The Story of Outerspace Future Xmas: My Happy Holiday Card To You!

Happy holidays: ALL THE HOLIDAYS!

Merry Christmas, Freaky Festivus, Happy Belated Hannukah, Happy Early Kwanza, A Very Merrily Anticipated Boxing Day, Hooray for the world not ending on December 21st, & all the rest...

So whatever you might be celebrating, please don't forget to enjoy hyperbolic aesthetic audacity, the joy of friends, family, and all the utterly weird and wonderful things that we do before returning to sober sanity in January.

That means, this is the time of year when we contemplate The Story of Outerspace Future Xmas . . .

On a frozen night late in December, a mysterious, but beautiful light was pulsating in the sky, it's colored rays reflected and refracted by ice crystals high in the atmosphere . . .

Being drawn to that spectral light, three quantum entities arrived from light-millenia away. Having no earthly bodies, they silently uttered, "Take us to your leader," in some unspeakable paradox of language . . .

And demanded to see the newly supernova'd interstellar space baby, whose existence was utterly unknown to us . . .

They bore no gift of frankincense, but instead produced a glowing boombox, powered by neutrinos and black hole dust. And when they started up an interstellar supernova birthday disco dance party, it went a little something like this . . .

 Happy Holidays, Everyone!

The Utterly Naïve "Artist" Redux: The Re-Artening

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be participating in my second art show this weekend; at the Des Lee Gallery, 1627 Washington Avenue in St. Louis. Another of my collages has been accepted in this year's Washington University graduate student art show, Parabola. The show opens Friday, 11/30 from 6pm-9pm, and can also be viewed on Saturday, 12/1 from 1pm-6pm.

If you're in St. Louis this weekend, please stop by. Parabola is always a fun event and here are some pictures of me and Laura Isaac arting it up at the show last year. (Photos courtesy of Laura Isaac, who is a fabulous artist; follow the link to check out her thoughtful and beautiful work).

If for some reason you can't attend the show--maybe you exist in some incompatible spatio-temporal dimension, or you have been called away on an urgent mission to forge peace in a war-torn land, or you can't walk because your bookie broke your legs (always pay the man on time!)--below you'll find a photographic facsimile of the collage I submitted, along with a description of the piece.

Dissertation Citation, mixed media collage, 9" x 12"

The academic dissertation is the culminating project in any Ph.D. program in the humanities. It must summarize and scrutinize the scholarship to date on the given topic, while also contributing some original and useful knowledge to the field. The writer accumulates knowledge, selects, cites, and interrogates the existing body of scholarship in order to construct this new work. Citations form the intellectual genealogy behind the dissertation; they are the breadcrumbs leading both writer and reader through the forest of research, thought, and literary labor that constitutes the Ph.D. 

Dissertation Citation is a mixed media collage that represents the intellectual work of dissertation writing. As a medium, collage is an act of visual citation. By selecting images and words from printed materials and arranging them in an original way, the collage recontextualizes familiar images and forms, inviting the viewer to scrutinize them with fresh eyes. It is a process of composition done via editing and creative reorganization. 

In Dissertation Citation, pages from magazines, business cards, maps, credit card receipts, museum tickets, advertisements, transit cards, and other ephemera constitute a series of frames within frames. Each layer becomes both an object of inquiry in itself, as well as a contextualizing frame through which to view the subsequent layers. Within the regimented rectangles, randomized bits of color and texture combine in surprising ways, forming unexpected symmetries and patterns. These layers emphasize the analytical rigor, as well as the creative serendipity, that are necessary to write the dissertation.

When Weird Gets Real: The Rhetoric of Marriage Inequality, or, Red Hot American Summer

Caveat lector! I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people with this post. But, you know what? It's been over 100 degrees F here for the past six weeks, I have to hear the words "Mitt" and "Romney" spoken in earnest all day long on the radio, and I'm feeling a little cranky. From the rhetoric of the presidential campaign and the stuff floating around the interwebs these days, I get the feeling that a lot of people are feeling cranky too. Leaving aside the presidential rhetoric about tax returns etc, I'm going to write a little bit about the debates going on concerning same-sex marriage, religion, and fast food. This comes out of a discussion I've been having on Twitter with Matt Moberly, who informed me that supporters of gay marriage are boycotting Chick-Fil-A and Christians opposed to gay marriage are boycotting Starbucks. (Sidebar: Does this seem like a weird way to carry on a debate about marriage rights? Yes. Yes it is.) From there we went on to discuss another rhetorical tactic of the proponents of gay marriage: comparing their cause with the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Matt then referred me to an article by Voddie Baucham titled "Gay is Not the New Black," published on July 19, 2012 by The Gospel Coalition. I'm sure there are a lot of other articles that present Christian opposition to gay marriage in more well-reasoned terms. (A warning to the highly literate: this one displays poor logic in numerous areas.) I feel compelled to post my own response to the article here, not only because I support marriage equality rights, but because I find that this kind of rhetoric distorts what marriage means to me as a non-religious, feminist woman living in the 21st century. What follows is an excerpt of an email I sent to Matt:

"There are a lot of problems with the logic of that article. But I will focus on the primary one: In the United States, religion (any religion) is not the authoritative basis of marriage. A religious marriage is neither A) required for American persons to be considered "married," nor B) legally binding. The state provides that authority, along with all the legal rights and privileges granted to married peoples.

"This evidence is anecdotal, but bear with me. Dennis and I were married in Cook County marriage court in 2005. We are granted both legal and cultural benefits of marriage. So we have legal rights to each other's property (for example), and cultural benefits of being viewed favorably by the population for appearing to adhere to a hetero-normative bourgeois lifestyle. We don't appear to rock the social boat, so to speak. Religion doesn't enter into it, and frankly, I get a little irritated when folks (like the author of the article) insist that my marriage has any relationship to religious tradition. I have entered into a legal union, the name of which is coincidentally shared by a religious union to which I do not subscribe."

This is a photo of me taken after my non-religious wedding, courtesy of my best maid, Sara Stromer:

"Would you agree, that as a non-religious person, I still have a right (granted by the state, but upheld by the culture at large) to this legal union? I am going to assume that you do, and continue with my argument.

"Ok. So let's do a little hypothetical. What if, instead of being born with a y chromosome, Dennis had been born Denise, and we lived in a state where same-sex marriage was legal, and we decided to enter into the same legal union we have now, but with a gender difference? There would be a certain amount of cultural opposition to this union (religion being just one basis for that cultural objection). However, in this hypothetical situation, there would be no legal objection. Jessica & Dennis get married, or Jessica and Denise get married, it makes no difference to the state. And the state is who we are talking about when we are making claims about civil rights.

"Of course, under this hypothetical situation, there would still be states (most of them, in fact) where Jessica & Dennis would be granted legal rights that Jessica & Denise would not. And in this way, the gay marriage comparison actually does match up somewhat to the black civil rights movement. While we equate civil rights today with cultural and social equality, it was primarily directed at legal exclusions based on race. The civil rights movement didn't outlaw racism, but it did mean that an African-American person had to be treated equally by the laws of New York and Alabama.

"As I said before, the gay marriage/civil rights movement comparison is overstated. The subtle homophobia directed at the LGBT community has qualitatively different effects than the Jim Crow laws of the past. And frankly, I think that the gay marriage debate is a red herring designed to direct our collective gaze away from that more subtle and powerful homophobia, which we avoid by debating whether the state or the church governs marriage rights. But like riding at the front of the bus or sitting at a lunch counter, same-sex marriage has become emblematic of a movement for equal social treatment. What my critique of Baucham's article tries to show is just this: Churches and other cultural institutions don't get to decide who can get married in the United States today, the state does that. But there is a difference between the rights granted by the state, and the acceptance of those same rights by some people in the nation (and they don't all object based on religion). I'm just asking that we recognize that difference, and think hard about the reasons why the general culture accepts Jessica & Dennis but not Jessica & Denise."

If you have managed to read all the way through this rhetorical critique/rant, then let me reward you with some of the (slightly) more lighthearted weirdness that you have come to expect from this site. I recently visited the amazing "Underneath It All" exhibition about the history of women's silhouettes, and the undergarments required to create them, at the Missouri History Museum here in St. Louis. There I saw this:

It's a nursing corset. Apparently there was a time in recent human history when new mothers were expected to wear a corset while nursing their babies. Aren't the nipple flaps kind of incredible? I could go on to make some further point about how, as humans, our expectations for behavior are in a constant state of evolution, and that some of the constraints we have placed on ourselves in the past seem insane to us today. But I think I'll just leave it at that, and let you make what you will of the nursing corset, as well as the rest of it.

Comments welcome.

The New Weird, Or The New Normal?

Ever since the phrase "the new normal" entered the American mediascape following the 2008 economic crash, I have found it to be a curious phrase. No, more than curious, I have found it to be irksome. If you are of the opinion that humanity (and all that it creates) is a work-in-progress, then the phrase "the new normal" probably irritates you too. It carries with it a condescending sense of complacency, as though to say, "Hey, whoever you are, if you don't like the world and your role in it, just shut up. Get used to it. This is the way things are now, so don't go trying to change them."

The New Weird may not have been conceived in opposition to any idea of "the new normal," but in practice these two strike me as opposites. Now I would be lying if I tried to suggest that I have ever thought of The New Weird as a program for social change. For me, it has always been related to the mindset and perceptions of individuals (although I concede that if enough individuals change their mindsets some change might occur on a social level). I still think of The New Weird as a way to become more attuned to the miraculous weirdness that already exists in the world around us. A way to see ourselves and each other better, and in seeing better, we might also do better. Whether that doing is related to making art or making social policy makes no difference to me.

Existing as I do in an ongoing state of revulsion toward the phrase "the new normal," imagine the delight I must have felt when I happened upon this title of a recent article by Mark Spitzer in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The New Weird: What happens to literary realism when the truth is stranger than fiction?" Go ahead, imagine it: the discovery of a fellow weirdo, someone completely unknown to me who is also writing about The New Weird. Jubilation!

Spitzer teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas, where he instructs his students to combine elements of the normal and the weird in their writing. In this article in the Chronicle he describes some of his theories and methods. In it, he also argues that contemporary American readers have lost their taste for realist literature, because the world we live in is already outrageously unbelievable. Today, he suggests, only the unusual can hold our attention. Spitzer writes:

"Basically, a new chapter has been opened in American lit. This is no longer a world where ordinary peasants visiting elderly relatives with tuberculosis can be endured for 900 Dostoevskian pages. This is a world of action, explosions, conspiracy, war, porn, plastic surgery, rovers on Mars, and Olympic champs smoking bongs on YouTube. Anything less is just plain boring."

Now as a lifetime member of the Hyperbole Fan Club, I understand where Spitzer is coming from. The unreal, the exaggerated, the nonsequitur, the unbelievable is incredibly enticing to me. And I like my cultural products to be just as big, loud, fast, and obnoxious as the next American. But something in Spitzer's argument still strikes me as curious, even irksome. He suggests that contemporary writers have no choice but to be intentionally, transparently, and outrageously weird because they must compete with contemporary news media for their readership. Journalists, he says, have an infinite stream of weirdness to work with. They simply have to record it, while fiction writers have to go out of their way to make up something weird enough to match reality.

Yes, the world is weird, the world is surprising, the world is constantly changing in unexpected ways. But Spitzer neglects to mention that thorough, objective journalism is a minority voice in the contemporary news media. He seems to forget that what passes for journalism these days is more likely to be CNN-style 24-hour infotainment, which is hyperbolic precisely because it has been engineered to be, and not because the events reported on are necessarily epic in nature. In fact, cable news has made an art of hyperbole, turning the absolutely banal into what seems like the most important thing in the world.

And I would argue that Spitzer's approach to fiction writing follows suit. He isn't teaching his creative writing students how to observe the world with a weird eye, and to craft their writing in such a way that others might catch a glimpse of that weirdness. Rather, he instructs them to juxtapose the quotidian with the fantastic, the fabulous, the strangely shocking. Like cable news, it might pass for entertainment, and it might hold a reader's attention. But this kind of writing will not help that reader to gain any new insights into the world she lives in. And for this reason, Spitzer's version of The New Weird seems tawdry to me, superficial, and an unfortunate waste of artistic and intellectual potential.

I maintain that weirdness is more than a fleeting entertainment. It is, I think, a creative approach to critical thinking, and a willingness to open the mind's eye to any and all questions. It is a way to  welcome for consideration the most unlikely thoughts, the morally ambiguous, the previously unaccepted or unacceptable. Weirdness is a way to challenge the status quo of narrow minded thought in any of its various guises. And within the outsider space of "weirdness" we are free to question the underlying assumptions of what passes for normality.

Weird Reading and Writing... and Publication!

I know what you're saying: "But Jess, you're a grad student; you read and write all the time. What's weird about that?"

Yes, I do these things (almost) every day. And yet, even with years of practice, I have yet to unlock the mysteries of written language. It is still unclear to me why some marks made on paper will come to life in our minds while others will not. But I am working on it, and I have been arguing with Jean-Paul Sartre a lot about it this week. But that is a story for another time.

Right now, I am pleased to announce that my first academic publication is expected to be released this June. Professor Rosemary Peters of Louisiana State University invited me to write a chapter for the volume Criminal Papers: Reading Crime in the French Nineteenth Century, and she had the foresight to include my piece in a section of the book titled "Reading Weird." Some things are just meant to be. Or, sometimes our weird reputations precede us. Or, sometimes, although we practice reading and writing every day (almost), we nonetheless continue to read in unconventional ways.

So three cheers for reading and writing weirdly. And three more cheers for the excellent Rosemary, who made this book possible. And yet three more cheers for all the contributors to the book, with whom I am delighted to share paper, ink, and hardback bindings. May we all read and write on...

Professor X and Student Z: A Weird Academic Discourse, Or, A Very UnEnlightened Exchange

Oh Noble Reader! Please know that of what follows: All is true. For the mind yet unsullied by graduate school and the lice-ridden Underbelly of the Academy, read no further, lest your Purest Humanity be corrupted by this all-too faithful depiction of Vice and Cruelty. If, Dear Reader, you have already Fallen into that deep abyss of Highest Education, continue on, and heed not the Example of Professor X.

***

Dear Professor X,

I am eager to schedule the exam for which I have been preparing these several months. I propose date A or date B; please let me know if either of these are amenable.

Best Wishes,

Student Z

***

Dear Student Z,

Exam? Please visit my office so that I can evaluate your level of preparation. Because you have failed to email me as often as I had anticipated, and because I set expectations about your email communications and still chose not to communicate those expectations to you, I had assumed you had left the university.

Best,

Professor X

***

Dear Professor X,

Please accept my sincere apologies for failing to adhere to your expectations for email communication. I have been in contact with Professor B, who I assumed was also in contact with you. It seems like we both made some incorrect assumptions! Wait, you assumed that I had dropped out of school? I find it insulting that you assumed that I had abdicated my responsibilities, rather than assuming that I had my nose buried in books, and that I was focused on my studies. Also, I can't believe that you would assume that I had dropped out of school, and that you made no effort to find out why or if you could help get me back on track. Please do not be offended, but I am not entirely sure that you are human. Or at least not human in the way that other humans might recognize.

Sincerely and apologetically,

Student Z

***

Dear Student Z,

You are insulted? I don't see that you have a right to be pissed at me. I am the one who has a right to be pissed. You did not conform to my secret email standards. I do not understand your approach to graduate school. This is very serious business. I'll have you know that people speak very highly of me. Very highly. I work with lots of people. I do not understand why you think that you have a right to have feelings. Furthermore, I do not understand your suggestion that I am inhuman. What am I, a computer? I will have you know that people speak very highly of me.

Agitatedly,

Professor X

***

Dear Professor X,

Nevermind that I am not pissed and that you are putting words in my mouth. Disappointed and confused? Certainly. May I please implore you to, once again, accept my sincerest apology and inquire how I might mend the situation. I do not intend to fight with you about this. I also speak very highly of you. [Thinking: I also feel somewhat sorry for you, if a lowly graduate student such as myself can offend you to such a degree. I am sorry that you studied at University D with Professor J, and that you will probably never reach his level of notoriety. It is clear that you care greatly about your reputation. I am sorry that providing pragmatic and useful guidance to your students is a task that seems to be beneath you. I am sorry that we are misunderstanding each other so completely.]

Best Wishes,

Student Z

PS Can I please schedule my exam, so that I can get on with my research?

Melancholia Part I: A Response to David Edelstein, Or, How Do You View a Film?

In December 2011, all manner of "Best of 2011" lists appeared. I took note of the ten-best list that David Edelstein discussed with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Thursday, December 22, 2011. He was talking about the year in film, and revisiting his own ten-best list.


You can find the transcript here.

"EDELSTEIN: On this very show, I described Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" as a masterly film. I think I called it a hateful masterpiece. And I'm not somebody who throws around words like that and then doesn't follow up on my 10-best list.

"I just couldn't - I put it down on my list, and I just couldn't do it. It is such a hateful film. It's a – it's the work of a nihilistic annihilist. For Lars von Trier, the world, when it ends, is, well-lost. Capitalism has poisoned it, and families are useless, and the heroine, the protagonist of the movie played by Kirsten Dunst, is so utterly hateful that she's really quite happy that everything is going to hell.

"And I guess I - when one chooses, you know, the things that one loves and one wants to recommend, how - it's a very difficult question: Can you love a film, can you recommend a film that highly that peddles a worldview that you find so utterly hateful, even poisonous? I don't know the answer to that. I struggled with it."

I think that David Edelstein puts his critical finger on a problem that has been plaguing readers (of all stripes) for a good long while. His review of Lars von Trier's Melancholia rests upon the ethical or moral disposition of the viewer. And he assumes, casting a broad ethical and moral net, that the end of the world--no matter how artfully it might be depicted--is disagreeable to the film's viewer. 

Melancholia may be a sad, bleak, fated, and morbid film. But to call it "hateful" is simply naïve.  The approaching planet of Melancholia, like Justine (Kirstin Dunst), we should read as human mortality in its most unadorned form. Ultimately, neither human, nor animal, nor golf cart will cross the bridge beyond the film's private golf course and escape into the seeming sanctuary of the never-seen village. The question posed by the film, however, is: How shall we react to all of this? With numb depression and nihilism? With crippling anxiety? With a wishful optimism followed by suicide? With fantasy? Each character poses his or her own possible response to the approaching planet Melancholia, and it is up to the viewer to chose his or her own point of identification.

Stay tuned for part 2 to see how I read this film in a less "hateful" light than David Edelstein.

The New Weird is Dead, Long Live the New Weird!

An Open Letter to 2011:

What happens to a year on December 31? On January 1? Does anything ever really begin and end there?

So dear 2011, you, who I have affectionately christened "The New Weird," come to an end. My Big Lebowski calendar has been replaced by one called Magnificent Specimens, which features photographs of eccentric men's facial hair to last for the next twelve months. But what sort of ending is this anyway? While the calendar marks a certain transition, others might be harder to detect. In my mind, New Weird, you are not so much a period of time, but a state of being. You are an embracing of art, a willingness to ask the unasked questions, and a glancing sideways at the world around you. So on this new year, I wish The New Weird a happy birthday, and look forward to your second chapter. Hopefully one of many to come.

My friend Ben Trumbo has already given your second phase some marching orders. New Weird, now you have an official slogan: "2012: Freaky Awesome!" And also a motto: "Suck it up and party." Interpret these however you will. But whatever your interpretation, Happy New Year, Happy New Weird, and may we all revel in your freaky awesome weirdness!

Photo courtesy of Ben Trumbo (2011).

Click here to check out some more of his freaky awesome work.