The Forward The idea for this “paper” grew out of my video work (here and here) for a seminar I took with Alex Juhasz: specifically, from her questions about the assertions I made regarding theory, violence and the body. What follows is an “academic” humanities paper–of sorts–that attempts to address some of her questions. I’m… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Musings
Telling Stories Digitally
So far this month I’ve received 5 faculty notifications announcing “Digital Storytelling Workshops” from the two schools I’ve adjuncted for in the last few years; I won’t be attending any of them. Not because I believe there’s nothing useful to be learned by examining the practice of digital storytelling–far from it–but because digital storytelling is not a new type of… Continue Reading
Palimpsests – Writing Over Marx
Within the humanities, palimpsests have become a popular metaphor for describing the movements of history. The present rewrites the past imperfectly with the tools at hand, while the past survives in traces, fragments–the evanescences that haunt us. It’s not original for me to use it as a title for this documentary essay, but it is… Continue Reading
Greetings from the Teutonic Spring
Admittedly, it’s taken me some time to find my rambling voice again. Some of it was just good old fashioned rust: my servos and articulators were all dusty and orange from disuse. And some of it was the pretext for my writing, which I’ll explain momentarily. To add a little context for those of you… Continue Reading
Documentary Achievements
Strong documentaries wrestle with reality Greco-Roman style, looking for the right grip, the proper leverage to pin their opponents to the mat. (If you don’t like my combative analogy feel free to swap it for one of your own. It doesn’t really matter which conceit we use: a dance, a birth, a long con, whatever… Continue Reading
A Video Essay
As a medium the video essay presents the artist with some interesting rhetorical tools, but, although I appreciate its grab bag of sights and sounds, its registrations present nothing new. The impulse for the video lived inside me just the same as an essay or poem lives inside me, the way a story lives inside… Continue Reading
What Might Be Whole the Light
We’re probably just born like this. Fractured. Missing a piece or two. A few Lincoln Logs short of a home, a couple of shafts shy of a full Erector Set. For the bargain, though, we gain a knack for pulp and pulchritude–a penchant for work to play at making us whole. The Buddha said living was… Continue Reading
Humanitas Digitalis
If you read the times–any times that is, from the 12th to the 21st centuries–literate humanity, and its grab bag of self-conscious preoccupations (i.e. the humanities) is ever unravelling. Some learned pundit–like Harold Bloom, Clive James, Matthew Arnold, Giambattista Vico, Francis Bacon, et al–is either prophesying its doom or writing the story of its rebirth.… Continue Reading
The Faster’s Diary – Preface
On June 1st, 2012, I stepped on the scale and was shocked to find a number better suited to a light weight NFL running back: 205 lbs. Sure, I was a long way from the slim-and-trim gym swinging days of my youth, but 205?! That was a big number for a man fast approaching 40,… Continue Reading
Occupy Your Street
Occupy Wall Street knew where it ate, but not where it slept. It knew who its friends were, but not its affections. It knew that somewhere, some lucrous virulence was metastasizing, unchecked within the body, but it knew not where, or how long the patient might reasonably be expected to survive. “Poor America, tossed on… Continue Reading
