The Porter Bureau

Just finished Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. It took me a bit longer than I had hopped because I had to intersperse my reading with preparation for the class I’m teaching next semester, Literature in the Wired World. Even so, I’m quite glad to be through it. Baudrillard is a challenging read generally, but one of the particular issues with Simulacra and Simulation is that the latter essays are all variations on the themes articulated earlier in the book, and quite deliberately so. The model of Baudrillard’s work, the ever duplicating replica sans original, structures and defines the rhetoric of Simulacra and Simulation. By the third or fourth essay, I was quite sure that Baudrillard had nothing left to tell me that he hadn’t already said, and if I was to contest him at all, the only sure way of doing so would be to simply put down his book and walk away. In fact, that strikes me as the point of the latter half of the book: Baudrillard knowingly reserves the final few essays of the book for those who would “study” his work, i.e. academics. There at the end, a place he feels that only the scholarly will arrive at, he takes the academic study of his own work to task by inveighing against the cultural morbidity of the university system, which he calls “The Spiraling Cadaver.” A final, “you think that your ‘critical thinking’ offers a way out of the implosion of the hyperreal? Well it doesn’t, and my proof is that you’re still here looking for one.”

I’ve often said that the most cogent and accessible definition of postmodernism can be found in Umberto Eco’s postscript to The Name of the Rose titled “Postmodernism, Irony, The Enjoyable.” As the title might suggest, Eco’s take on postmodernism is thoughtful but not particularly bleak. Not so with the final essay in Simulacra and Simulation, “On Nihilism,” which likewise telegraphs its mood. Here’s a delightful sample:

I am a nihilist…
I observe, I accept, I assume, I analyze the second revolution, that of the twentieth century, that of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning, equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. He who strikes with meaning is killed by meaning.
…
The masses themselves are caught up in a gigantic process of inertia through acceleration. They are this excrescent, devouring, process that annihilates all growth and all surplus meaning. They are this circuit short-circuited by a monstrous finality.
…
There is no longer a stage, not even the minimal illusion that makes events capable of adopting the force of reality–no more stage either of mental or political solidarity: what do Chile, Biafra, the boat people, Bologna, or Poland matter? All of that comes to be annihilated on the television screen. We are in the era of events without consequences.

I can only compare the pathos of reading “On Nihilism” to the feeling, or affect, of watching Brazil for the first time; the harrowing of the soul by the anti-cathartic ending leaves the viewer/reader simultaneously nauseous yet desperately wanting food, water, anything to fill the void carved out by the experience. (Don’t get me wrong, I love the film, but if you don’t come away from your first viewing fully gobsmacked, then you weren’t paying attention.) If, then, I recommend Eco to anyone wanting to understand what postmodernism is, then I recommend “On Nihilism” to anyone wanting to know why we would be well rid of it as the dominant philosophy. (Some would argue that we already are, but that is a different discussion.)

Because one of my professors got sick this semester and canceled her seminar, I currently don’t have any classes, which is a mixed bag because her seminar would have been my last class–ever. On the upside, however, I’m teaching two classes this semester and the grading load is killing me; I can only imagine how bad things would be if I had coursework to contend with as well. I’m 99.8934% sure my faculty adviser doesn’t read my blog, so I’ll go ahead and say that I’ve made almost no headway on my orals reading list this semester. I have no worthy excuse since, as stated, I don’t have any course work of my own to accomplish, but as I stare down this stack of 80 papers (damn the person who invented the word “rewrite,” damn him/her to hell!) I can only shrug and admit that if I started the semester over again, I doubt that I’d be able to do anything differently.

That said, I have had a chance to think a bit more about where I want to take my research after I’ve completed my orals. My focus over the summer was on modernism and religion–a topic which still interests me, especially as it pertains to the rise of atheism and Marxism in the colonized world, as well as the orientalist appropriation of eastern religious traditions by English authors (namely T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land). I have long felt that religion is often overlooked as one of the contested cultural sites of modernism, and that it deserves a place in the discussion right next to empire, politics (fascism/communism/capitalism), and urbanization.

In fact, even the most irreligious of the modernists still recognized the critical role religion played in shaping the modern subject and state. For example, Woolf’s character Louis in The Waves, whose father is “a banker from Brisbane,” seeks to overcome his status as a colonial and become a fully actualized Englishman by embracing Anglicanism. Ironically, the “true Englishman” characters in the book that Louis so longs to be like have long since rejected the church. This religious willo-the-wisp that Louis chases throughout the novel can be read as the paradoxical desire of the colonized subject to be fully synthesized into a colonialist culture that is constantly being redefined specifically to prevent such synthesis, thus maintaining the colonizer/colonized relationship.

Likewise, in Nostromo Conrad links religion, culture, politics, and capital together into a hydra of battlefields (both literal and figurative), and like the hydra of myth, none of these conflicts can be resolved until all of their intertwining companions are dealt with. While the contest between South American Catholicism and American Protestantism–both linked to their respective economic ideologies–is only one of the factors that lead the reader of Nostromo to feel that the cycle of rebellion and turmoil must continue on indefinitely, there is no denying that religion is a co-equal partner in this pantheon of forces that defy resolution.

But the problem with the above analysis is that it has likely been said somewhere already. To say that religion is important in the history and construction of English culture and politics, regardless of the period, is like saying that wheat is important when making bread. It’s not that there isn’t more to be said on the subject, just that one would have to dig for nuances that may have diminishing returns.

With the challenges facing any discussion of religion in modernism in mind, I decided to turn again to one of my original interests: the spaces and times of rebellion and/or conflict. On the one hand, this focus may be rather well trodden ground as well, especially if discussed in terms of “borderlands,” a compelling but now cliche idea in literary studies. But on the other hand, I think we live in a world where ideas and ideologies become ever increasingly fixed and rigid. Until there is a rupture of some kind that can force a society to not only imagine a different world but actually act on those possibilities, we are content to allow life to continue as usual. It’s true that artists “imagine” a different world all the time (thank you very little Mr. Lennon), but during times of rebellion and upheaval art and literature can serve as a reconstructing force as a nation or community tries to construct a new group-narrative that will resolve the injustices and cultural imbalances which caused the recent rupture. But rarely does one particular national myth rise up uncontested; multiple narratives must contend with each other before one can assume dominance. These points of contention, right before a national/cultural myth becomes fixed, are what I am interested in researching.

I read the experimentalism and themes of modernism, then, as just such a rupture, and I hope that linking the impulses and cultural products of that rupture with the subsequent political and cultural upheaval of the postcolonial world will allow me not only to bring in the questions of religion discussed above, but also help me say something about human subjectivity in periods of conflict and indeterminacy.

Today was my first day of spring break. The fact that Spring hasn’t even started yet doesn’t seem to have daunted the good folks at the University of Maryland. And, to be honest, I could use the R&R… so long as it doesn’t snow while I’m working on my tan in the back yard.

Really, though spring break for the serious academic is a chance to catch up on reading, prepare for the final push at the end of the semester, begin researching final paper topics, and, of course, download back episiodes of the Daily Show.

Well, to make sure my spring break is as productive as possible, I have decided write a list of all the things I’m going to say that I will do over the next week. Such a list will help me to know exactly what I am blowing off at any given moment and what I should plan to blow off next. After spring break is over, I will return to my blog and report on just how many essential tasks I managed to avoid doing.

I give you, The List:

1. Revise my Woolf paper and send it to my narrative theory professor (I really need to do this one)
2. Taxes
3. Grade student quizzes
4. Email each of my students with a midterm update (yes, midterm has past–I need a break)
5.  Pay my parking ticket from when we went to DC with David, Diana’s brother                      
6. Pay Byron’s little league baseball registration (if I don’t do this one I’m in BIG trouble)
7. Email Professor Sangeeta Ray about setting up an independent study over the summer
8. Update my syllabus through the end of the semester
9. Read up on “Kaleidoscopi narratives” for Prof. Richardson’s class
10. Read selected Borges stories, including Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
11. Mock the sorry state of conservative “thought” on my blog (which is so hard to do when John Steward does it so well already)
12. Rant about the unconscionable state of the American healthcare system on my blog, paying special attention to how our system belies every argument in favor of the so called “free market” (anyone who believes that the “invisible hand” guides the US financial markets and not men and women who are slightly less criminal but slightly more culpuable than Bernie Madoff needs to lay off the weed–#11, check!)
13. Build a pinewood derby car with (for) Byron.

That’s enough for now. I may sneek in a few more items in the next few days. That will give me something to do while I’m trying to avoid the things already on the list.

There’s no sedative like grading freshman English 101 papers.

I went in to have a conference with one of my professors a few days ago. While we were discussing my final paper, I noticed that she had a picture of the Salt Lake temple on her bulletin board.  So when we were done I said rather inquisitively, “you have a picture of the Mormon temple on your board.” To which my professor responded, “yeah, I guess I had better take it down now.”

I was taken aback. Why would my professor assume that she needed to remove this picture of the Mormon temple? The answer, of course, came to me quickly: my professor immediately assumed that with my observation came an implicit critique of the now infamous “Proposition 8,” California’s recent constitutional ban on gay marriage, and that like her I was upset with the Mormon involvement in that vote. I hurried to explain myself, “well, you don’t necessarily have to take it down… I ask because I’m a Mormon… I’m from Utah. I was just curious why you might have the picture there.” After an awkward moment where both of us wondered if in our misunderstanding we had seriously offended the other, she told me that her mother was one of the writers on PBS’s production of The Mormons, a production that was generally well received by people of the LDS faith and thought to be both insightful and honest.

So here was a woman who as far as I could tell was not religious, certainly not a Mormon, but who had enough pride in her mother’s work that she had bothered to pin this flier to her board. And if I interpret our conversation correctly, she at one time felt an affinity for the Mormon faith because it is so misunderstood. The Mormons, she might have said six months ago, really aren’t all that different, and they’re clearly making an effort to not be seen as insular or “odd.” Now, however, when reminded of this Mormon symbol in her office,  her first thought was to take it down, despite the fact that for her it was a symbol filial pride and not religion.

This is what Mormons have lost–the cost of their funding of proposition 8. Here was someone who was more than willing to approach Mormon culture with an open mind, and while I doubt she’d ever consider the religion, she felt a sympathy for the Mormon faith, a faith that has been unfairly reduced to HBO specials and punch lines on South Park. She wanted to give Mormons what every religious, ethnic, political, and social group wants: to be considered in all of their complexity–warts and all, yes, but at least with the possibility that open-minded people will see the good in the “all” as well.

Some of my Mormon friends might say, so what? She’s a liberal professor in a liberal field teaching at a liberal university. Why would we expect any reaction other than a kneejerk condemnation of Mormons after proposition 8 and the gay/lesbian reaction to its passage? To which I would respond by pointing out just how much is lost when a liberal professor in a liberal field at a liberal university changes her attitude about the Mormon faith and culture from empathetic to antagonistic. Scholars in the humanities, and literature in particular, are at best suspicious of religion and at worst openly hostile towards it. Despite the sometimes thinly veiled antagonism I have felt because I believe in a fundamentalist Christian faith (“fundamentalist” is an adjective in this case, not a noun), I have never apologized for my beliefs–which for a graduate of the University of Utah is hard to do. That the Mormon faith and culture had an ally in such a liberal environment is not something to be scoffed at. But now that ally is gone.

I don’t know what the answer is to the conflict between homosexuality and the Mormon faith. I’m fine with my religion dictating theological and moral principles, but I get nervous when any organized religion, my own included, extends their influence into civil matters. In this case, the Mormon faith seems to have crossed the line between “we do not” to “thou shalt not,” and I have to wonder what the consequences will be for Mormons who are more than willing to follow the leadership of the church on spiritual matters, but not on civic ones.

Despite her sincere invitation to return and talk more about religion and my paper, I haven’t gone back to see if my professor took down her picture of the Salt Lake temple. I would, but I’m just not sure how to go about apologizing for my beliefs.

Yes, it’s been a while. However, great news today. On Wednesday the University of Maryland sent me a funding offer which covers tuition for the four years of my PhD and a stipend for teaching classes while I’m there. I am reminded of the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original version, not Tim Burton’s). Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) says to Charlie, “Do you know what happened to the boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?” Charlie responds, “No, what?” And Willy Wonda answers, “He lived happily ever after.” Well, I don’t know that I’ll live happily ever after, and after having completed an MA I have no illusions about graduate school being a walk in the park, but I can tell you that today I do feel like the boy who got everything he ever wanted. Allowing, of course, for the fact that “everything I ever wanted” includes my family… who I’ve decided to bring with me to Maryland.