"Othering" Assignment and a little Lacan

Here are the details of the "Othering" Assignment.


1. Find someone you consider to embody "the Other," that is, the Other to YOU. Definition of "Other" in the philosophical sense from Wikipedia


2. Develop a set of interview questions that seek to get this person to define their identity, their perception of WHO THEY ARE AS A HUMAN BEING.


3. Interview the person using these questions. Take notes on what they say, and, very importantly, how they appear/act/behave when they are speaking.


4. Prepare a short (one page) reflection on the experience. Tell us what this assignment made you understand about this "Other" what it made you understand about yourself, maybe even what this made you understand about the world in general.


5. This is due next Friday (March 4th) when we will present our findings in class.

Here's a little bit on Lacan's concept of "The Mirror Stage" of Ego development (not necessary for the assignment, but very interesting nonetheless)

A Visual Representation of the Mirror-Stage

The young child views him/herself within the mirror and finally sees him/herself as viewed from the outside, correlating the internal self- what s/he feels as s/he manipulates the limbs only partially visible from his/her viewpoint- with a representation of her outer self as set against the external world. However, the mere fact that the subject's sense of self is dictated by an external source, one that s/he has no control over, forces subjectivity into his/her world, and becomes insecure in the very systems of meaning and identity that allowed him/her to attain a sense of unity in the first place.

Rally for your education!!!!

Schedule for the Week of 2/21/11 to 2/25/11

Tuesday: Answer the questions from Blade Runner in class, Blog assignment, Videos from the blog, discussion


Wednesday: Clips from Zizek's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, discussion


Thursday: Simple grammar pretest (I want to see what skills we may need to look at so that your English III teacher doesn't hate you, Orientalism reading


Friday: Begin working on a presentation on "The Other." In this assignment you'll be asked to choose something/ somebody whom you consider "other" You will create a list of questions that ask them about their identity, conduct interviews (filmed) and present what you have learned to the class. Also we will pass out Conrad's Heart of Darkness and I'll give you your first reading assignment.

Capitalism Repeating Itself

And another explanation of cultural hegemony (remember when I asked if radical concepts could remain radical, or simply be co-opted by dominant culture? Well this strange lady explains it pretty well.

The Reality of the Virtual Part 1

Each week I am going to post a segment of Zizek's lecture on "The Reality of the Virtual." Remember that the more insidious "reality" is that which is embedded in the "virtual."

Speed Reading

I know that most of you don't have the time to get all the reading you want to do done. So, I thought I would share a little article on speed reading and maybe it will help. Enjoy!

When Theodore Roosevelt did things, he did them with gusto. That included reading. Roosevelt was a voracious reader. The man devoured books like a damn hungry lion feasting on a fresh kill.  While in the White House, he would read a book every day before breakfast. If he didn’t have any official business in the evening, he would read two or three more books plus any magazines and newspapers that caught his fancy. By his own estimates, TR read tens of thousands of books during his lifetime, including hundreds in foreign languages.

Roosevelt accomplished this feat because he knew how to speed read. Associates said he would would flip through two or three pages in a minute. Despite reading so quickly, Roosevelt could relate back  in minute detail all of a book’s important points and even recite quotes from the text.

Being able to plow through so many books so quickly benefited TR’s leadership and influence. He easily connected with others as he could hold a conversation with anyone on any subject imaginable. Scientists were  blown away with Roosevelt’s knowledge of complex theories, socialites were smitten with his witty insights about the latest piece by Oscar Wilde, and cowboys out West respected the “Eastern Dude’s” understanding of desert wildlife. TR’s life as a bionic book worm also provided plenty of grist for the 2,000 published works he turned out himself.

In this post we provide some suggestions and tips so you can start speeding reading just like Theodore Roosevelt. Are you ready to start devouring books with your brain? Let’s get started!

How to Speed Read

Stop subvocalizing by counting.When we learned to read, we usually read aloud and pronounced every single word that we saw in a line. This slows reading down considerably because you can only read as fast as you can talk. While you may long ago have graduated from Hooked on Phonics and transitioned to reading silently, you probably still subvocalize. Subvocalization is when you pronounce words with the voice in your head or larynx. You might even open your mouth silently as you read, sort of like a guppy (I do this sometimes and my wife makes fun of me for it).

Quitting the subvocalization habit can be hard. First try simply reading faster than your mouth can move or the voice in your head can speak. If that doesn’t work, try this technique: Repeatedly say “A-E-I-O-U” or count “1, 2, 3, 4″ as you read the text. This will help train you to stop reading with your larynx and guppy lips and start reading with your eyes. This little trick can increase your speed in a matter of minutes.

Stop backtracking by using your finger. Backtracking slows many readers down. After reading a word, a person will read two or three more words, but then dart their eyes back to the first word. You probably do this without even realizing it. Watch someone read. You’ll see their eyes darting back and forth. Chances are they’re re-reading the same line over again.

To help you stop backtracking, use your index finger as a pace car. Underline the text with your finger at a pace faster than you normally read. Only look at the text in front of your finger; once you pass it with your finger, you can’t go back.

Use your peripheral vision. Your brain can comprehend several words at a time. You don’t have to read every single word by itself. The key with speed reading is to start reading multiple words at a time instead of just one at a time. To read chunks of text at a time, you need to start developing your peripheral  vision. Here’s how:

Take a book and draw two parallel lines about three inches apart from each other down the middle of the text. Concentrate on the area between the lines and try not to move your eyes outside of them. See if you can catch the words beyond the lines in your peripheral vision. Being able to indirectly read words in this way will greatly increase your reading speed.

Another thing you can do to get in the habit of reading text in big chunks is to practice speed reading with newspapers. Newspaper columns typically measure 1.83 inches. You can only fit five to six words in that small space, thus providing you the perfect platform to master reading text by the chunk. Instead of reading word by word, try reading line by line. It takes some practice, but you’ll find yourself breezing through the local story about the cat that got stuck on the roof in a matter of seconds.

Train your eyes with free web apps. Several free web applications exist that help users stop backtracking and train their eyes and mind to read more than one word a time. Spreeder is my favorite. Simply copy and paste the text you want to speed read into Spreeder. Spreeder will then flash chunks of your text on the screen until it goes through the entire text. You can decide how many words Spreeder will show at a time and how fast you want the words to appear. I actually used Spreeder during law school to help me quickly read through cases. Not only was I able to get through assigned reading faster, I trained myself to stop backtracking and subvocalizing as well.

Try the z method. The idea that reading must be done linearly is a myth. Your mind is pretty dang amazing, and it can actually process and understand stuff even if you read it backwards. Take advantage of this by employing the z  method. Basically the way this works is you start off on the first line and read it normally- left to right. Of course you’re not subvocalizing, and you’re not making any unneeded stops. When you get to the end of the first line, sweep your eyes from right to left diagonally across the second line until you get to the beginning of line three. Repeat this z pattern down the page.

You’d think you’d miss information by simply scanning across every other line backwards and diagonally. But try it for yourself. With practice, your brain will be able to pick up information backwards and in the periphery. Pretty dang amazing.

Know when to skim and scan. In addition to reading quickly, Roosevelt looked for places where he could skim and scan. In a letter to his son Kermit about the best way to read Dickens, Roosevelt said: “The wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest.” We can follow that advice for most things we read.

Not every word is important when conveying an idea. For example, articles like “a,” “an,” and “the” can be eliminated from most text, and you can still understand what is written. With practice you can train yourself to look over these unnecessary words and focus on the meaty stuff.

Another thing you can do to help focus on keywords is to skim through the book’s table of contents and section headings so you have a general idea of what the section is about. This will prime your brain to be on the look out for words related to the topic when you actually start reading.

Of course, the pleasure of some books is the masterful whole, the entirety of language and the author’s carefully selected words and purposefully constructed sentences. The joy of such literature comes in soaking up the text precisely as intended. In such cases, it’s best to slow down and take it in.

I hope everyone is enjoying their four day weekend. I know I am, anyway here is the stuff for next week.

As you know, I won't be coming back next year. It breaks my heart because I love this place. I love my students and I love having the opportunity to teach what I love. But, life goes on and I am sure that I'll find something else.


The reason that I bring this up is that it raises the issue of "public secrets." As students you know a lot more about what is going on at the school than the faculty and administration wants you to know, however there is an effect that occurs when information becomes official.


So the post for the week is to read the following article (sorry Jessie, it's full of words), and give me your responses.

Slavoj Zizek: Wikileaks, or, When it is our duty to disturb appearances

14/01/2011 17:30

How are we to judge the struggle between Wikileaks and the US Empire - is the Wikileaks publishing of secret US state documents an act in support of the freedom of information, of the people's right to know, or is it a terrorist act posing a threat to stable international relations? What if this is not in fact the true struggle, what if the crucial ideological and political battle is going on within Wilileaks itself: between the radical act of publishing secret state documents and the way this act was reinscribed into the hegemonic ideologico-political field by, among others, Wikileaks itself?

The ultimate triumph of the ruling ideology is that it can afford what appears as its ruthless selfcritique. There is no lack of anti-capitalism today, we are even witnessing an overload of the critique of the horrors of capitalism: books, newspaper in-depth-investigations and TV reports abound on companies ruthlessly polluting our environment, on corrupted bankers who continue to get fat bonuses while their banks have to be saved by public money, of sweat shops where children work overtime, etc.

There is, however, a catch to all this overflow of critique: what is as a rule not questioned in this critique, ruthless as it may appear, is the democratic-liberal frame of fighting against these excesses. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratize capitalism, to extend the democratic control onto the economy, through the pressure of the public media, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, honest police investigations, etc. - but to never question the democratic institutional frame of the (bourgeois) state of law. This remains the sacred cow that even the most radical forms of this 'ethical anti-capitalism' (the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement) dare not touch. The question is thus: can Wikileaks be reduced to this?

The answer is a clear no: there was, from the very outset, something in the Wikileaks activity that went well beyond the liberal topic of the free flow of information. We should not look for this excess at the level of content. The only truly surprising thing about the Wikileaks revelations is that there is no surprise in them: didn't we learn exactly what we expected to learn? The only thing disturbed was appearances: we can no longer pretend we don't know what everyone knows we know. This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it publicly changes everything. If we are looking for predecessors of Wikileaks, we should recall that one of the first measures of the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to render public the entire corpus of the tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements, etc. Here also, the target was not only content, but the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.

What Wikileaks threatens is the formal mode of functioning of power: the innermost logic of diplomatic activity was in a way de-legitimized. The true target were not just dirty details and individuals responsible for them (to be eventually replaced by others, more honest), or, more succinctly, not those in power, but power itself, its structure. We should not forget that power comprises not only its institutions and rules, but also legitimate ('normal') ways of challenging it (independent press, NGOs, etc.) - and, as Saroj Giriput it succinctly, Wikileaks activists 'challenged power by challenging the normal channels of challenging power and revealing the truth.' (1)

Wikileaks exposures do not address us, citizens, merely as dissatisfied individuals hungry for dirty secrets of what happens behind the closed doors in the corridors of power; their aim was not just to embarrass those in power. Wikileaks exposures bring with themselves a call to mobilize ourselves in a long struggle to bring about a different functioning of power which reaches beyond the limits of representative democracy. Walter Lippmann, the icon of American journalism in the 20^th  century, played a key role in the self-understanding of the US democracy. He coined the term Manufacturing Consent, later rendered famous by Chomsky - but Lippmann intended it in a positive way. He saw the public as Plato did, as either great beast or a bewildered herd - floundering in the 'chaos of local opinions.' So the herd of citizens must be governed by 'a specialized class' whose interests reach beyond the locality.

There is no mystery in what Lippmann was saying, it is an obvious fact; the mystery is that, knowing it, we play the game. We act as if we are free and freely deciding, silently not only accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction (inscribed into the very form of our free speech) tell us what to do and think.

In this sense, in a democracy, every ordinary citizen effectively is a king - but a king in a constitutional democracy, a king who only formally decides, whose function is to sign measures proposed by executive administration. This is why the problem of democratic rituals is homologous to the big problem of constitutional democracy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively decides, when we all know this is not true?

What we call 'crisis of democracy' does therefore not occur when people stop believing in their own power, but, on the contrary, when they stop trusting the elites, those who are supposed to know for them and provide the guidelines, when they experience the anxiety signaling that 'the (true) throne is empty,' that the decision is now really theirs. There is thus in 'free elections' always a minimal aspect of politeness: those in power politely pretend that they do not really hold power, and ask us to freely decide if we want to give them power - in a way which mirrors the logic of a gesture meant to be refused.

Alain Badiou proposed a distinction between two types (or, rather, levels) of corruption in democracy: the de facto empirical corruption, and the corruption that pertains to the very form of democracy with its reduction of politics to the negotiation of private interests. This gap becomes visible in the (rare, true) cases of an honest 'democratic' politician who, while fighting empirical corruption, nonetheless sustains the formal space of corruption. (There is, of course, also the opposite case of the empirically corrupted politician who acts on behalf of the dictatorship of Virtue.) In Benjaminian terms of the distinction between constituted and constituent violence, one could say that we are dealing with the distinction between the 'constituted' corruption (empirical cases of breaking the laws) and the 'constituent' corruption of the very democratic form of government.

Wikileaks revelations do not target only 'constituted' corruption, what they threaten is the 'constituent' corruption inscribed into the very form of multi-party liberal democracy which 'represents' a precise vision of social life in which politics is organized in parties which compete through elections to exert control over the state legislative and executive apparatus, etc. One should always be aware that this 'transcendental frame' is never neutral - it privileges certain values and practices.

This non-neutrality becomes palpable in the moments of crisis or indifference, when we experience the inability of the democratic system to register what people effectively want or think - this inability is signaled by anomalous phenomena like the UK elections of 2005: in spite of the growing unpopularity of Tony Blair (he was regularly voted the most unpopular person in the UK), there was no way for this discontent with Blair to find a politically effective expression. Something was obviously very wrong here - it was not that people 'did not know what they wanted,' but, rather, that cynical resignation prevented them to act upon it, so that the result was the weird gap between what people thought and how they acted (voted). It was already Plato who, in his critique of democracy, was fully aware of this second corruption; and this critique is also clearly discernible in the Jacobin privileging of Virtue: in democracy, in the sense of the representation of and the negotiation between the plurality of private interests, there is no place for Virtue.

There is no reason to despise democratic elections; the point is only to insist that there is not per se an indication of Truth - as a rule, they tend to reflect the predominant doxa determined by the hegemonic ideology. Let us take an example which surely is not problematic: France in 1940. Even Jacques Duclos, the second man of the French Communist Party, admitted in a private conversation that if, at that point in time, free elections were to be held in France, Marshal Petain would have won with 90% of the votes. When de Gaulle, in his historic act, refused to acknowledge the capitulation to Germans and continued to resist, he claimed that it is only he, not the Vichy regime, who speaks on behalf of the true France (on behalf of true France as such, not only on behalf of the 'majority of the French'!), what he was saying was deeply true even if it was 'democratically' not only without legitimization, but clearly opposed to the opinion of the majority of the French people. There can be democratic elections which enact an event of Truth - the election in which, against the sceptic-cynical inertia - the majority momentarily 'awakens' and votes against the hegemonic ideological opinion; however, the very exceptional status of such a surprising electoral result proves that elections as such are not a medium of Truth.

There is, however, a counterargument whose strength we should not misunderstimate (to quote President Bush). The premise that telling the entire secret truth of what went on behind the closed door, all the dirty personal details, etc., will liberate us is wrong. Truth liberates, yes, but not THIS truth. Of course one cannot trust the facade of official public documents - but neither is the truth the dirty personal details or remarks behind the official facade. Appearance, public face, is never a simple hypocrisy whose truth is the secret dirty details beneath. Edgar Doctorow once remarked that appearances are all we have, so we should treat them with great care - it happens quite often that, as a consequence of destroying an appearance, one ruins the thing itself behind the appearance.

This, however, is only one - misleading - side of the story. There are moments - moments of crisis of the hegemonic discourse - when one should take the risk and provoke the disintegration of appearances. Such a moment was superbly described by the young Marx back in 1843, when, in his 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law ,' he diagnosed the decay of the German ancien regime in 1830s and 40s as a farce-repetition of the tragic fall of the French ancient regime : this regime was tragic 'as long as it believed and had to believe in its own justification.' Now, however, the regime 'only imagines that it believes in itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing. If it believed in its own essence , would it ... seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism? The modern ancient regime is rather only the comedian of a world order whose true heroes are dead.' (2) In such a situation, to put shame on those in power becomes a weapon - or, as Marx goes on: 'The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by publicizing it.'

And this, exactly, is our situation today: we are facing the shameless cynicism of the existing global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights , etc., and through moves like Wikileaks disclosures, the shame (our shame for tolerating such power over us) is made more shameful by publicizing it . When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalists and the much stronger role of Iran, this is not a tragic mistake of a sincere agent but a case of cynical trickster getting caught in his own game.

Exclusively for Yaroslavl  initiative

OMG I feel so bad!

Tomorrow is supposed to be the big day right?we're all showing our PSAs, someone earns the right to a cake (to delivered on another day. I for one am excited. But then something magical happened...

I felt horribly sick. 

And I still do.

So, here's the plan for the week.

Monday: If you want to go, to present your PSA, that's great. I will take it into consideration that you have done the assignment on time. If you want another day, you can take it and we'll go on Tuesday. When we're done we'll do something productive, quietly.

Tuesday: The remainder of you will present your PSAs and someone will win a cake! We'll also look at TV shows and Ideology  

Wednesday: More on Ideology and a little about Self and the Other, Beginning of Blade Runner (Permission slips due)

Thursday: Blade Runner, cap off Free Will and Determinism

One more thing...PSA assignment and CONTEST!

Free Will and Determinism Public Service Announcement Parody Assignment


Here's the story. I was watching TV during Friday's "holiday" and I came across a few pretty interesting and a few pretty (unintentionally) hilarious public service announcements. It was then that I had an epiphany. Sophomores, amongst other things, are funny, and I want you to harness that innate aptitude for humor to create your own PSAs. The theme...Free Will and/ or Determinism.


I want you to work in groups of three or four. You'll pick a position related to Free Will/ Libertarianism or Determinism and create a PSA that informs, warns, educates, or scares the population into some belief about a particular philosophical position. Imagine it now the "dangers" of "free will!"


You will have a major grade for the Presentation portion, and I'll need a script of your work (quiz grade). Also, we'll have time in class to work on this and I'll give a daily grade for observed work in class. 


You will be graded on the strength of your understanding of the philosophical position AND how funny you are.

Blog Post and Schedule for the Week of 2/7/11 to 2/11/11

Blog Post for the Week: Respond to the following assertion with your own ideas on the issue. Sartre asserts that we are all ultimately responsible for everything in our lives,be it the actual choices we make or our perspective on situations seemingly out of our control. Do you agree with this contention? Keep this in mind, today I read in a health magazine that everyday we make 200 food-related choices alone, so there is probably millions of choices we make of which we are totally unaware. Due Friday at Midnight


Monday: We'll continue through the Sartre/ Existentialism Lecture. After that, we'll be reading a selection from Genesis on the binding of Isaac and do some discussion questions. We'll do the questions in small groups then come back together as a class and discuss.


Tuesday: Film on Sartre, Discussion of Heidegger and "Being"


Wednesday: Marx and Marxism lecture and reading selection


Thursday: More Marx, looking at how Marxism has evolved through the past century (Stalinism, Maoism, Titoism, Contemporary Post-Marxism)


Friday: How Marxism and Psychoanalysis have intersected and evolved and collided in the past twenty years or so.