You are Merino Wool.
You are very easygoing and sweet. People like to keep you close because you are so softhearted. You love to be comfortable and warm from your head to your toes.


What kind of yarn are you?
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All true. :-) Via And She Knits Too!

I recently promised a response to Kenneth Burke's "Semantic and Poetic Meaning," from The Philosophy of Literary Form, and because I created an appetite for the response in your mind, dear reader, I shall now complete the form and fulfill your desire. (Ugh, that was cheesy, but I couldn't resist!) I responded to this prompt:

Toward the end of “Semantic and Poetic Meaning,” Burke comments on the relationship of Shakespeare to his villain Iago in Othello. Explain what he says. How does this example relate to the thesis or ideas presented in the essay? Is this an example of a Burkean irrelevant tangent?

Semantic meaning cannot account for poetry, motivated speech, sociopolitical context, the speaker-audience relationship, irony, attitude, implication, or moral significance. For example, the utterance “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” has a very specific meaning for us. To understand that question fully, we must understand the chain of events leading to the September 11 attacks, the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Bush administration's rhetorical “war on terror,” in which they declared the existence of an "Axis of Evil" and claimed they knew for certain that several countries were in possession of weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq. We would have to know that Hans Blix conducted an investigation to try to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that he has not succeeded in finding them so far. We would have to know that “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” is a motivated utterance—left-leaning citizens and “doves” repeatedly ask that rhetorical question in an accusatory manner, already knowing the answer.

This is an essay I wrote last semester for my Women's Studies class. For some reason, I've been hemming and hawing about posting it here, but finally decided what the heck, maybe somebody will get something out of it. At any rate, those who took the class with me might like reading it.

Identity politics has become a pervasive theme both in everyday life and in scholarly work. As a feminist scholar, I know I need to have a well-articulated “take” on identity politics, but I do not yet. The essay that follows is a critical reflection on the academic conversation surrounding identity politics. In it, I review briefly the genealogy of and problems associated with identity politics, including experience and its interpretation, normativity within groups, transience, and self-subversion. I then discuss the place of identity politics in my own work on the conflict between proponents of the women-born-women only policy at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and advocates of trans inclusion, and conclude with a preliminary evaluation of the need for identity politics. Although politicized identity is fraught with legitimate problems, I argue that for psychological, social, and emotional reasons, most people have a need for it, a need that, it could be argued, is powerful and as legitimate as identity politics’ critiques.

In my Modern Rhetorical Theory class, we just read a few works by Bakhtin, including "Discourse in the Novel," "The Problem of Speech Genres," and "Discourse in Dostsoevsky." I was pleased to see that Clay Spinuzzi recently blogged about Bakhtin. I'd blog about Bakhtin too, but we are now reading Burke, heh, and I'll be posting a response to "Semantic and Poetic Meaning" from The Philosophy of Literary Form in the next couple of days.

Andrew Ó Baoill links to a sad story about what happens when authorship and copyright get out of hand:

[T]he Joyce estate has informed the Irish government that it intends to sue for copyright infringement if there are any public readings of Joyce's works during the festival commemorating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday this June.



James Joyce died in 1941 and the copyright in his work expired in 1991. Then the EU extended terms to life+70 years, and the work went back into copyright in July 1995. The estate has been very active in enforcing their copyright, suing regularly. While some of their actions have been aimed at issues such as protecting the memory of Joyce's daughter Lucia from scrutiny, other suits have been against non-commercial uses of the works by fans. As such, they seem solely concerned with the financial health of the estate [admittedly one of their roles] having no concern for nurturing the greater cultural legacy of Joyce.

Unbelievable. So wrong!

AKMA posted some observations about teachers and teaching that have been making me look at myself. He says that teachers will very often--almost always, in fact--say that they are excellent teachers. Few will "cop to being a mediocre teacher." I believe I am slightly better than mediocre, but only slightly, and it took an enormous amount of work just to get to mediocre. My first semester teaching was an unmitigated disaster; I was lucky to get through it in one piece. The evaluations, which ranged from excellent, very good, good, fair, and poor, averaged out to be "fair," and I can't believe I even got that.

Okay, let's hear it. What do you think of the redesign? I've been meaning to do it for a while. My friend Adam made me three images, and when I was first trying to decide which one to use as the banner, most people I asked picked this one I have now. I decided to go with the other one with the red and black polka dots and the retro font, with the intention to do a redesign later. Let me know how it strikes you. I can always go back to the previous design, but I will keep this one for a couple of months regardless of what folks think. :-P

By the way...please tell me if the favicon you see is red or blue. I changed it to blue and FTP'ed it, and on my roommate's browser, it is blue (she uses Safari). On mine (Mozilla), it's still red, gah.

Update: Favicon is finally blue. I had to go in and rename the file, but at last I can rest.

Oh! I am laughing so hard my sides are hurting, I'm crying, snorting, and afraid I'm going to wake up my roommate. Some guy has a blog with lists of five things, and it is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while--right up there with Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. My favorite lists are, in no particular order:

• Five odd things my hateful stepfather consumed in large quantities
• Five words I'd like to hear the Pope use in everyday conversation
• Five things I've considered arbitrarily becoming very opinionated about
• Five fake names for defecating
• Five “Brady Bunch” Characters (and what sometimes make me fear I'm a little like each of them)
• Five great reasons to buy a Hummer™

Via Household Opera.