Nuance in a time of sharp contrast

Words are powerful...but power is not always the use of force.

I recalled this as I listened,. in amazement to linguist Geoff Nunberg's careful analysis of the phrase Deep State at the end of yesterday's Fresh Air broadcast. You can check it out here:


Nunberg uses his characteristic thoughtful and precise language to unpack a term that has slipped into everyday political use (or at least, into regular tweets from our Fearless Leader and his cronies...) and to describe why it is so troubling. What I admire about this essay is how ti takes its time to reach a conclusion, supporting it withe evidence, so that when we arrive it seems entirely reasonable. So reducing it to a soundbite seems especially in approprtiate, but the sentence that really hooked me was this one:

It's that suggestion of ruthless efficiency that makes "the deep state" sound more ominous than a name like "the invisible government." We think of a government as a collection of people, with all their foibles and frailties [...] Whereas the specter of the "deep state" is chilling precisely because it seems to be so capable. Hidden from view, it orchestrates complex schemes across a half-dozen agencies, buries incriminating documents, compromises inconvenient opponents with spurious allegations.

What Nunberg is doing in the essay is an important you-can-do-this-at-home strategy for finding bullshit. He replaces the new term with another, theoretically synonymous one that shines a light on the connotations of the first one.  I have always liked to use this strategy when folks complain about the tyranny 'political correctness.' Replace that Fox news talking point with "showing respect for others and their identities" in most phrases and you see what these folks are actually complaining about....

All of this puts me in the mind of an article by Nicholas Lehman that appeared in the July 31, 2000, issue of the New Yorker. Lehman carefully examined George W. Bush's use of metonym in contrast to Al Gore's use of metaphor and hinted at the carefully controlled language being deployed by politicians to shape their messages.

To pretend these are 'just words' is to be naive about how speakers and writers seek to shape our thoughts and behaviors through the choice of words. Nunberg's essay is a sobering reminder that we can be controlled as easily by language as by overt use of force...

Strange Characters

Another weird typography citing...along the lines of Keith Houston's Shady Characters

Daisy Alioto writes about the Dinkus (***) in The Paris Review - 8 June 2018.

Another book to remember...

Artists as correspondents...

I love letters. Writing them. Getting them. Don't do it enough, though.

Here are some stories about artists' letters...

Brooks, Katherine. "Sol Lewitt's advice to Eva Hesse is what every creative person needs to hear." The Huffington Post. 27 Oct 2015.

Also this:

Savig, Mary. "The Art of Handwriting" The Atlantic.com. 5 Jul 2016.

Homework!

Clipping

Hanne Darboven wrote by hand, copied different kind of texts by transferring them into her own handwriting. Only in few cases would she have them copied by someone else with a typewriter. This personal aspect of her art-making is reminiscent of the practice of monks in the Middle Ages, copying the texts of the Bible day after day, writing the codex, and this is rather a contrast to the idea of the depersonalized primary structures of the prefabricated or mechanically created, mainly geometrical forms, being used by the Conceptual and especially the Minimal artists of the time. Darboven chose the medium of the book as the classical medium of knowledge of the early modernism, constructing a personal reading of history and time. She practiced cutting fragments of encyclopedias, literature and later of articles out of magazines and newspapers, transferring them into her own handwriting and combining them to form a new text, a privately hand written ‘cultural history’.

 Schoofs, Miriam. "Hanne Darboven: I inscribe by I describe nothing". Flash Art. Jan -Feb 2013, p.

My college radio debut...

Thanks to Professor Ron Block at Rowan University's WGLS FM 89.7. Professor Block hosts The Writers' Roundtable, a monthly show where he talks about fiction and poetry with authors. He was kind enough to ask me to come over on April 27, 2015, and talk about the work in Chromography: Writing in Color (currently on view at Rowan University Art Gallery). We talked about abstract painting drag, secret messages and the translations of The Hours from literature to music.

Here's a link to the show's podcast, enjoy the show...

On Cyphers...

A Better Pencil by Dennis Baron

I cannot say this was a page-turner. Many books were able to leapfrog over it when I would curl up for bedtime reading...why? Baron has chosen a fascinating subject - the transformations wrought by changing writing and reading technologies - but his book suffers from an unusual condition: too much reasonable thinking. When the conclusion of your book includes the sentence, "The effects of the technologies [forcing changes in how we write, read and circulate text] have typically been positive, with some negatives inevitably mixed in  - the plusses and minuses owing as much to the vagaries of human nature as to the advantages or disadvantages of the technology itself", you're being a little wishy-washy.

While the book includes flashes of imagination (a good section of Ted Kaczynski as author, an imaginative and inclusive overview of writing technologies form clay tablets to forgotten early word processing programs, a thoughtful meditation on global citizenship in the information age), Baron seems to have written a book that would be better discussed over dinner than actually published. His informal, conversational tone contribute to this impression.

All of this perhaps says more about my expectations than about Baron's book - an effort to consider the ways we are being manipulated by our own communication is a valuable opportunity for reflection. I wish I'd gotten a little more to reflect on here.

R/W Curator's Talk

Gave a short talk tonight at the closing reception for R/W: Reading and Writing Visual Experience, a show I organized for the Hicks Art Gallery at Bucks County Community College. Here's some video:

Interesting things about writing

It would be easier to say Twitter is a colossal waste of time, though it would be more accurate to admit I just don't know what it's for. I feel like it is some tool I encounter in the hardware store that I don't know how or why to use. After all, many of us got along just fine without it for years...how essential can it be?

Then I read an interesting essay like Bob Mankoff's post about the relationship between Tweets and cartoon captions in the New Yorker (actually this one is part two; I am eager to read part one). I am struck by the ways comedy writers use twitter, as a 'warm up' and to accomplish specific joke 'moves', and it makes me wonder whether I am being too rigid in my thinking about this kind of writing....

Around our house, we have a special respect for people who can up with unexpected uses of existing materials - re-purposing is on  level with invention. Finding a way to use Twitter as a tool (rather than in its boring self-promoting, over-sharing, prescribed way) is startling in that manner.

Will I figure this out? I don't know, but I think a solution would involve exploring the limitations of the medium. I know there is an upper limit on characters, and that there are ways to tie messages together through special characters (@, #). It seems like there must be poets who are interested in limitations who are employing this thing...I am thinking about Twitterwriting and welcome any suggestions...

Suggested readings

It's been very busy - too busy to keep up with this blog's housekeeping. I wanted to point to two things that interested me.

One was in the February 24 Washington Post Classical Beat blog. Anne Midgette makes a plea for critics to connect to others idea when publishing on line. This is a great idea - and its value to all of us comes into focus when she writes about how

A new work, in particular, is in the position of the blind men and the elephant: everyone who was there can give his or her own piece of the experience, and readers, seeing them all together, can try to amalgamate them into a larger, and more accurate, picture.

Critics' varying descriptions and assessments can offer readers a multi-dimensional view of a work. And I need that when I read...as I can't get away to see anything these days.

The other thing I wanted to link to is The Guardian UK Theatre Blog, which had an exhortation for artists to write more about their work. Not more self promotional bloggiy crap, but

a messier kind of writing, more vulnerable and yet more declamatory. Writing that is the product of a desire to speak as well as an obligation to communicate. A more restless kind of writing, devoid of neatness, riddled with ambiguities and rhetorical flourishes. Writing that expresses the same wants and preoccupations as that artist's other creative output, without needing to comment on that work. Writing suffused with generosity and fragility. The page as a canvas or a stage, as well as space for programme notes.

I have been teaching writing in art schools for a while, and I welcome this idea wholeheartedly. Writing is not something one does merely to promote oneself - it's something that can explain one's self to one's self. It is the mind at work... and that's a pretty exciting thing to read (whereas boring, jargon-laced, self-promoting 'artists' statements' are not...)

More soon. Really. I want to write about this book club I'm in and the book How Learning Works: Seven Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching. It's been interesting to think about learning instead of teaching...

Where is "I" in this essay?

Note: This is the first in an occasional series of postings on general writing concerns. As always, your comments are welcome and encouraged.

One of the most frequently asked questions in my writings classes must be, “can I use the word ‘I’ in my paper?” I usually toss off a rather flip answer (did I ask you to write the paper? Do you refer to yourself as I?), but I’m in constant amazement about this question. Are there still legions of teachers out there telling people that I weakens a paper? Does anyone really think readers prefer the opinions and experiences of semi-anonymous constructs to the thoughts and ideas of their students? Or does no one really have an idea where I belongs in a paper?

Okay, some guidelines. Ask yourself, before you use I, if you are doing so because you’ve not been able to locate another reference who says what your about to say. If not, you may not be done with your research. If you can honestly say that no one in your research is saying what you’ve got to say, go for it. This of course means that you have to use I when you’re talking about personal experiences or observations. Which brings us to the real reason I can’t stand teachers who refuse to admit the first person singular to an academic paper.

Once upon a time, academic writing consisted of carefully researched and annotated prose. These were not the good old days; they were the days in which only certain things (things others had written about before) were admissible subjects for academic discourse. One of the major arguments of feminist writers in the late 60’s and early 70’s was to get I taken seriously in a world in which one was only taken seriously for his ability to refer to the experience of others.

Finally, I’m of the school of thought that if you can’t deny subjectivity, you might as well admit it wholeheartedly. An assignment to write a paper is an invitation to take your place in the ongoing conversation that is education. You are assigned to write because we want to know what you think about a given subject. So when you have made an original observation or have an original thought, and you’ve done your homework to be certain that it’s yours, use I fearlessly. Take your place in the conversation to which you’re invited.