The temperature seems to have returned to something resembling a habitat suitable for human life, which I’m happy about, as I’m planning to be out and around on my bike later. Though first I need to fix a flat — the second in one week! Defying everything I know about having (and keeping) a bike in NYC, I leave my bike locked up downstairs in front of my building, and no trouble has ever come my way. But if I wind up with a third flat I’m going to begin to suspect sabotage. Yesterday, a long but fun day doing manny duty with Greg for the twins (by the end of the day we were all covered in popsicle juice; sharing a popsicle with a one-year old in 90something degree weather is not a neat affair.) I am no longer so tired after our Tuesday babysitting gig that I can’t do anything but get in bed with Pringles and my laptop tuned to Hulu, so I actually got some satisfying work done last night. A flurry of re-visiting some old favorite readings — Rajan’s Biocapital, Chow’s Protestant Ethnic, some pieces in Global Assemblages — plus some time with Aihwa Ong’s recent book on neoliberalism, which I’m finding quite helpful. Something I’m sorting out right now: the limits of ephochal readings of Foucault (such as “disciplinary society”) and some reasons we might want to concentrate instead on descriptions of technologies that (as Ong characterizes neoliberalism) can be deployed within any sort of political regime. This seems consonant with a Deleuzeun understanding of “diagrams” (abstract, mobile), despite some of the responsibility Deleuze bears for encouraging epochal readings (his “society of control.”) Meanwhile, the soc blogosphere is rife with advice these days for the would-be job candidate — Newsocprof, Scatterplot, Rethinking Markets — which I’m really appreciating. “Going on the market” seems sort of terrifying, but completing a set of discrete tasks feels do-able.
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Is there room for this to be a blog where I ask you clarifying questions? Like what you mean when you say, ‘epochal reading’?
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Yes, that blog is perfect, and went immediately into the googlereader. Thanks!
And thanks for the explanation! I’m trying to wade through the order of things right now and i see what you mean–there’s lots of big sweeping stuff about the classical period, the 17th century, etc. I’m reading with just one other lay reader, and feel like I could really use a teacher for all this. I’m having a hard time understanding! Also, so much of the stuff he talks about in terms of taxonomy during the enlightenment is stuff we librarians still do all the time, a project we still believe in. but then i don’t know if I’m taking him too literally/misreading him. What does one do in the face of theories that one can only half-understand? Do you just forge ahead?
I realize I have strayed from the topic.
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“I think in Foucault, nothing is necessarily good or bad — he is charting how things come to be, like classification systems, and the power formations that emerge with knowledge systems.”
Thanks for this!
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