” It’s my term, and I’m sticking to it.

And the point of the argument is that we have always been digital — not in the sense that we’re merely binary digits in some vast Matrix, but in the sense that the characteristics that become obvious when we interact online also apply to our physical interactions (though in attenuated or infrequent ways).

So, for example, we usually do want other people to be part of our lives in physical ways. I’ve long wanted to meet Naomi Chana, Anne Galloway, Steve’s friend Sage, and one of the Tutor’s associates; the Digital Genres conference afforded a congenial opportunity to satisfy that interest. It was great to meet, physically, some people I had hitherto only read about. But there are people in the world I’ prefer not to meet. For instance, some readers of these words may dislike their bosses; might it not be preferable to interact with the Boss only online? Those who have been scarred by unwelcome physical interactions with others — should they welcome the possibility of touch? Of course, we enrich our friendships by knowing one another in a variety of settings (online, offline, at work, on vacation, in a game, in shared enjoyment of a movie, concert, whatever. That doesn’t imply that one of those contexts enjoys an ontological privilege, such that it’s real-er than others.

Now, I can just hear David Weinberger’s pointed and appropriate riposte to this argument (I can hear it because I have heard him say it several times in several different conversations): “My physical body is ontologically different because I care more about it, because if you cut it I bleed, because if this body dies, that’s it, I’m dead.” (I keep meaning to ask David if “care,” in this context, is an echo of Heidegger?) And David’s right. His physical body is different (and not his alone, I mean, although. . .). But I don’t think that “different” means “realer,” unless only living things are real. (And all this simply bypasses my theological commitments to calling into question the simplicity of death; we ought to be able to conduct a fruitful conversation about digital bodies without expecting that everyone adopt a Christian theology of life and spirit and bodies.)

If the physical is different-not-realer, though, then we’re in the position of giving an account of differences that respects our physicality without rendering it the index of our reality. Anne introduced the language of “flows” and “intensities” (from some of the theory — Foucault, Irigaray, Deleuze, Guattari, — that other DG participants roundly blasted), terms that help me point to the body as a distinctly intense locus of my identity — but not the only, the true, the real me.

That’s all on that topic for today.

DRMA: "I and I" by Bob Dylan; "Blue Spark" by X; "Lullabye" by the Judybats; "Never Let Me Down Again" by Depeche Mode; "Nature" by Prince Nico Mbarga and the Rocafil Jazz; "Love Me Tender" by Elvis Presley; "Illumination" by Fatboy Slim; "It's So Hard" by John Lennon; "No Language In Our Lungs" by XTC; "Divin' Duck Blues" by Taj Mahal; "Why Not" by Dorothy Love Coates; "I Ain't Got You" by the Yardbirds.

Digital Genres Keynote/Closer

Well, this makes the third or fourth formal occasion on which I’ve heard David Weinberger talk about weblogs, and I think (if he’s sick or indisposed, or double-commits himself) I’m getting the presentation down well enough to sub for him. But that catch is, he’s great, and the point of these presentations isn’t simply to find out something about weblogs — I mean, there were a bunch of people at the talk who have no particular reason to learn more about weblogs — but to listen to David, who is not only an ambassador from the tech world to the civilian establishment, but is also a magnificently gifted communicator. Jack Vinson blogged the talk, for which he had the benefit of having seen David talk when he came to Seabury.