Archive for the 'Footnotes' Category

Discipline, Punishment, Gratification, and Sugar Free Cookies

Published on May 30, 2009 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

This Boing Boing post titled “FBI terrorist interrogator on the uselessness of torture and the efficacy of cookies” reminded me of a line from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish about discipline and gratification that has stuck with me over the years: “In discipline, punishment is only one element of a double system: gratification-punishment.”

The Boing Boing post features someone’s argument about how building rapport with someone is more effective than torture when trying to get information. They use the experience of giving a diabetic prisoner sugar free cookies as a turning point in gathering information that likely couldn’t have been had by any other means.

I think it is not only a good example of discipline via the form of gratification, but also a good argument for the effectiveness of gratification as a form of discipline over punishment. Another way to read this is to figure the embodied experience of pleasure at the core of subjectification.

It reminds me that most people aren’t necessarily even aware of gratification as a form of discipline. I try to be conscious of it, but it’s difficult to resist the rewards that go along with particular modes of being. Though, knowing that gratification is also a form of discipline doesn’t make it any easier to know what to do. Sometimes this knowledge, as often seems to be the case, just leads to paralysis.

Wahhh My Life is Boring!: How Having a Video Camera Makes You Feel Uninteresting

Published on May 17, 2009 in Diary and Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Of course, when I say that my life is boring, I mean that it is boring in a visual sense, not that I don’t find my life interesting. Rather than complain about my life, the goal of recording this video was to capture and express the way that my experience of reality is mediated through this device. Now, when I experience the world, it is evaluated for its visual interestingness — “Is this something I can capture on video and share with the world?” — in addition to be evaluated for being photographed, poeticized, storied, noted, blogged, or narrativized by some other means.

Having this camera fills me with the same sense I’m sure many others experience when they start their first blog, or, now, Twitter account — how am I going to fill this space? It’s a bit like having a blindingly blank page in front of me at all times, except that the criteria for making it go away is different.

All of these technologies for recording and sharing ourselves — they are also part of what makes us into cyborgs. With this video camera, I’m no longer myself, but myself-video-camera, just as I am myself-blog, myself-Twitter, and myself-notebook. In turn, not only are my memories of reality shaped through these devices, but the “me” that others experience is too, especially since I wouldn’t have shared this thought if I hadn’t recorded that video.

Fake Babies, Real Symbols

Published on January 2, 2009 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I just can’t get over the unironic irony of women buying baby dolls (watch the video) the way that men buy lady dolls. It’s incredible to see such strong and stereotypical gender conformity.

One thing I do like, though, is how these moments highlight and make clear the role and importance of the symbolic experience of reality for humans. Even though these women don’t have real babies they are still able to derive real pleasure from the experience, because part of the pleasure of having a baby comes from the idea of having a baby, whether or not that baby is real.

Via Boing Boing via Jezebel.

The Danger of Meat Sounds

Published on December 23, 2008 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , .

This article jokes about how voice chat is ruining cybersex on PlayStation Home. Reminds me of an outcry a while back by transgendered folk in Second Life. Second Life was adding voice chat to the game, and transgendered folk were against it, because the inclusion of voice chat would destroy their ability to pass for the opposite sex. This points to the fickle and porous boundary between cyberspace and meatspace, which Boellstorff treats in his book, Coming of Age in Second Life.

“Pownce is shutting down”

Published on December 2, 2008 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Pownce came into existence as another competitor to Twitter. It’s selling point was that you could share files with friends on the site. However, it’s going away now: “Six Apart Acquires Pownce, Shuts Down Service.”

Usually a story like this would appear as a short blip on my radar. This time is a little different though, because, after searching and searching, I decided that Pownce was the place to leave messages for a close friend when she happened to be offline.

So, in a way, I feel like I looked for different places to live, then carefully decided on a place to call home, and now that home is going away.

Goodbye home. Time to look for another place to live.

The Anthropology (and Sociology) of Body Modification

Published on December 1, 2008 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , .

In the never-ending search for future projects, I recently considered extreme body modification as a possible project. It fits with the interest I have in the body — an interest that is shared by many in the discipline — and I think it would provide an interesting alternative to existing engagements with the body.

However, it looks like a couple of people have already beaten me to the punch.

http://news.bmezine.com/2008/09/06/anthropology-thesis/

Hi, my name is Alisha Gauvreau and I am a fourth-year Anthropology student at Laurentian University. … For my fourth-year university thesis, I am studying suspension as practiced by members of the body modification community in Canada.

~

I’m a graduate student with the UCCS sociology department and I’m working on my masters thesis on non-mainstream body modification.

It is good at least to see from the comments that the community was very receptive to the research these two were conducting.

“I could never live in Canada — their Internet is crap.”

Published on November 28, 2008 in Footnotes. Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Cory Doctorow posted about how he can’t live in Canada because the Internet there is crap, and it made me wonder how many migrants consider this when deciding where to live.

Interesting that the quality of an Internet connection can have an effect like this. Of course, it is quite a different example, but part of the reason I don’t like going back to my parents’ house is that they don’t have a broadband connection, or even dial-up for that matter.