A traitor to the cause?

I was never a big fan; and the more I see Louis Bourgois' work, the more I read about it, the more I find out about the cult of her personality, and the more I try, really try, to like it, the less I do. Why is it that I just can't get into messy feminist or proto-feminist work? It's so boring in so many dimensions... I do like her prints though, not all, but some; the ones less bogged down by personal eccentricity and mythology.

Art for Whom?

Used to be that I could stop a conversation cold when people asked me what I did and I told them I was a printmaker. I haven’t made prints in a while. And now, when people ask me what I am up to, and I answer honestly with “I am deconstructing an Art Forum,” communication really takes a nose dive. Institutional critique or not, who are we really talking to...

So, Is It a Class Thing?

I was born and raised in Brazil; and there we talked a lot about class if not at all about race. In America it is the opposite; we bloviate a lot about race and ethnicity but we rarely talk about social class.

As can be gleaned from some of my previous blogs, the little burg I live in is once again faced with “developmental issues”. A land owner wants to sell one of his parcels of land to be developed into a big box store, specifically a Lowe’s. This parcel of land gives onto a very small and winding double yellow lined road called Isaqueena Trail, which up to now has mainly been developed for residential use. How to use said parcel and its neighbors has been an issue of contention in town for a while and details of the current debate can be read at http://www.nobigboxonissaqueena.org/ .

I’d love to call Clemson a college town, but it isn’t, it is merely an intersection of highways and double yellow lined roads at whose center lies a mid-sized, present day, American style university, or what David Hickey has recently described as a “big box of information”. Clemson is a place, like so many others, in the middle of nowhere, where young Americans come to finish growing up for four years; a place where they can do a lot of drinking, follow some mediocre sports teams, have sex, and show up for class every now and then. Like so many towns in this vast oil dependent country, it has sprawled without rhyme, plan or reason other than to accommodate a growing number of transient residents. Other than physical requirements such as housing and an array of familiar franchised restaurants to make the kids feel at home, big boxes of information also require a very specialized kind of labor in order to be able to hold on to the “university” label, the kind of labor that comes equipped with PhDs.

So let’s go back to the question of what kind of development should take place on Isaqueena Trail in Clemson-burg. Obviously, it is only a contentious issue because there are two social groups with very different sets of vested interests when it comes to how development should unfold in town. There is a group of people that does not want your average, natural-seeming [1] American style development to take place here; and then there is another group that does. This second group is comprised of land owners, average Americans who would not mind the convenience of big box store shopping at their doorstep, and, seemingly, the entire city council, since for them this kind of development is a way of getting tax dollars without the always unpopular raising of taxes on existing citizens and businesses.

The issue of development on Isaqueena has come up before when another developer wanted to sell a nearby site to Wal-mart. At that time, I was firmly against it and went to every council and planning board meeting to protest the establishment of a Wal-mart in town. The outcome of the confrontation between pro-Wal-mart and contra-Wal-mart factions resulted in what seemed to be a good and logical comprehensive plan for future development; one in which the town would develop in a sustainable way without giving in to rampant sprawl. Apparently though, Clemson’s comprehensive plan is just a meaningless piece of paper since it will be overthrown in order to allow for Lowe’s to come in.... But I digress. This time around, my instincts still remain firmly against such development; but except for sending letters to a mostly unresponsive council, I have not been as involved in trying to keep “natural-seeming” development at bay. By staying uninvolved, I have watched the events unfold as an informed outsider and have tried to look at the whole thing objectively, only to conclude that that’s not possible, and that this fight is a “class ‘theng’”.

Those of us against “development as usual” in the town of Clemson seem to be comprised of that overly educated labor class of which I spoke earlier; the class of people instrumental to the existence of “the big box of information” in the center of town and raison-d'etre of Clemson. We make up a social group with a certain set of preferences. We prefer to have sustainable, slow development in the hopes that eventually the town will attract small individually owned businesses designed for people with high human capital such as us [2]. Ours is a set of preferences for which we are willing to pay in the form of longer commutes to big box stores (let’s face it, we all use the damn things; it’s America, man), and, given our actions, in the form of higher future property and sales taxes. The motivations of the opposing group are also easy to discern: the developer wants to sell to Lowe’s in order to make quick huge profits, and the council wants easy present versus hard to come by future tax returns. And beyond the thorny issue of the property rights of the land owner, what remains somewhat of a problem for me as a socially conscious human being overly educated in post-structural theory is the question of how to accommodate the preferences of the group of people councilwoman Thompson hails from. The people who see nothing wrong with the way America looks and feels like. The people who prefer to eat at Olive Garden rather than eat at Villa Novella; what of their preferences?

Apart from all the very real urban and sustainability implications of our current modes of production and development, this Lowe’s thing in Clemson is also, most definitely, a very real class “thing”; and as class thing, it comes with all kinds of thorny power implications... [3]

[1] Notice I said “natural-seeming”. I am not saying that America’s developmental patterns are natural in an absolute way, if such an animal even exists; I am saying that sprawl has been, except for very specific instances, the very way this nation has developed physically and economically in the past, so it is only natural that municipalities feel the need to keep using this old model.
[2] Although, truthfully, I don’t see it happening since there isn’t enough of us here; hence the beauty of faith...
[3] Merci M Foucault...

Maybe He Is Different After All

Obama to meet with McCain to discuss how to better run the government.

This I Believe

I believe that in time of great crisis, great politicians arise. One such politician has arisen; now all that remains is to see if he steps up to the plate of being a great President. Godspeed Barack Obama.

little things that signify some unknown

I shop at the Ingles Supermarket, every once in a while, on my way back from the county pool, when I think of something I need that they might have. Despite my abhorrence of them when they first came out and of what they signify in this culture (but that's a whole other rant), I confess that I have become addicted to using their “do it yourself” check-out machines.

Due to some faulty wiring in my brain, lately I have been pressing the “Espanol” button instead of the “English” button when I first say hello to the darn thing, and have found out that once I do that, I am stuck having the machine dish out orders in “Espanol” throughout the rest of my engagement with it. Given that I speak Portuguese, it isn’t the end of the world and I go through the “processo” in “Espaneesh”. I did that yesterday, paid my bill; and as I was walking out, I thought to myself, “Hmmm 'interesante', the voice in the machine that gives out orders in English is a female voice; however the one speaking Spanish is a male voice....”

Le Culot de Bill Kristol

1 culot Noun, masculine (a) (Infml) nerve, cheek; avoir du ~ to have a nerve, have some cheek, be cheeky(b) body; residue
[edit] Etymology
From cul 'bottom', itself from Latin culus 'arse'

So Bill, quel culot! Who exactly are you calling “the media elite”, Harvard boy? And who do you imagine is this “vulgus” you eulogize so? In your column Here the People Rule, you write with respect to Obama’s favored poll numbers over McCain’s: “You might think this data point poses a challenge to my encomium to the good sense of the American People.” Pardon me Bill, let’s be vulgar; who the fuck uses the word “encomium” while trying to prove his understanding of the common people?

Do you really think you are proving your connection and knowledge of what the “vulgus” wants by writing a column, in the way that you write it, in the NY Times? When you write in praise of the common folk while giving us all a little lesson in word derivations from the Latin, not only are you only speaking to the media elite such as yourself, you are also seriously condescending to The People you claim to celebrate. Bill, you wouldn’t know the “vulgus” if it hit you in the face; but I don’t think you care. The “vulgus”, to you, is just an abstraction in your game of “bait the liberal elite”; and in the end, that’s really what you care about.

You are a member of the conservative elite; please accept it without trying to tell the elite of a different color, and I’m talking red and blue here, that your brand of conservatism is “of the people”. Don’t keep beating that tired old drum, or in your case, timpani about the liberal elite not understanding the “vulgus”. An average of 50% of the American people keeps voting for liberals, so it seems that the liberal elite knows something about at least half of the American “vulgus”. And while you’re at it, do stop talking about “Joe the Plumber” as if he were the epitome of the American entrepreneurial spirit; that too is an insult. But I guess the fact that he is not a licensed plumber, and has no intention of actually starting a business is beside the point, for he too is just an abstraction in the game that conservatives play in trying to make the common people think that a small increase in taxes will stop all investment in this country[1]. Hell, as it is, the Republicans running the government let that happen without raising one single tax! And above all Bill, stop zealously pushing Sarah Palin as an icon of The People who could easily lead us as our president. Here my friend, you are not smitten with the “vulgus”, it’s the “vulva” you've fallen for. Don’t worry Bill, you are not the first Jew to fall for a Shiksa, and you won’t be the last man to go down for a vulva. (Now, how’s that for vulgar?)

[1] Way I see it, “Joe the Plumber” is such a perfect image for you people, I am beginning to think he was planted to ask that question about taxation to Mr. Obama. Of course Obama should have asked him what kind of plumbing business he had that was netting $250,000. I’ve actually met owners of small plumbing businesses, I’ve yet to encounter one that nets that much... but I digress...