EMP 2008 Pop Conference

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Call for Proposals
2008 Pop Conference at Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame

Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change

April 10-13, 2008, Seattle, Washington

How does music resist, negate, struggle? Can pop music intensify vital confrontations, as well as ameliorating and concealing them? What happens when people are angry and silly love songs aren't enough? The migrations and global flows of peoples and cultures; the imbalanced struggles between groups, classes, and nations: what has music’s role been in these ongoing dramas? We invite presentations on any era, sound, or geographic region. Topics might include:

* In conjunction with the new EMP|SFM exhibition, American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music, how Latino musics have shaped the American soundscape and challenge black and white rock-pop paradigms, or more broadly, the unsettling effects of immigration, internal migration, displacement, assimilation, and colonization
* How music enters politics: social movements and activist responses to crises such as New Orleans; entertainment's connection to ideology and propaganda; music within "cultural policy" and as part of the public sphere; debates over copyright, corporate power, and cultural democracy; performing dissent
* Social and musical fragmentation: segregation and constructions of whiteness, divisions of class and gender, versus musical categorization and niche marketing, from big genres to smaller forms such as "freak folk"
* "Revolution" as a recurrent theme in popular music, a social or technological reality it confronts, or an association with particular genres and decades of music
* Clashes between communal, local, identity -- tradition, faith, nativism -- and cosmopolitan, global, modernization
* Music in times of war, economic crisis, adolescence, and other intense stress
* Agents of change: tipping points, latent historical shifts, carnivalesque subversions, and accidents or failures of consequence
* The sound of combative pop: what sets it apart?

Send proposals to Eric Weisbard at Er✧✧✧@emp✧✧✧.o✧✧ by December 17, 2007; please keep them to 250 words and a 50 word bio. Full panel proposals, bilingual submissions, and unusual approaches are welcome. For questions, contact the organizer or program committee members: Joshua Clover (UC Davis), Kandia Crazy Horse (editor, Rip it Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll), Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh) Holly George-Warren (author, Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry), Michelle Habell-Pallan (University of Washington), Michele Myers (KEXP), Ann Powers (LA Times), Joe Schloss (NYU), RJ Smith (Los Angeles magazine), Ned Sublette (author, Cuba and its Music), and Sam Vance (EMP|SFM).

The Pop Conference at EMP|SFM, now in its seventh year, joins academics, critics, writers of all kinds, and performers in a rare common discussion. Our second collection, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, will be published by Duke University Press in November: email Laura Sell (Ls✧✧✧@dukeupr✧✧✧.e✧✧) for a review copy. The conference is sponsored by the Seattle Partnership for American Popular Music (Experience Music Project, the University of Washington School of Music, and KEXP 90.3 FM), through a grant from the Allen Foundation for Music.

Ned Raggett, Friday, 7 September 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

(Eric's address being EricW @ empsfm. org)

Ned Raggett, Friday, 7 September 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

I was just about to post this. Thanks!

The deadline's earlier this year, I see.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 7 September 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

don't miss my presentation: "I Like The New Deerhoof Record...Pretty Much Anyway, Except for Song 8 Kinda Bugs Me"

M@tt He1ges0n, Friday, 7 September 2007 19:53 (eighteen years ago)

Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame?!?!?

WHAT?!?! THIS IS IN SEATTLE?

Alex in SF, Friday, 7 September 2007 20:54 (eighteen years ago)

Oh it's part of the EMP. When did this open? And C.L. Moore, but no Henry Kuttner! CRIME!

Alex in SF, Friday, 7 September 2007 20:57 (eighteen years ago)

It's been there for some years. One of the regular lecture halls for the conference has a Blade Runner spinner hanging over the stairway entrance.

Ned Raggett, Friday, 7 September 2007 21:29 (eighteen years ago)

Screw the movie part of this. I wish this was all about the writers.

Alex in SF, Friday, 7 September 2007 21:31 (eighteen years ago)

That's what Bloodhag is for

Miza Din II, Friday, 7 September 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

In honor of this year's conference:

Songs about revolution

Pete Scholtes, Friday, 7 September 2007 22:44 (eighteen years ago)

So anyway (prompted by Eric's separate thread, now redirected here). I've figured out a title, now to figure out an actual proposal...

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 11 September 2007 01:58 (eighteen years ago)

Heh. I've referents and source material, no proposal.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 11 September 2007 02:16 (eighteen years ago)

Let's make not much money.

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 11 September 2007 02:19 (eighteen years ago)

three months pass...

Deadline is tomorrow, folks.

Ned Raggett, Monday, 17 December 2007 00:03 (eighteen years ago)

If nobody does a thing about Stop Snitchin' I'll eat my hat.

Maria :D, Monday, 17 December 2007 01:34 (eighteen years ago)

You should pitch!

Ned Raggett, Monday, 17 December 2007 01:36 (eighteen years ago)

Sent my proposal in this afternoon.

unperson, Monday, 17 December 2007 01:37 (eighteen years ago)

"Albert Ayler Needs to Stop Snitchin"

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 17 December 2007 01:48 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, mine's about Colombian death metal bands.

unperson, Monday, 17 December 2007 01:54 (eighteen years ago)

awesome

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 17 December 2007 02:18 (eighteen years ago)

I know a guy in a Columbian death metal band! I will be interested to find out more.

Eppy, Monday, 17 December 2007 02:56 (eighteen years ago)

this was too early for me. i forgot all about it. not that i had any bright ideas, but still, when has that ever stopped me.

scott seward, Monday, 17 December 2007 04:14 (eighteen years ago)

Sent!

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:06 (eighteen years ago)

what's your proposal rev??

J0rdan S., Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:09 (eighteen years ago)

LA riots -> LA rap

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:11 (eighteen years ago)

(I seriously doubt I'll be accepted, but I might as well try, right?)

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:12 (eighteen years ago)

Proposal for:

We Had to Tear This Mutha Up: Anger and Hedonism in the Wake of the L.A. Riots
by Rodn3y J. Gr33n3

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:12 (eighteen years ago)

People attend to be lectured to?

smurfherder, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:16 (eighteen years ago)

Basically, and to ask Jonathan Lethem dumb questions about Kurt Cobain conspiracies which get falsely attributed to me.

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 07:17 (eighteen years ago)

To The Lester, The Xgau, and the Holy Eddy, Amen

Mackro Mackro, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:09 (eighteen years ago)

Basically, and to ask Jonathan Lethem dumb questions about Kurt Cobain conspiracies which get falsely attributed to me.

-- The Reverend, Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:17 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

you aren't gonna mention this and then not explain it.

J0rdan S., Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:12 (eighteen years ago)

RACIST!

Mackro Mackro, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:16 (eighteen years ago)

Hehe, after Lethem finished his keynote speech, he fielded questions from the audience, included one guy who was all "RACIST!" and Lethem was all "O_o", but xgau defused the situation pretty well. Then he called on some high school kids sitting by the back wall who asked him "What do you think of the theory that Kurt Cobain didn't commit suicide, but was murdered instead", and Lethem was all "o_O" and said he had no opinion whatsoever and was kind of visibly flustered by these dumb questions.

This whole time I was sitting with Alfred and a couple other Stylus types, across the room from everyone else I knew. After the misbegotten Q&A section ended, Matos and Ned and Mackro came up to me all like "Rodney WTF!!!", and I was like "O_o" because I had no idea what they were on about. Apparently, they thought I had asked the Cobain question, but no, it was the kids in the back. What a trip.

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:35 (eighteen years ago)

rev do you think bush orchestrated 9/11

J0rdan S., Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:38 (eighteen years ago)

Why does Bush never want to rock?

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:39 (eighteen years ago)

I think Bush, the '90s grunge band, orchestrated 9/11.

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:39 (eighteen years ago)

Aw, here we go...

Opening night great, reception wonderful, Lethem speech v. cool, q&a session afterwards...interesting. Especially the Kurt Cobain question.

-- Ned Raggett, Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:57 PM (Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:57 PM) Bookmark Link

I wanna know if the Cobain guy is going to ask that question at every panel. I thought it must be Richard Lee (Seattle's infamous "Kurt Cobain was murdered" guy), but apparently not.

-- AKA Mr. Jaq, Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:18 PM (Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:18 PM) Bookmark Link

Ned, you were mad wrong for trying to blame the Cobain question on me!

-- The Reverend, Friday, April 20, 2007 1:42 AM (Friday, April 20, 2007 1:42 AM) Bookmark Link

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:51 (eighteen years ago)

Gwen Stefani: The Real Terrorist!

JN$OT, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 08:52 (eighteen years ago)

My planned proposal on Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution was doomed to failure.

Joseph McCombs, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 10:30 (eighteen years ago)

I support you, Joe.

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 10:36 (eighteen years ago)

Rev, I wasn't in the middle of the L.A. Riots, but I was close enough when it happened. If you need perspectives from a dumb college radio white boy in Orange County in April of 1992, I'm your man.

Mackro Mackro, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:41 (eighteen years ago)

And I'll add similar perspectives from the same general locale (in this case from UCLA).

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:45 (eighteen years ago)

Anyway, the Rev's proposal had best be accepted dammit. (As should everyone's!)

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:46 (eighteen years ago)

rev do you think bush orchestrated 9/11

People who don't believe the official whitewash. Lol.

Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 17:54 (eighteen years ago)

I submitted mine yesterday morning. Good luck to everyone.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 20:28 (eighteen years ago)

Alright. Thanks, Mackro, Ned.

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 20:39 (eighteen years ago)

Haha mine is already doomed to ignominious failure, but it got in under the deadline so eff the haterz.

Dimension 5ive, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 21:30 (eighteen years ago)

What is yours?

The Reverend, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)

luck, all.

BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

I will only tell in the hopes that Ned & Alf tell theirs: “A Luscious Bitch She Is, True: George Clinton Countering the American Counterrevolution.”

Dimension 5ive, Tuesday, 18 December 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.najp.org/articles/2008/04/emp-iii.html

more christgau

curmudgeon, Sunday, 27 April 2008 00:29 (seventeen years ago)

Hey y'all -

I stumbled onto this conversation on the web. Hope it's okay to clarify my post on Culture Rover. My point was not to say viva jargon! The comments of Peter and others here sound right to me: there's a danger of misusing language. My point was that when we critique jargon, is it possible to still explore the ideas that might lurk behind that jargon? Yes, sometimes the jargon is full of sound and fury signifying nothing, but at other times the jargon hints, in its stilted way, at new perspectives and approaches. It shines a light of stangeness across familiar topics. It can get us out of our heads to see (or hear, or just sense in general) things in a new way. In other words, I'm worried that in our (rightful) focus on keeping jargon out of the language that we use, we might be throwing out the intellectual baby with the jargonistic bathwater.

A very cool intellectual historian, Eliot Gorn, once commented (I'm paraphrasing here): "We cultural historians do not 'interrogate' things. We don't trace 'trajectories.' We don't explore the 'terrain.' Those are things the military does." Gorn was suspicious of the way in which cultural historians were using the language of war, slipping into frameworks that distorted culture. Okay, yes, I agree. But it is kind of intriguing, just for a moment, to think about culture through those metaphors (jargoned up as they are).

So I basically agree about policing and limiting jargon, but I don't want to close down the language too much. Can't this also limit and police ideas, keep people from getting outside of the assumptions in which they might feel trapped? Being trapped in this way seems as potentially Orwellian to me as any doublespeak.

Glad to listen more to your ideas and thoughts and comments about all this. Hope it was okay to barge in with my own perspective here.

Best,
Culture Rover (Michael)

culture rover, Monday, 5 May 2008 14:13 (seventeen years ago)

Bump a bit (since I don't know if people noticed this). My coherence is rapidly dying today so I have nothing to add beyond the belief that there is a middle ground which is always negotiable in situations like this.

Ned Raggett, Monday, 5 May 2008 19:42 (seventeen years ago)

Yep

curmudgeon, Monday, 5 May 2008 23:47 (seventeen years ago)

"Heteronormative" seems useful, but actually muffles the impact of the words you'd use to describe its concept. (You could say the same for "heterosexism," which is even broader, but most people at least know what that word means.) Isn't it more pointed to say that someone endorses a homophobic view of what's normal and what isn't, rather than say that person is being "heteronormative"?

Actually, Pete, "homophobic" and "heteronormative" mean two different things. I can elaborate but I'm not sure you're still reading (or if this is even the proper place for it).

In any event, the question that rarely gets asked in these debates is WHO exactly is getting effected by such jargon? There's rarely an assessment re: the precise damage it's supposedly causing.

And I must reiterate what Culture Rover said in his blog post. Journalists are just as susceptible to these charges as academics. "Jargon-free" does not necessarily mean "easy to read." My love for Xgau is well-known. But even the man himself admits his writing is difficult to wade through. I'm still not 100% certain why he likes Daydream Nation judging purely from his original Consumer Guide entry. And while "kvetch" and "kvell" are hardly jargon per se, his review of KC & The Sunshine Band's Greatest Hits read like a communiqué from Planet Xavion to a suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old who had no clue what those words meant (or even that they were words in the first place - "kvell I" looked like "kvell ONE" to me). Also, he's sprinkled his writing with academic jargon at least as early as using the word "signifier" in his review of Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (1981).

Oh and check that thread where some ILMers freaked about his Vaughan/Bogan review and claimed he-wasn't- talking-about-the-music even though he was using the "impolite discourse" of rawk inn rawl.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

But you're kidding yourself if you think it goes down easy. In fact, every essay I've read so far in the latest issue of the academic Cinema Journal, for instance, is much easier to understand than Scott's review. And the same goes for Dave Queen's masterful Scorpions discography from Marooned (or many of his threads here - check the Siren vs. Oh No It's Devo one). Or Stewart Voegtlin's stuff for Stylus. Etc. All great. All very difficult.

Finally, I've never read anything academic (not even Spivak) as impenetrable as Meltzer's The Aesthetic of Rock. And I even have a mind as august (and academic!) as Simon Frith to back me up on that one.

Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 18:37 (seventeen years ago)

ILM wouldn't let me link to ILM in that post for some reason. So voila:

Xgau takes music criticism to a new level

Roxy Music 'Siren' vs 'Oh No, It's Devo'

Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 18:41 (seventeen years ago)

I don't think anyone's arguing for a Manichean approach to rockcrit. Thanks to respectful demurrals by Carl Wilson and Michael J, Kramer, I've been answering emails for three weeks.

The bottom line: anyone who knows my work and tastes (and what I do to pay the mortgage) can't mistake me for an anti-intellectual. A pedant maybe.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 18:47 (seventeen years ago)

You know-nothing revanchist jingoist. Oh wait.

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 18:49 (seventeen years ago)

Thanks for posting, Michael, and I half agree--like I said, good babies in that EMP bathwater.

But jargon is bad by definition. That's why one person's jargon is another person's exact term. When Noam Chomsky spoke at UW in the late '80s, and someone asked him why he didn't use "ruling class" and "capitalist" in his speech, Chomsky said he didn't see the need for Marxist jargon. To the Marxists, Chomsky's use of "elites" was the jargon of an anti-Marxist.

In truth, jargon lies in the ear. The question to ask is: What is being communicated besides simply what is being said? And why? And to what effect?

E.g. if you say "Let's interrogate this discourse," you probably mean:

1.) "Let's talk about this debate"
2.) "I've slogged through a lot of the same shitty postmodern textbooks as you have"
and if you mean this ironically:
3.) "I'm making fun of people that have slogged through these books" or "woe is us"

The precise damage being done is that a lot of smart people have not slogged through those books, often for the perfectly good reason that they're shitty postmodern textbooks, and this (I'm assuming very large) audience either tunes out on impact when they hear this jargon, or has to do the additional mental work of translating what you're saying into English.

By definition, jargon has the opposite effect of poetry or poetic prose: it numbs and clouds where better language makes vivid. Rather than shine the light of strangeness, it casts the pall of routine.

Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 23:07 (seventeen years ago)

But Pete, what exactly counts as jargon? Do "kvetch" and "kvell" count? I mean, they aren't even English in the first place whereas at the very least "interrogate" and "discourse" are.

One can definitely substitute "a Xgau (or Seward or Queen or Voegtlin or Meltzer) review" for "shitty postmodern textbooks" and make the exact same argument you're making above.

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

And Soto, somewhat hilariously, I didn't understand your last post (well, really, just the second sentence).

Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 23:34 (seventeen years ago)

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 23:40 (seventeen years ago)

Ah! Capice.

Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 23:43 (seventeen years ago)

x-post

Kevin, if what you're driving at is that "heteronormative" also includes the simple ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality, isn't that also better put just by saying "ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality"? I don't see how combining all these different things (including, as I said, homophobic attitudes toward what's normal) into one vague word is an improvement, much less an innovation.

It's as if I decided that we should have a word for how war has become the norm in our time, and peace the deviation, and called this concept "warmalcy." It would actually take me more work to define the coinage over and over again than to just get across what I'm talking about in words that thousands of people have already used before to describe the same thing. But then maybe I'd get less credit for having nothing new to say.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it kind of pisses me off that this sort of thing is referred to as "theory."

Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 6 May 2008 23:51 (seventeen years ago)

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?"

And was Soto wrong to use "Manichean?" To be honest, I had no clue what it meant. But I looked it up and all is well. Or so I thought...

And fwiw, Theory is extremely unpopular in academia right now.

Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 00:00 (seventeen years ago)

x-post

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

I hope I make my listeners and readers work. Work is fun. But the work should be worth it: It takes work to see the connections between ideas, to start making connections yourself as you listen or read, hearing ideas come together almost musically. It's work to "get" the subtle things someone is trying to put across (I left a lot between the lines in my EMP talk just because I figured it's best to start with what people most likely don't know, or don't agree about). In the case of a writer such as Christgau, there are also the references and slang and jokes and send-you-to-the-dictionary words I already mentioned.

The kind of work I don't like is the communication equivalent of someone throwing a book on the floor and asking you to pick it up versus someone handing you a book: Sure, I could use the excercise, but fuck you all the same. I get nothing out of the work it takes to translate "interrogate the discourse" to "examine the debate." Whereas even indirectly, Christgau has taught us both something good. "Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it. "Kvell" I didn't know until I looked it up, but it seems like a great Yiddishism to me. "Signifier" meanwhile isn't really academic jargon; it might be an academic word, but it means exactly what it is.

I can't defend a bunch of writing I haven't read, so I'll just repeat that I'm against jargon in any setting--oh, sorry, "context"!

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 00:26 (seventeen years ago)

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?

Well first of all because that's not what homophobic means, but I've already given you enough to argue with here.

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 00:27 (seventeen years ago)

Here's Wiki:

"Homophobia (from Greek homós: one and the same; phóbos: fear, phobia) is a term used to describe irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuals.[3][4][5][6] It can also mean "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals".[7] Homophobic is the adjective form of this term used to describe the qualities of these characteristics while homophobe is the noun form given as a title to individuals with homophobic characteristics."

And here's Answers.com which Google links to whenever you search a word:

"Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men."

Ok we could probably go back and forth here all night as I have some major problems with what you're saying. I just want to address this for the record:

"Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it.

The suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old me had never heard it before which I hope doesn't surprise you. I certainly know the word now. Oddly enough, I've never heard it without "kvell."

Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 00:37 (seventeen years ago)

Whoops, sorry to read so sloppily, Kevin.

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 02:14 (seventeen years ago)

I'd argue that Wikipedia is wrong when it comes to "homophobia" (and on a lot of other words, like "irony"). Leave asside the fact that "discrimination" is used to mean exactly its opposite (a lack of discrimination based on prejudice, "homophobia" is modern slang; it doesn't come from its Greek roots; if it did, it would mean "fear of same." It's a made-up word combining homosexual with phobia, and the way it's commonly used, it encompasses the spectrum of attitudes towards homosexuals that "racism" does when it comes to race, or sexism does when it comes to sex. "Irrational fear" would be last on the list: The common comeback "I'm not homophobic, I just hate gays" is nonsense.

Sorry to go on, obviously words are something I like to argue about...

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 02:18 (seventeen years ago)

I can't force anyone to use the words I want, but 95% of the time, I use the term "homobigotry" instead, and stress it so that people realize I'm asserting that word and not the weak colloquialism Pete just called out. I only use "homophobia" if it is literally that, which is far rarer than the former.

Mackro Mackro, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 03:28 (seventeen years ago)

ass-ide

max, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 03:29 (seventeen years ago)

ass interface development environment?

Mackro Mackro, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 03:31 (seventeen years ago)

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 16:01 (seventeen years ago)

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, May 6, 2008 4:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

yes, and frequently divorced from any of the academic rigor with which it is (more usefully) deployed to better effect.

remy bean, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 16:06 (seventeen years ago)

"hegemony" was definitely the word of the weekend.

Mackro Mackro, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 16:09 (seventeen years ago)

"neoliberalism"

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 16:14 (seventeen years ago)

What I really wanna know is, which if any academic jargon phrases would make the best band name? The Valences? Discourse? (Maybe for a disco group?) The Jargon (pronounced with accent on syllable 2: "Jar-Gone") would be a great name for an alien race that bedevils Doctor Who. "There's been an outbreak of Jargon at EMP."

dad a, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 17:33 (seventeen years ago)

Did someone say jargon. Then again, we are talking about Dartmouth, as reported on in the Wall Street Journal:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways."

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 18:34 (seventeen years ago)

"neoliberalism"

Ha, don't get me started.

Eppy, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 19:23 (seventeen years ago)

I took Alfred's criticism to mean that while these words may have larger meanings behind them, a lot of people weren't using them that way, but were instead obfuscating their otherwise-understandable ideas, and that this is bad.

The problem seems to me that each term has essentially a moral argument associated with it, and that when someone just throws it out there you'd have to take all day to push back against the premises inherent in the jargon, so it really limits debate.

Eppy, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 19:38 (seventeen years ago)

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences.

Poor Northwestern.

HI DERE, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 19:42 (seventeen years ago)

Hahaha

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 19:42 (seventeen years ago)

Always amazing when the left and right go so far around the bend they meet up again. Sounds like (based admittedly on no direct exposure to her writings) her quasi-progressive critique of science's aspersions to truth would dovetail quite nicely with the recent fundamentalist attack on science.

dad a, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 19:54 (seventeen years ago)

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

Skot (and I as his significant other) got death threats from "Jukies" in response to that review. It really riled some folks. Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

Maria :D, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 20:09 (seventeen years ago)

holy shit, that first paragraph is hysterical

HI DERE, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 20:15 (seventeen years ago)

The second for me:

El-P's rhymes are as wack as a lumberjack swinging an ax made of wax from the ears of Tears for Fears after they drank all the beers and found Britney Spears in arrears for illiciting too many middle-aged leers and hipster sneers. On the other hand, instrumentally, he's good.

Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 20:19 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, I haven't read much Scott Seward, but every time someone posts something of his, I find that it's the new best thing ever written. Line Ned posted is definitely a favorite from the El-P piece.

"I'll make ya quake. Scare ya so bad your ass will be Farrah and your drawers will be Cheryl Ladd."

*** *** ***

I suppose the value of academic/technical jargon is that it allows you to pack very complex ideas (and idea sets, ideas about ideas, references, etc.) into small spaces, where they can be played off each other. This assumes an audience familiar with the terminology and its implications, so yeah, it can impede broader communication, but broad-channel communication isn't always the #1 goal. Sometimes you just just want to get the concepts across as efficiently as possible.

contenderizer, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 20:30 (seventeen years ago)

Ned beat me to it. EXCELLENT review. The best line that sums up what I like and don't like about the latest El-P.

Like Skinny Puppy made a record and let their plumber sing.

Mackro Mackro, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 20:41 (seventeen years ago)

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

Ha ha, I'm imagining the guy furiously text messaging this.

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 21:46 (seventeen years ago)

Neoliberalism, neoliberal, neoliberals: know what they mean, can see why they're used, but avoid them myself. They might fall into the category of an ideology that goes nameless in order to pass itself off as "common sense," but conservatives would say the same thing about left-wingers who don't like communism, liberalism, or anti-Americanism as labels. I prefer openly argumentative language, such as "free-market true believers" or "free-market hucksters" or "the self-serving ideology of First World international lenders," etc.

Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 21:48 (seventeen years ago)

At EMP "neoliberalism" was code for "Clintonism."

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 21:48 (seventeen years ago)

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

No you're not. You're managing to have a humane argument on ILM for which I'm grateful.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

You've got to be fucking kidding me! So much for the underground.

Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 21:53 (seventeen years ago)

I understand your point, Pete, but the descriptive phrases you prefer fail to do what the word "neoliberalism" does so effectively: encapsulate a complex set of ideas and historical references into a small space. Neoliberal is (or can be considered) good jargon, because it's much more efficient than a sidebar on the history of economic liberalism.

contenderizer, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 21:58 (seventeen years ago)

As a buzzword, though, it plainly sucks. Maybe the difference between academic obfuscation and beat-to-death buzzwords figures in here.

contenderizer, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 22:00 (seventeen years ago)

I gotta ask, though, Pete - is your favorite book Madame Bovary? It's mine...

Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 22:04 (seventeen years ago)

I take Pete for a Portrait of a Lady fan.

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 22:05 (seventeen years ago)

Loved Bovary in high school, but what's the connection?

Pete Scholtes, Thursday, 8 May 2008 04:24 (seventeen years ago)

Le mot juste

Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 8 May 2008 08:31 (seventeen years ago)

Flaubert was obsessed with finding it

Kevin John Bozelka, Thursday, 8 May 2008 08:31 (seventeen years ago)

three months pass...

A blog posting from someone who is on the committee planning the next conference http://swtos.blogspot.com/2008/08/politics-of-race-bodies-on-popular.html

was recently asked to participate on the program committee of a major popular music conference that happens each spring in Seattle. If you know pop music, you know I mean the EMP Conference. Seattle is home to the great Jimi Hendrix and EMP has a great exhibit happening now on Jimi. The program committee selects the upcoming topic and puts the call for papers together. Who attends the conference? A mix of music journalists and academics. And some industry folks and publishers of popular music from A to Z.The conference itself has always struck me as driven by the participation of predominately white driven set and discourse of POP music. It occurs for me as a black female scholar that EMP has been dominated by the musics that powerful groups of white folks like or white critics talk about (Kelefa Sanneh is an exception though he ain't Greg Tate). It has also been about hidden conversations by all us "minority" folk still feeling and perhaps making ourselves others but NOT taking a stand on program committees to say what is usually backroom conversation for blacks only or with a few radical white folks who we trust or who we think are like us -- have no real power in the matter.

The committee is assigned to choose a title in the next few days so the CFP (call for papers) can go out by early Sept. One of the popular titles arising has to do with the EROTICS OF POP. Committee members are talking about how bodies get left out but rarely are they talking specifically about WHOSE bodies are left out and HOW. Right now we are at the generalizing stage. I suggested this title two days ago and some liked it, others did not. For one, it's too long:

Share, Remix, Reuse : Social Media, Music & We the People in 2.0(09)

What was behind my proposition was bringing issues of diversity out without making it explicit -- race, gender, nation, class -- as well as musical and cultural diversity in approaches to music-making. Check out this great video on creativity and video remixes:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.htm

My specialty as a popular music scholar is race, gender and the body. What I have been privy to as a speaker/participant at EMP, what has driven my own concerns about participating has been that I feel white concerns about popular music run the atmosphere and the conversation. It seems inevitable with a critical mass of white journalists and scholars talking about pop.

I notice the committee's conversations seem to already use the term BODIES without politicizing what it means to different audiences and people. The politics of the people of color whose BODIES and VOICES have been consumed, always present, but often disenfranchised by the pop machine seems to always get lost when we don't privilege REAL PEOPLE in our themes and discourses not just their bodies.

So here I am on the program committee and if you've learned something about me from my previous posts -- offending the status quo excites me when I really have the courage to do it. But part of me is withholding what I always wanted to say now that I got a little power. Crazy thing.

So I said it. Black folks already got issues about the way bodies are consumed in popular culture and popular music from hip-hop to McDonald's commercials and jingles. I shared with the committee that I think we must politicize the way people MIX in whatever title we choose and use it as a metaphor about the MIX in music. It's about sounds and people mixing. Not just money and markets on some chart. I shared in my last communication, if we bring the politics of race and gender to the CFP then I'd feel more at home with my participation in EMP as a whole.

The hidden transcripts among some folks of color I've talked since EMP began several years ago, particularly some notables in journalism and academia, is that the issue of race might be a topic of some paper, but not a issue we talk about as people readin'/writing popular music. I also told my compatriots that RACE and WE THE PEOPLE and WEB 2.0 in 2009 is a national tie in for the conference this year. Which is I am considered proposing the following title: WE THE PEOPLE in 2.0(09) : FORMING A MORE PERFECT MUSIC

I also added that the keynote speaker should be someone of color to bend the ear of the conference goers in the direction of race, gender and the body in ways that people of color can and do without trivializing that WE are the ones who often get BOXED IN in conversations of BODY.

I still want Success with the Opposite Ethnicity/Sex/Gender/Nation/Age. I want to shatter the illusion but going to the place that is heard as different, other, or out of place. I want to pull our attention towards the MIX and REMIX of DIFFERENCE. Like...Agree to be Offended and Stay in the Conversation Anyhow!! Kyra
Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. at 11:15 PM

curmudgeon, Friday, 15 August 2008 17:40 (seventeen years ago)


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