I cite

Not the law

In his memoir, Althusser does not run to the law following his murder of Helene. He does not run into the street looking for a policeman. Rather, he runs to the 'sick bay' area of his apartment building (I think part of the Ecole, but I may be wrong) and hails Dr. Etienne, grabbing him and telling him that he, Althusser, had murdered Helene. In fact, Althusser notes that it was standard practice for someone suffering 'psychological disturbance' to be taken first to the police station. Yet, he was taken first to Sainte Anne's hospital.

How is, then, that law is absent at precisely that spot where Butler asserts its presence? In fact, she hears the voice of law ushering from a place where law is completely absent, displaced by the medical-psychiatric apparatus.

Senate candidate pedals into town

Here is an article from The Finger Lakes Times about Jon Tasini, who is challenging Clinton's Senate seat. As usual, I am torn in multiple directions about what to do. First, I don't think he has a chance. Second, I think even if he won, very, very little would change. And I think this because I think that electoral democracy is completely broken in the US. So, if I circulate petitions for him, am I a hypocrite? Or, am I challenging Clinton and the party overall from the left in an effort to keep them from going further and further to the Right? Is this a time when I should prefer not to participate? Or is it a time where the bad guys are so bad that even lost causes are worth fighting for?

Link: Senate candidate pedals into town.

GENEVA — Some politicians peddle their politics.

Jon Tasini, Hillary Clinton’s little-known Democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate, is pedaling his.

During his 600-mile excursion across New York to drum up votes, Tasini stopped at the Geneva Bicycle Center on Exchange Street Thursday, where he focused his comments on Clinton’s stand on the Iraqi war.

“I’ve had lots of Democrats who have said they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton again because she voted for the war,” Tasini said, as he was just getting off his blue and silver Trek 7700FX bike.

His 16-city “Ride for Peace” tour began May 11 at the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Manhattan, and it will conclude Sunday, one day before the state Democratic Convention kicks off.

Tasini is asking people to sign a petition that mirrors legislation proposed by U.S. Rep Jim McGovern, D-Mass., to end the war in Iraq. He hopes to get the Democratic Party to adopt it as part of its platform, which would call on Congress to cut off funding for troop deployment and prevent permanent bases from being set up in Iraq.

To force a primary, Tasini needs 15,000 signatures or 100 signatures in half of the state’s 29 congressional districts. Yet, his real goal is to get the Iraqi war debated at the convention, but that’s something Clinton supporters are fighting because it would mean Clinton would have to spell out her views on the war, Tasini said.

They don’t want that to happen, he said.

A freelance writer and union leader, Tasini is realistic about his chances against the former first lady, who has $25 million in campaign funds. He’s raised a little less than $100,000, and he won’t be spending any of it on slick campaign ads.

At each stop along the bike trek, his three campaign workers, who travel in a makeshift-headquarters RV, hand out fliers with information about the human and economic cost of war — tailored to the specific community.

In Geneva, the flier mentioned Sgt. Heath A. McMillin, the Clifton Springs native who was killed in Iraq on July 27, 2003. It also spells out that $13.9 million is enough to have paid for such things as 592 college scholarships, 94 police officers, 75 teachers or 112 affordable housing units in Geneva.

Tasini was met at the bike shop by a handful of supporters, including Paul Passavant, who’d ridden his bike from his South Main Street home.

“When I heard Hillary Clinton voted for the war, I said that I would never vote for her again,” Passavant said.

Disconnect?

So, here is the list of stories on Yahoo as of 12:24 on May 27. Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad--and then wacko, trivial, trivial, trivial. It's worst than the middle ages. It's like doom and destruction accompanied by fantasy, doom and destruction and permanent war while folks go about their business shopping and recreating. Parts of the world disintegrate while Americans do their part to hasten destruction.

• Quake kills at least 2,900 in Indonesia
• East Timor's capital descends into chaos
• Hamas rejects deadline on Israel recognition
• Bush: U.S. won't relent in war on terror
• Pope energizes hopes for John Paul sainthood
• In New Orleans, families flock to Aquarium
• Schumacher's  Monaco pole sparks row
• NBA · NHL · MLB · Indy 500 · NASCAR · NFL

Sniper Mom Parties On

So my son's 11th birthday party began with a few setbacks. First, I was told that the party room I had reserved was somehow occupied and that the seven boys I was taking to laser tag would have to eat cake and pizza and then run around. I was less than delighted and expressed this with great vigor. So, they comp-ed the party and let us do one mission before cake and two after. I was prepared to pay for the third since they had already comp-ed the rest, but didn't have to. That was pretty great.

Other initial setbacks: when one kid arrived his mom said he had been throwing up all day but really wanted to come to the party. She advised me to bring a plastic bag in the car. He threw up before we left, nearly making the sink in time. Then he threw up right after we payed the toll. But he did great on his missions.

A third setback: one kid refused to go in to the briefing room because he was afraid of the dark (I wonder if there is any connection between this and the fact that his dad is in Iraq.) He finally went in and had fun.

I guess the heavy rain and fog shouldn't be included in the party checks and balances. You can't predict the weather. But, we had to drive over an hour, so I think we can put that in the minus column. On the other hand, Paul had a carload of boys who were no more distracting than Zizek was when Paul took him to the airport under similar weather conditions, so maybe that's a plus.

And, I'm not sure whether the great, great pleasure I took in being a sniper is a plus or a minus. Nothing like shooting kids and strangers with a laser gun in a dark maze. I was so intense about it that I got a really nasty blister on my trigger finger. My daughter, a tiny 7, oddly scored negative 27 points. High scores were over 300. I think this makes her a casualty.

I'd like to suggest this as something for faculty or student groups. But, they'll probably say its too militarist, too violent. Too bad. I love being a sniper.

PS: I should add that despite her low score, my little daughter (although she'll be 8 in about 3 months she wears like a size 5) was a fierce player. Since she's small, she could sneak up on people and shoot them in the back. One victim turned around, confronting her, saying, "what's up with that little person?" Her response: "I may be small, but don't call me little."

Monkeying Around Interspecies Style

  Monkeying Around Interspecies Style 
  Originally uploaded by manahanwill.

yet another not to be missed version of the fundamental fantasy, distorted, it seems to me, in a masculine direction for he is surely not the manpanzee of anyone's dreams.

The Sock Monkey King

  The Sock Monkey King 
  Originally uploaded by Monkey River Town.

For more flickr monkeys there is this nifty set (don't miss the monkey train). And, then the wonderful green monkey series. And, why not, Jodi's own selection of monkeys.

Before the law? vulnerability and legal recognition

In Precarious Life, Butler turns to the Hegelian struggle for recognition in the context of her own meditations on vulnerability. Posting vulnerability as a resource for apprehending and producing commonality, Butler considers the ways that norms condition how it is that we perceive or recognize vulnerability. That is to say, vulnerability is a primary condition of being human. Yet, this vulnerability is itself posited, recognized, and constituted as vulnerability. Thus, we may fail to recognize others or ourselves as vulnerable. We may fail to recognize others at all. Vulnerability, then, has to be recognized and constituted and norms are one of the vehicles for this recognition and constitution. So, we have to think about vulnerability from within the field of power and the differential operation of norms of recognition. She writes:

When we recognize another, or when we ask for recognition for ourselves, we are not asking for an Other to see us as we are, as we already are, as we have always been, as we were constituted prior to the encounter itself. Instead, in the asking, in the petition, we have already become something new, since we are constituted by virtue of the address, a need and desire for the Other that takes place in language in the broadest sense, one without which we could not be. To ask for recognition, or to offer it, is precisely not to ask for recognition for what one already is. It is to solicit a becoming, to instigate a transformation, to petition the future always in relation to the Other. It is also to stake one's own being, and one's own persistence in one's being, in the struggle for recognition. This is perhaps a version of Hegel that I am offering, but it is also a departure, since I will not discover myself as the same as the "you" on which I depend in order to be.

To my mind, this encounter might also be thought as a scene of law, as a form of petitioning or coming before the law. Becoming here does not imply restoration or finality. It does imply the possibility of relation and change, of acknowledgement and responsiveness. Coming before the law changes the law. The law does not remain steadfast and impermeable. Rather, each application, each interpretation and extention, implies a 'this not that' that was not present prior to the encounter.

For those who might claim the nightmare

Chumans and manpanzees                                             
Neoconservatives twisting mind games            
into an unconscionable monkey business
plan for profit.

Fundamental fantasies embed in links
missing or otherwise, dead linked fetishes
securing our dreams, preventing any waking
confrontation with the nightmares, that come
to think of it, celebrate faith and foreclose any
thought of evolution.

In the spirit of IT's monkey business (which has been updated--I actually think it may be impossible--but necessary?--to overdose on monkey cites and commentaries) I post this horrifying image of nasty neocon Charles Krauthammer.  And, I include a little nod to DF's half cocked nightmare. In the discussion below and over at IT, a couple of folks have reminded us of the Soviet dream of a hybrid army, which I posted about earlier in my typically overly serious and literal fashion. Here is a bit from the initial post on Krauthammer (which I found via emailed updates from the konspiracist list, a remnant and trace from my forays into conspiracy theory; one of the fascinating things today about much conspiracy theory is how tame it is when compared to the machinations and interconnections of Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, the FBI, etc. In fact, on that note, I also include below the fold as it were another post from the same site on the Top 10 signs that the US is (becoming) a police state. )

Krauthammer himself writes:                  

The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers--principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics--bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong--indeed,deeply un-American--about fearing people simply because they believe.          

Following this quote, Allan Uthman writes:

We don’t fear them because they believe, Charles; we fear them because they actually are bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Antonin Scalia, our probable next Chief        Justice, says our government derives its authority and its laws from God, and he is not alone by a long shot. But this is demonstrably untrue. Only 2 of 10 commandments even parallel current law, and these are the easy ones, killing and stealing, which have always been illegal everywhere.

If the Bible is the ultimate source of truth, why not just get rid of the constitution, which doesn’t even mention God, and enforce biblical law? If you were a true believer, of course this would seem like a good idea. So fearing people, simply because they believe, is perfectly logical for those who don’t.

Reefer Madness Redux: "Sleeper effect" of cigarettes can last for years - Yahoo! News

This strikes me as completely stupid and lame, the proof that proves nothing, a symptom of a therapeutic society where everything is an addiction. How does this link to the studies that say cutting down on fat does nothing or that smoking Brits are healthier than abstemious Americans? I'm not saying that smoking is good for you. But this sleeper effect business is nonsense on stilts. It reminds me of a kind of Refeer Madness. Will folks in 20 years have satires on this kind of health hysteria? And why do Americans continue to scream about health even as we refuse to pursue national health insurance? The contradiction is agonizing.

Link: "Sleeper effect" of cigarettes can last for years - Yahoo! News.

Scientists have discovered that a single cigarette has a "sleeper effect" that can increase a person's vulnerability for three years or more to becoming a regular smoker.

Midgets are Big

There's something odd in pop culture right now: the bodies of little people are becoming more visible, more present, but present and visible not as themselves, not as the bodies of persons, not as a way that people are present, exposed, not as a way of being human, but as a figuring of a certain set of contemporary symptoms and fantasies.

I just saw an add for a movie called "Little Man" and then a commercial that placed adult heads on children's bodies. The former relied on a visual arrangement that not only shrunk a typical adult male body (The incredible shrinking man!) but also compressed in and in so doing infantalized it and made it abnormal. The commercial made its figures adult children: adult heads on kids' bodies. So, they were like little people but were not actually little people--it's like they wanted to gesture toward little people without being them, to comment on or evoke them and then in some way twist or refigure the reference.

I would think that folks in disability studies would have much that is helpful on this. I'm not well read on this. More likely, the opposite: I have a passion for "Freaks" (one of us, one of us!) and freak shows (my grandmother claimed to have known an actual geek). I fetishistically follow this material, but not within an academic terrain (other than a kind of Marxist critique of the disabling of people with talents and abilities that enabled them to earn a living exploiting the saps who would go to carnivals and travelling shows).

But, today there seems to be a reappropriation of the little body in a way that effaces those who inhabit little bodies so as to fetishize a kind of adult infant. It turns adults into children--or, privileged adults into spoiled children. We already know that racialized bodies, lower and working class bodies will be called into being as adult subjects capable of responsibility, trial, and execution at ages much, much younger than the privilege youthful exploits of, why not, George W. Bush--drinking, doing coke, destroying companies well into his 30s. What do you call a black man who does this sort of thing?

I read tabloids but rarely watch them. Yet, I think that little people have figured on some of the more disgusting reality shows, perhaps those on VH1. Generally they are figured as hyper sexual--not just mini-me, I don't think. When this kind of a 'ableist' (?) 'sizeist' (?) term ( I put them in quotes because I have to confess that I am not as aware or pc as I would like and these terms strike me as awkward and bizarre) or figure comes to stand in for or signify the adult as child, we have a celebration--without joy--of the worst combination of adult and child: the selfish demands of the child, with the exploitive viciousness and sexuality of the adult.