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Baby I Was Born this Way

Lady-Gaga-Born-This-Way-Video-17-1024x570The other day a friend on Facebook posted a fun cover version of Lady Gaga’s 2011 song “Born this Way” — a song celebrated (or, all depending on your politics, condemned) as an anthem for the tolerant left. For example, a verse reads as follows:

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life,
I’m on the right track baby,
I was born to survive.
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or orient made,
I’m on the right track baby,
I was born to be brave. Continue reading “Baby I Was Born this Way”

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That’s Not How I Imagined It

newyorkercartoonMy recent post, on an old Canadian beer commercial called “The Rant,” along with a query a while back from someone on Facebook, got me to thinking about why scholars these days are so excited about studying so-called virtual communities (from Second Life, which used to be cool, to a host of other online identities and platforms which, for the time being at least, are thought to be cool). Thinking about the audience pictured in that commercial from my earlier post — seated in what looks like an old movie theater and all listening to a disgruntled Canadian on stage go on about how he is wrongly stereotyped by Americans — we all know (right?) that it is populated by stand-ins who are quite literally standing in for the people to whom the commercial was directed: those in the TV audience who used the occasion to further identify themselves as misunderstood beer-drinking Canadians. Continue reading “That’s Not How I Imagined It”

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“Now I’m an Accountant…”

Picture 2Have you heard about factories in various parts of the world that have gone bankrupt but been taken over by the workers? Consider the case of the Vio.Me. factory in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, which used to make ceramic tiles but now, after the workers took control of the bankrupt facility, it produces fabric softener. Learn more here. Continue reading ““Now I’m an Accountant…””

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In Our Heart of Hearts

crystal ball

10. Understanding the system of ideology that operates in one’s own society is made difficult by two factors: (i) one’s consciousness is itself a product of that system, and (ii) the system’s very success renders its operations invisible, since one is so consistently immersed in and bombarded by its products that one comes to mistake them (and the apparatus through which they are produced and disseminated) for nothing other than “nature.” – Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method” Continue reading “In Our Heart of Hearts”

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The Violence of Constructed Identities

A recurring assertion of the contributors to this blog, as evidenced in the quote on the banner from Jean-Francois Bayart, is that identity is not something inherent or static. Identity is constructed, malleable, temporal. The implications of this assertion are many, and the reality of violence, both recent and past, makes those implications even more significant.  Continue reading “The Violence of Constructed Identities”

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We Can’t All Be Exceptional

Picture 12National Public Radio — yes, I’ve been listening to it while driving to work in the morning and yes, I do contribute — has started a year long series on what they’re simply calling sacred music — listen to the first installment here. It’s on an actor in Hollywood — Ben Youcef (pictured in the middle, above) — originally from Algeria, who is also a muezzin (one who calls other Muslims to prayer). Continue reading “We Can’t All Be Exceptional”

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Gettysburg, Or How (And What) We Remember

gettysburg

This month marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg is remembered as one of the most pivotal moments in the United States’ Civil War, in part for the way that momentum shifted towards the Union forces, but also because the largest number of lives were lost there than in any other battle in the conflict. Continue reading “Gettysburg, Or How (And What) We Remember”

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Asking the Wrong Questions

‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.’

These opening lines of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times came to mind recently when I read an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education  written by Peter Wood, the President of the National Association of Scholars. The piece related to the recent news that, when he was governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels (now president of Purdue University) had an email exchange questioning the use of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States in Indiana schools, which Daniels reportedly described as “anti-factual” and a fraud, in his less colorful moments. In his commentary, Woods argued that Daniels was correct in questioning the worth of Zinn’s tome, pointing to a range of reviews of the work from historians teaching at prestigious universities that critiqued Zinn’s construction of his narrative. Continue reading “Asking the Wrong Questions”

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Whose Switch is a Switch?

Code Switch PicCode switching is often used to reference the actions (usually linguistic variations) of a particular person/group that is assumed to break from their own “natural” practices to perform codes “not their own” for the purposes of fitting in, acquiring capital, and accessing spaces thought to perceive the “native” practices of the switcher as illegitimate or illegible. This switching, or shifting as some call it, is often painted with a stroke of fluidity and described to take know-how, precision, performance and rehearsal. While the durability or recapitulations of code switching may come to be seen as natural over time, where it’s no longer recognized or described as a switch, it’s often thought to be something that is and can be [consciously] turned off and on like a light switch by the social actor. Continue reading “Whose Switch is a Switch?”