(Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography

Bi-Partisanship in Action: Lou Dobbs & the Catholic Bishops Make Health Care Policy

2009-11-08T14:10:00.007-05:00

There are matters on which we live in what is in effect a one party state. The result is that there are issues on which one 'bipartisan' group of citizens and politicians are able to impose draconian moral views on the remainder of the population. Two of those issues (they are not the only ones) are reprodutive freedom and immigration.

The Democrats (our allegedly liberal or progressive party) barely managed to pass health care reform in the Congress even having effectively eliminated a perfectly legal procedure - abortion - from the bill in order to appease the reactionaries in their own party. This is pathetic. Where was the democratic leadership on this one? When the religious zealots came in and whined that they'd lose in the next election if their home-town clergy didn't support them (which they may or may not do, in any case) the leadership ought to have been clear: 'If you think you cannot win without the support of Bishop X, imagine how difficult it will be to win without our help. ... Oh, and, of course this is a matter of your conscience' and of 'principle' and not just of pandering to the Church, right?'

And, predictably, undocumented workers are excluded from the 'affordable health care for America' reforms too. The whole point of a public option - which is an insurance policy not publicly provided health care -is to provide a way for workers to use their own money to purchase affordable health care. Except, of course for those pesky illegals- who, on average are smack in the middle of the income and occupational groups who most need access to the public option. They will still be using thee emergency room for medical care.

Good policy - protect 'unborn babies' but leave real live human beings hanging. Change you can believe in? Here is the President himself:

"What we can do right now is choose a better future and pass a bill that brings us to the very cusp of building what so many generations of Americans have sought to build -- a better health care system for this country."

For those that need a translator, our hoper-in-chief acknowledges that we almost got meaningful health care reform. We are on 'the very cusp' of having done something useful and efficient and fair. But not quite.

Distributing Unemployment

2009-11-07T21:46:00.003-05:00

At The New York Times yesterday there was a nice column dissecting the distribution of unemployment. You can find it here. I especially recommend the interactive graphic they present here. Also, this graphic accompanying their report today that the overall unemployment rate has cleared the 10% threshold is very good. On the data graphics dimension, The Times really does some remarkable work.

"Local" Event ~ The Picture Man: Photographs by Milton Rogovin

2009-11-06T17:38:00.004-05:00

I just learned of this exhibition of work by Milton Rogovin that is opening tomorrow at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse. I have posted several times about Rogovin, most recently here.

Election Round Up

2009-11-06T01:05:00.001-05:00

"So the good news for Republicans is that they now have two more governorships. The bad news is that they’re still Republicans — with all the baggage that entails." ~ Ruy Teixeira

That is the conclusion to this assessment of the off year elections this past week. It sounds about right to me.

Surprise! An Albatross Chick Will Be Able To Swallow a Plastic Bottle Cap But Not Digest It

2009-11-05T15:28:00.009-05:00

Yesterday, The Guardian ran this disturbing photo essay by Chris Jordan [1] [2] [3]. The pictures are of the decomposing remains of Albatross chicks and the (sometimes literally) mounds of plastic they have in their digestive tracks. Here is a sample:

“The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their
parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting
what looks to them like food. Every year, tens of thousands
of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity,
and choking.” He stresses that in taking these photographs,
“not a single piece of plastic was moved."
Photograph © Chris Jordan.

Another Local Event: Anticipating Palin Here in the Heartland

2009-11-05T11:08:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I heard a story on npr about Sarah Palin's upcoming book tour. It should be said that the npr folks simply read the AP wire release. But her is the interesting part:

Sarah Palin's book tour is a gift for her base.
No stops are planned in Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other major cities and book-buying communities that are standard for authors on the road, but where the voters tend to be Democrats.
Beyond a Nov. 16 television interview with Oprah Winfrey, nothing is scheduled for Chicago. New York will feature media appearances only. Instead, the itinerary for Palin, whose "Going Rogue" comes out Nov. 17, includes Noblesville, Ind.; Washington, Pa.; and Rochester, N.Y.
[. . .]
The tour starts Nov. 18 at a Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, and running mate Sen. John McCain made a campaign appearance last fall.
Choosing Michigan as the first state fits the book's title, which refers to reports from last year that the then-Alaska governor was defying McCain's staff and instead had gone "rogue." Palin openly expressed her unhappiness with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan and effectively concede the state to Democrat Barack Obama.
"It was a mutual decision between Harper and Palin," Andreadis said of choosing Grand Rapids. "And Barnes & Noble has a great store there."
Other parts of the tour will mirror the 2008 race. On Dec. 7, Palin is booked for the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., not far from last year's Republican National Convention, where Palin's speech — in which she likened herself to a pit bull — made her a national sensation.
[. . .]
The full schedule has not been completed, but confirmed locations — many of which Palin campaigned at last year — include Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Roanoke, Va.; the Army post in Fort Bragg, N.C.; Orlando, Fla.; and Albuquerque, N.M..

Palin is setting up "interviews" with the phalanx of Fox network numb-skulls and other right-wing mouthpieces. And she will get powder-puff treatments by Oprah and Barbara Walters. That sure is roguish - stick to venues where no one will challenge you. Nice.

Rebecca Solnit and Rhyming

2009-11-05T08:59:00.010-05:00

Last night I drove in to town to attend the Rebecca Solnit talk that I mentioned a few days ago. Overall the experience was disappointing. The talk was interesting, a sort of spin on her new book - which I've mentioned here. It prompted me to think about some things that will be important in some papers I have in mind to write. But Solnit read the bulk of the talk even though her extemporaneous voice is so much more engaging than her reading. Indeed, I think that is true for nearly everyone. What was troubling is that the turn out was modest - a cavernous lecture hall that was at best a fifth full. Not a soul in the first half dozen rows. On top of that, it seems that the organizer was ill and could not attend. So things were understandably unsettled; but there was no coordinated 'Plan B' in place. For the always awkward minutes before the talk, Solnit stood alone at the front of the room, eventually Margorie Searl [1] [2] stepped up and gamely read the organizer's introduction, but then Solnit's mic didn't work, there was no water on the podium, and so on.

The oddest thing was that the audience was more or less non-responsive - at he end of a fifty minute talk, two people asked questions.* But Solnit's thesis is provocative and she seemed eager to engage. No response. It was very, very weird. I don't want to come off as a moralist here. In large part the lack of participation seemed to be due to the Oprah-Maury-like way the space was set up with a mic on a long stand on each side of the auditorium down very close to the stage. I think people were reluctant to rappel down the steeply sloped stairs. And I think they felt weird at the prospect of standing three feet from the speaker, back to the audience talking into a microphone. I'd say that arrangement needs a serious re-thinking. That said, the audience seemed disengaged and uncomfortable until Solnit was properly domesticated behind a table for purposes of signing books. Then there was a long-ish line. Folks seem comfortable with semi-commercial dyadic interactions but lost when it comes to expressing ideas in public.

~~~~~~~~~~

Solnit started her talk by quoting a line from this poem by Seamus Heaney; I thought it would be a good thing to pass along.

Doubletake**
by Seamus Heaney

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
if there's fire on the mountain
or lightning and storm
and a god speaks from the sky.

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

Solnit is considerably more sanguine than Heaney about the prospects for fortuitous convergences, of rhyming - and she is right, it seems to me, that it happens, from some at least, more than once in a lifetime. And, while she did not say so, it is true too that while poetry and art cannot fully remedy the harms done to people, they can go a long way toward mitigating, for a time, some of the worst effects.
__________
* I was not one of them; this is, more or less, a matter of personal policy at such events. I think campus speakers are for students and that too much talking by adults (read faculty) dampens the prospects that students will leap in. Students are too ready to defer to faulty at such affairs, and faculty are too often oblivious to how dominating (and boring) they are in conversation.

** From: Seamus Heaney. The Cure at Troy ~ A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991.

Best Shots ( 92 ) ~ Tom Hunter

2009-11-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

(119) Tom Hunter Woman Reading Possession Order,
1998 ~ (04 November 2009).

Passings ~ Susan Horwitz (1947-2009)

2009-11-03T23:22:00.003-05:00

Over the past four years here has been a lot of mayhem in my life. Some of it was just, well, inexplicable; no one’s fault, not preventable, not foreseeable. Some of it is my own fault. And a pretty large amount of it has been sown by others - for reasons that they need to deal with but likely will not. No need to go into specifics, they are pretty ugly. And I’ll spare you, the names and the actions of the culpable. They know who they are.

In any case, it has taken considerable effort to deal with my own foibles but not to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of meanness and venality. I could not have done it on my own. I had love and support from my sweetheart. I also had help from an incredible therapist, Susan Horwitz, who worked here at the University.

Susan listened carefully, told me when I needed to cut the bullshit and take responsibility, pushed me to see the many points where responsibility rested elsewhere - usually places where I had neither any control nor hope of it, and helped me figure out how to deal with all that. She also laughed easily, talked about the travails of juggling research with seeing clients, bragged about her students, and gushed about her baby grandsons.

I had not seen Susan in a while - not because the onslaught had ceased, but because I’ve mostly been able to navigate it pretty well. But in the back of my mind I considered her part of my safety net in the event that things got really crazy. Late last week I tried to contact Susan to no avail. I didn't think much of it. Today I learned that she has died, of brain cancer. She was 62. This is crushingly sad news. My heart goes out to Susan’s family. She was smart and funny and genuine. I will miss her. I do already.

On the Usefulness of Walls for Politics (7) ~ Visualizing Transcience

2009-11-03T09:59:00.008-05:00

"Events, by definition, are occurrences that interrupt routine
processes and routine procedures." ~ Hannah Arendt

"If this proposal is correct, then it is easy to appreciate why
we so often identify or describe events in terms of their causes
and effects. Not only are these features that often interest us
about events, but they are features guaranteed to individuate
them in the sense not only of telling them apart but also of
telling them together." ~ Donald Davidson

A short while ago I posted links to a couple of essays, reflections on the collapse of communism in 1989 and the aftermath of that event actually set of events. Today I came across this pretty impressive photo essay at Spiegel Online. The series - entitled "The East-West German Border, Then & Now" - is by Jürgen Ritter and, as the title indicates, is a sort of 'before and after, affair. In many respects it brings to mind the similar project by Brian Rose about which I posted here a couple of years back. Here, though, many of the photographs depict changes in patterns of activity, prompting one to imagine how the inhabitants now tell together things that they used to tell apart.
__________
Both Photographs © Jürgen Ritter. Here are his captions:

(1) "The border on the peak of a mountain, 1984: The border ran along the top of the Junker Mountain by a Thuringian town called Lindewerra, in what used to be East Germany. At this altitude, Lindewerra was one of the few villages that could be observed directly from the West. This photograph was taken in 1984 in what was then the Erfurt region."

(2) "Junker's Peak, 2009: Now the only thing dividing the scenic Thuringian region is the Werra River. The scar created by the border is also slowly healing."

Local Event ~ Rebecca Solnit at RIT

2009-11-02T00:23:00.002-05:00

This Wednesday (11/4) Rebecca Solnit will be speaking at RIT as part of the Gannett Lecture Series. You can find details about her talk - entitled "Other Loves: Public Life & Unsaid Emotions" - as well as of a reading that she is doing earlier at Writers & Books here. If you have visited the blog even occasionally you'll know that I think Solnit is a wickedly smart, politically astute writer. I am looking forward to her talk. As a tune up you might enjoy reading her Op-Ed ("California's Common Sense Deficit") from The Los Angeles Times yesterday. You can find that here. And here is a reading - focusing early on mostly on really insightful passages on Henry David Thoreau - that Solnit gave a couple years back when she published her wonderful book of political-aesthetic essays Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes of Politics:

Part of what she reads goes like this:

"The police and the media willfully, if not consciously, mistake what kind of danger civil disobedients pose. Martin Luther King, that reader of Thoreau and great advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience, was a dangerous man in his time, because he posed a threat to the status quo, and it was for that reason that the FBI followed him and many hated him. Like Thoreau, he went to jail; like Thoreau he posed no physical danger to anyone. But to admit that activists can be dangers to the status quo is to admit, first, that there is a status quo; second, that it may be an unjust and unjustifiable thing; and third, that it can indeed be changed, by passionate people and nonviolent means. Better to portray activists as criminals and the status quo as the natural order -- and only celebrate revolutionaries long after their causes are won and their voices are softened by time, or misrepresentation; for Thoreau and King are still dangerous men to those who pay attention to their words."

Just so ... I highly recommend a trip out to RIT on Wednesday evening.

India and Its Maoists

2009-11-01T10:04:00.005-05:00

This morning in The Times, you can find this report on the growing conflict in India between Maoist guerrillas one the one hand, the government and large extractive industries on the other. Caught between the two is the adivasi population who inhabit vast forested lands in southern and eastern portions of the country. The adivasi are often impoverished, indigenous tribal peoples. In The Times story Arundhati Roy is identified as among the people who believe the government ought to initiate negotiations with the insurgents. Roy published a longish essay on this matter in The Guardian late last week. You can find it here. It seems clear that Roy finds the Maoists, their history and their current tactics deeply troubling. But she also understands the reasons why the local population might side with them against the government. And she wonders why, given any number of other resistance movements across the country, the government has launched a massive military campaign against the Maoists.

It seems to me that the local population is caught between communist thugs and corrupt government officials. Both sides are more than willing to brutalize those they take to be 'collaborating' with the other side. Indeed, both sides seem to be more than willing to invoke collaboration to rationalize any havoc they cause. Roy holds out some hope that it may be possible to put brakes on the impending violence. From where I sit that seems unlikely. The choice for local populations, as is often the case, is between fanatics and expropriators. That is no choice.

The ROTC Dilemma ~ Hand Wringing in the Ivy League

2009-10-31T10:02:00.007-05:00

Today in The New York Times there is a long article about the travails of students at elite universities who opt to join ROTC. The story focuses on the burdens that such students face as they are compelled to travel to (sometimes quite distant) locations to perform their duties because, by University policy, there is no ROTC on their home campuses.

I have had a series of students in ROTC here at Rochester - Rachel Boylan and Stacy Allen come to mind immediately* - who are as smart and committed and enthusiastic and talented as any students I have had. I respect these young men and women and (as I told Stacy this past week when she was back to campus after a tour in Afghanistan) I worry about them. And even though UofR offers ROTC, I regret that the students who enroll in it confront such a limited range of options. My concern, though, is not quite the same as the ones that the article in The Times lays out.

The basic problem is that all smart, committed, enthusiastic young men and women face a restricted range of options when it comes to what we might call civic engagement. In the first place, virtually the only way that such students can connect with something larger then themselves is to join the military. (I set aside the more banal paths of joining a fraternity/sorority or playing an intercollegiate sport.) What if such students could engage in national service that contributed to the construction of community and public life here at home? What if such students could do the same abroad in organizations (without the taint of the CIA) like the Peace Corps? Those options are unavailable to undergraduates. They are stuck (and I do not want to demean their endeavors) engaging in charity or volunteer work as an extra-curricular activity or internship. My students simply do not have the options, the choices, that would make such career paths meaningful. Training programs in college and a more or less lengthy stint of service afterwards ~ sounds like a great program to me. I bet there would be lots of takers.

In the second place, such students - smart, committed, eager, curious - face real financial hardships. Their options are restricted here too. Virtually the only way to avoid significant, burdensome loans is to join the military - ROTC or National Guard. Here the ROTC students look pretty well-off. Compare the $40K scholarships that ROTC students get at elite universities with the median income for a family of four in the United States. Compare the difficulties that ROTC students confront to those that other students who endure difficulties as they try to work their way through college or who make ends meet by, say, joining the National Guard. Compare any military pay/benefits package with patching together part-time, low wage, no benefits jobs in any other sector.

Finally, none of this should gloss over the fact that the military is - by its nature - an authoritarian, entirely in-egalitarian enterprise. (The problem with ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is merely one symptom of that authoritarian character.) Neither should it gloss over the fact that many students in ROTC will go off to fight and perhaps die in wars (or ‘conflicts’ that the sitting administration cannot, in any given case, bring itself to declare a war) that at best are extremely difficult to justify. If we want college to train students to be active, creative democratic citizens, it is not at all clear that military service is the most conducive path on which to set them.

If we are concerned about choice and opportunity, let’s have options with which military service might have to compete, options that might allow students to engage the larger world and get paid to do so. I respect the students who sign up for ROTC. I would respect students who signed up for non-military national service too. I think both should get the same benefits for the same commitment.
__________
* Both Rachel and Stacy invited me to the induction ceremonies where they received their commissions into the Marine Corps. These are held in conjunction with graduation. I attended both and was honored to do so. It was truly amazing for me to be able to glimpse the families of the ROTC Cadets (often multiple generations of service men and women). When I say that I respect these students I mean it.

Juan Gelman

2009-10-30T12:10:00.006-05:00

On Poetry
by Juan Gelman

a couple of things have to be said/
that nobody reads it much/
that those nobodies are few and far between/
that everyone's caught up in the world crisis/ and

with the business of putting food on the table/
and that's no small problem/ I remember
when my uncle juan died of hunger/ he used to say
no problem since he'd forgotten how to eat anyway/

but the problems came later/ when
there was no cash for the coffin/
and when finally the official truck came from the city
to take him away uncle juan turned into a bird/

the guys from the city looked at him with contempt/ complaining
they were always being given a hard time/ that
they were men and men was what they buried/ and not
birds like uncle juan/ especially

since unc was singing cheep-cheep all the way to the
municipal crematorium/
which seemed to them like a disrespect they didn't like one bit/
and when they slapped him to shut him up/
the cheep-cheep was heard in the cab of the truck and even
their ears rang with cheep-cheep/

that's how uncle juan was/ always singing/
and he didn't see that death was any reason to stop singing/
he even went into the oven singing cheep-cheep/ and some
chirping rose up from his ashes for a while/
and the city guys stared at their grey shoes in shame/ but

to get back to poetry/
poets are having a rough time of it these days/
nobody reads poetry much/ only a few nobodies/
the profession has lost its prestige/ its getting harder every day
for a poet/

to get a girl to fall in love with him/
to run for president/ to get credit at the grocery store/
to get some warrior to perform heroics to be sung/ or
some king to pay three pieces of gold per verse/

and no one knows if this is because we're running out of
girls/grocers/warriors/kings/
or just poets/he two things at once and there's no use
racking you brains over the question/

the beautiful thing is knowing you can sing cheep-cheep
in the strangest of circumstances/
uncle juan after he died/ and now me
so that you'll love me/

~~~~~~~~

The Deluded
by Juan Gelman

hope fails us often
grief, never.
that's why some think
that known grief is better
than unknown grief.
they believe that hope is an illusion.
they are deluded by grief.

~~~~~~~~

Some time ago I read a collection of John Berger's essays* and noticed, among other things, that he had quoted some remarkable verses from Argentine poet Juan Gelman. I had never heard of Gelman but have now tracked down what seems to be the sole collection of his work in English translation.** Gelman spent many years in political exile and, while it is now safe for him to return, he still does not reside in Argentina. His son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter were disappeared by the regime. And he nevertheless manages poems of hope and beauty and humor.
_________
* John Berger. 2001. The Shape of a Pocket. Vintage. See pages 161-64, 215.
** Juan Gelman. 1997. Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems. University of California Press. See pages 119-20, 167.

Ready! Take Aim! Fire!~ The University of Chicago Shoots Itself in the Other Foot

2009-10-29T18:21:00.007-05:00

Once again, my Alma Mater, is in the news. And, once again, the news is not good. Not long ago I posted on the self-congratulatory love fest that the department of economics held recently - celebrating their market fundamentalism in the face of any and all evidence or reason. And just over a year ago I noted in a post on Studs Turkle that the University is buying the building on South University Avenue that houses the Seminary Coop Bookstore - arguably the best academic bookstore in the country, if not the world. I am not at all confident that the University can help itself; it will in all likelihood strike a fatal blow to the coop before the story ends. Stay tuned. The link between those two posts is that the building the coop now occupies is intended to house an institute in honor of ideologue-in-chief Milton Friedman. How fitting that that enterprise (funded by rich alums) should threaten the existence of the coop!

The University of Chicago seems to be incredibly ham-fisted when it comes to recognizing the value of community resources and public spaces. This morning I came across this contribution by Jamie Kalven to The Huffington Post. It seems the University is intent on evicting a community garden - and the robust set of associations that revolve around it - so that they can use the parcel of land as a staging area for a construction project. Kalven is sensible and articulate about the University. The administration apparently is populated by people who, while maybe polite and well-intentioned, seem have no clue whatsoever. Among the problems from which Hyde Park has suffered throughout the years is an emaciated 'community' and anemic 'public space.' Here the University is going out of its way to exercise it property rights in a way that will undermine the prospects even further. Worse. The construction project for which the garden land will be taken over is - you guessed it - going to produce a building that will house the Seminary Coop Bookstore.

While I do not want to get carried away with the virtues of gardening - what I think of as adults playing in the dirt - it is clear that the University is more concerned with community in the abstract than what it looks like in reality.

How Gardeners Learn Things from Invisible Institute on Vimeo.

Shirley Burtz from Invisible Institute on Vimeo.

Best Shots (91) ~ Ellen von Unwerth

2009-10-29T00:03:00.001-05:00

(118) Ellen von Unwerth ~ 'She Disappeared After This ...'
(28 October 2009).

Passings ~ Roy DeCarava (1919 ~2009)

2009-10-28T19:33:00.004-05:00

Dancers, New York, 1956. Photograph © Roy Decarava.

Roy Decarava has died. He was just short of his 90th birthday. You can find notices at The New York Times here and here. I will link to obituaries as they appear. Some time ago I wrote this post on DeCarava's subtle and insightful views on race and photography.

Enthusiasms (27) - Vijay Iyer

2009-10-27T15:07:00.003-05:00

Pianist Vijay Iyer has put out a couple of recordings in as many years that are truly terrific. The records are released on independent labels - Sunnyside and ACT. While both are very good, I especially like the new trio recording - the tunes are spacious and the interaction between the musicians embodies a real egalitarianism. This is not simply drums/bass supporting a soloist! It reminds me in some respects of the interplay between the members of Air (Henry Threadgill/Steve McCall/ Fred Hopkins) ~ and that is, to my mind, very rarefied company. Finally, what is not to like about a musician who takes inspiration for his record titles from readings of Cornel West or Antonio Gramsci? In any case, here is a sample:

Vijay Iyer Trio ~ "Historicity" from Historicity (ACT, 2009).

Apostasy in Chicago

2009-10-26T21:32:00.004-05:00

I recently received my copy of The University of Chicago Magazine. It contains this puff piece about a self-congratulatory conference of the economists there. The article was incredibly annoying for a couple of reasons. In the first place, the author never managed to actually talk to anyone who disagrees with the market fundamentalists in Hyde Park. He quotes some critics of the Chicago School. But he mostly let the true believers run on about how great they are; the consequence is that they end up caricaturing their critics and denying that they themselves have been wrong, ever, about anything. One upshot of that - and this is truly irritating - was that they were able to rationalize their (specifically Milton Fridman, Arnold Harberger and their acolytes) complicity in the murderous Pinochet dictatorship. The defense amounts to acknowledging that just maybe rates of economic inequality were higher under Pinochet but that his "reforms" (let's not use the word coup!) nevertheless ushered in economic progress on the continent. That is a howler given that the real problem is that Pinochet murdered his opponents in very large numbers. The complicity of Friedman et. al lies in having lent intellectual legitimacy to a murderous regime. It would be refreshing to have the Chicago economists acknowledge that their much loved "free markets" too often are instituted through the barrel of a gun. It pains me to see the alumni magazine of a great university celebrating ideologues.

Having said that, there is some evidence of active brain waves in Hyde Park. I recommend this essay ~ "How I Became a Keynesian" ~ by Richard Posner in The New Republic. Posner has not, I suspect, become a convert. He has simply demonstrated that it is easy to learn from those with whom one disagrees, if only one reads them first.

Reflections on 1989

2009-10-26T19:18:00.003-05:00

Here are two essays - the first by Adam Michnik, the other by Timothy Garton Ash, - both of which reflect on the political economic transformations of 1989 and what has followed. Both are worth reading. (The Garton Ash essay is the first of a pair - I will link to part two when it appears.)

Beloved Daughters

2009-10-26T00:05:00.001-05:00

I've just finished re-reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things because I am thinking about assigning it for a class next term. Early on in the book, Rahel, arguably its main character finds herself married ("she drifted into marriage") to a feckless American who seems not to understand her whatsoever. The husband finds himself "offended" by the look in Rahel's eyes when they had sex.

"He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast violent, circling, driving ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace. Worse Things kept happening."

And for much of the first half of the book politics - large scale disaster - provides the backdrop to the unfolding personal disaster on which Roy focuses. Indeed, politics intrudes in various, almost always destructive, ways into the lives of her cast of characters. One important way it does so is through the operation of legal and informal restrictions on the freedom of the women in the story whose options are limited severely by lack of educational opportunity, legal restrictions on inheritance, domestic violence, sexual harassment, the stigma of divorce.

Then this evening I came across a review of an exhibition entitled "Beloved Daughters" of work by Fazal Sheikh now showing at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. Sheikh focuses on the same litany of restrictions that Roy highlights and the way they impact the lives of large numbers of Indian women. The image I've lifted above is of the city of Vrindavan which is a city to which widows, having been rendered worthless by the death of their husbands, exile themselves in hopes of escaping the relentlessly cyclical operation of death and re-birth. Although many of Sheikh's portraits of women and girls are powerful, this scene conveys a remarkable desolation. It suggests precisely how the personal turmoil in women's lives is structured and distributed by forces that operate and persist on a much larger scale.

Shoot the Messanger: Illinois Officials Harassing Students

2009-10-25T13:25:00.004-05:00

The Illinois State's Attorney in Cook County (Chicago), Anita Alvarez, is in the process of legally harassing students at Northwestern University who conducted class-based inquiries into allegedly wrongful convictions. You can read the story here in The New York Times. As is typically the case, government functionaries are more interested in persecuting those who call them to account than they are in getting things right. Given the regularity with which law enforcement agencies and the courts more or less willfully convict citizens of crimes they did not commit, what is wrong with some oversight?

Susan Meiselas & Dumeetha Luthra : In Silence

2009-10-23T08:59:00.009-05:00

"Article 25 (1) Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to social security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood i circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same protection." ~ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

In conjunction with this report by Human Rights Watch, Susan Meiselas & Dumeetha Luthra have produced this video slide show - In Silence ~ Maternal Mortality in India - addressing the epidemic of deaths ~ so many that the actual numbers remain unknown ~ among women during childbirth.

Václav Havel Interview

2009-10-23T00:02:00.001-05:00

This is a short interview with Václav Havel from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I guess I wonder why those media entities - largely remnants of the cold war - still exist. Two things strike me about the interview. The first is that I find it difficult to believe that many of our recent Presidents would know who historians such as Tony Judt or Timothy Garton Ash actually are let alone what they might think or have written. Second, and even more impressive, is the volume of Lou Reed: Emotion in Action (which is a collection of Reed's photographs) on Havel's bookshelf.

Thomas Demand

2009-10-22T20:12:00.004-05:00

In The Nation this week is an essay by Barry Schwabsky on German photographer Thomas Demand or, more precisely, on a new exhibition of the photographer's work. Demand makes large images of staged or constructed scenes that are themselves derived from photographs. Here are some of the good bits:

“As is well-known by now, all of his photographs are taken in his studio; employing existing photographs, usually from the media but sometimes his own, as his sources, Demand uses paper, cardboard, cellophane and other flimsy, everyday materials to construct full-scale replicas of actually or formerly existing places. . . . These empty stage sets are what we see in the photographs. The reconstructions follow the general lineaments of their originals, but with most detail eliminated. In particular, every trace of language has completely vanished:. . . In general, since everything in the photographs has been newly built, nothing shows any signs of wear, any smudges or defects. Each thing has become a sort of abstraction of itself.”

"These images construct illusions only to deflate them. The image is empty, and eerily disinfected, and Demand makes sure you know it. You see the seams in every wall, the folding of the corners of the furniture. These are two-dimensional pictures of three-dimensional pictures based on other two-dimensional pictures of the real world. And how real is that, anyway? I suddenly feel like I've lost track."

"Demand's . . . work asks, among other things, . . . whether and how photographs can be about things that they are not of."

I do not know much about Demand, although I did post his contribution to the "Best Shot" series at The Guardian a couple of years ago now. The image above is the one he selected for that purpose. I recommend that you follow the links and read about it. It turns out, I think, that while Dmand's work is, as Schwabsky nicely reveals, about representation it also is about politics.