tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post7086880296904910324..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: The Surveillance State: Some Books and Other Media, Precursors, Re-Taking Stockmichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-84870501495202009172013-07-21T16:04:36.729-07:002013-07-21T16:04:36.729-07:00@Eric:
RAW told me how he was taken by Kenneth Bu...@Eric:<br /><br />RAW told me how he was taken by Kenneth Burke's "perspective by incongruity." This was one move Burke described in Rhetoric as he blasted the field wide open, not like Chomsky and Linguistics, by effectively saying, "Everything that went before me was too soft," but by allowing the ancient tradition to flourish along his new formulation of what he (Burke) thought Rhetoric was: any attempt to persuade. So when we're using symbols and language we're probably trying to get someone to notice something. And that, to Burke, was Rhetoric. It included unconscious processes, which make him ahead of his time, if we think of the new cognitive and neurosciences and imaging systems. <br /><br />His influence dovetails with much of what Korzybski was about and prevented a unified theory of criticism and all discourse, including classical theory, linguistics, literary criticism, and philosophy.<br /><br />I am troubled by what you say about what is verboten at community colleges, as this just seems wrong in so many ways. I'm reminded of someone asking Aldous Huxley why he didn't want to study Literature at University, and he said he thought literature was to be "enjoyed." I agree, and there's also scads of new research that shows it helps us to think better and develops our emotional lives...it just seems absurd to forbid poetry and novels and short stories in college! I would think a cursory study of Rhetoric could go hand in hand with the reading and discussion of interesting texts.<br /><br />But I'm NOT officially educated, so what do I know?michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-20129155876884993762013-07-20T12:40:40.918-07:002013-07-20T12:40:40.918-07:00I have negative feelings about rhetoric. I got my...I have negative feelings about rhetoric. I got my Bachelor's in English in 1985, and I don't recall hearing the word rhetoric during my undergraduate education. I started working on my Master's in English Composition in 1999. The first quarter I took "The Western Rhetorical Tradition" and the second quarter I took "The Rhetoric of Life Writing." Along with this shift towards rhetoric in English education came a shift away from literature. I've encountered this in grad school and in teaching high school and community college. At both community colleges where I've taught the school forbids the use of novels, plays, poetry or short stories in most English classes.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-36539514185065049972013-07-18T00:12:31.341-07:002013-07-18T00:12:31.341-07:00@Tom: Amash is fine, but I guess what I was vaguel...@Tom: Amash is fine, but I guess what I was vaguely hinting at: what choice might we possibly have in 2016 aside from Hillary and some pre-enlightenment Republican?<br /><br />@ Eric: Heresy lives here! Seriously: if we live movies (and we do) McLoon's probes do seem to fall short.<br /><br />MM and son Eric used Vico and Bacon pretty heavily for The Laws of Media. (This makes Eric McLuhan literarily one degree from Francis Bacon. Could ham and eggs be far behind?)<br /><br />I see the study/probe/use of rhetoric/metaphor as possibly the most dangerous, potent, and occult "powers" to be studied academically, apart from that area of the campus that houses Physics, Chem/Biology/the new physical sciences. I reject - and I think McLuhan and RAW did too - the idea that Rhetoric can be isolated and seen as apart from any-thing that "is" Right Where You Are Sitting Now.<br /><br />EX: "Today's heresy..." was a good one. Seriously.<br /><br />Another way of putting it: one can - and perhaps should- think that all the OG consists of _is_ metaphors and rhetoric. michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-81892529093390325822013-07-17T08:27:26.776-07:002013-07-17T08:27:26.776-07:00I had forgotten Vico worked as a professor Latin r...I had forgotten Vico worked as a professor Latin rhetoric at the University of Naples. Rereading McLuhan's Laws of Media I noticed the importance McLuhan placed on rhetoric.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-38860360675481144922013-07-17T08:13:35.851-07:002013-07-17T08:13:35.851-07:00Today's heresy: I find David Thomson's in...Today's heresy: I find David Thomson's insights into media overwhelmingly more interesting than McLuhan's.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-1593953680050291812013-07-17T07:33:42.036-07:002013-07-17T07:33:42.036-07:00Michael, the most visible politician on the NSA st...Michael, the most visible politician on the NSA stuff seems to be Justin Amash, the libertarian (but nominally Republican) congressman from Michigan. He's kind of like Ron Paul without the racial baggage.Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07810736442596736041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-42724320568654078172013-07-17T02:10:09.774-07:002013-07-17T02:10:09.774-07:00CORRECTION on the author of the MM bio quoted abou...CORRECTION on the author of the MM bio quoted about linguistics:<br /><br />It's W. Terrence Gordon, not Theodore Gordon, who is a well-known futurist. I had the book on hand and typed out the relevant passage, only to get the author wrong!<br /><br />You can't trust bloggers! They're their own worst editors. (Sometimes?)michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-16465923291746305212013-07-17T01:34:49.536-07:002013-07-17T01:34:49.536-07:00@ Tom Jackson-
I think I've said this before,...@ Tom Jackson-<br /><br />I think I've said this before, but one "good" thing that's come out of this Snowden thing: how much more easily it is to see who in the media and politics is a civil libertarian and who is an authoritarian/part of the commissar class. The fallout from Snowden forced the issue. <br /><br />From where I stand I have ZERO use for Obama apologists, and it's not just for the NSA stuff. Not by a long shot.<br /><br />And where is Gary Johnson in the MSM? I confess I haven't been "monitoring" nearly as much as I used to, but he's largely getting iced-out, right?michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-2215507328711878992013-07-17T01:29:15.934-07:002013-07-17T01:29:15.934-07:00@PQ: Harold Rosenberg gave Understanding Media a g...@PQ: Harold Rosenberg gave Understanding Media a glowing review in the NYT, but misread MM by a few miles. MM liked the review anyway.<br /><br />The classical scholar who loved Joyce and Pound and then turned to Ong, Gideon, and the new media? As far away as I am from MM's personal temperament, he's one of the GREAT generalists of the 20th c, and I always get something interesting from any page, any book by him. <br /><br />BTW: he SEEMS to have read RAW in his study of linguistics: in Theodore Gordon's bio, chapter 15 is titled, "Is McLuhan A Linguist?" <br /><br />"McLuhan made reading notes and kept files on many topics related to linguistics, such as meaning, dictionary-making, and semiotics (the study of any system that carries meaning). He also collected references to the works of many well-known linguists of the twentieth century, including Charles Hockett, Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, R.A. Wilson, and Noam Chomsky. There are references to Alfred Korzybski's study known as General Semantics (a language-based system for the training of the central nervous system) as early as 1943 in McLuhan's doctoral thesis." - p.324<br /><br />Gordon does a good job of defending MM against Umberto Eco, who rejected MM as a semiotician; the argument goes on for about five pages. michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-60556007795874978842013-07-16T13:51:16.911-07:002013-07-16T13:51:16.911-07:00The NSA book I bought recently was "The Secre...The NSA book I bought recently was "The Secret Sentry" by Matthew Aid. It seemed to be well reviewed; I haven't had time to read it yet.<br /><br />It seems to me that one important reason why private companies are being used for spying is that they don't have the same legal constraints that apply to the government. The constraints on the NSA seem to be rather flexible, and in any case the program is too shrouded in secrecy to permit real oversight, but why not just offload it to someplace all those annoying civil libertarians can't supervise?<br /><br />You write, "It's far too easy for paranoids like me to see a President Palin and local cops having ultra-fast digital info ... " I wish it was easier for other people to see that sooner or later,a Republican president is likely to have access to all of the spying tools that Obama is deploying now. Many of the arguments on Twitter between civil libertarians and defenders of the NSA pit the anti-surveillance folks against Obama loyalists, who won't take the point at all. <br /><br /><br /><br />Cleveland Okie (Tom Jackson)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07810736442596736041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-63898658070911961672013-07-16T13:25:49.436-07:002013-07-16T13:25:49.436-07:00Michael, in reply to your final paragraph, I recal...Michael, in reply to your final paragraph, I recall hearing (and/or reading) McLuhan say a few times, in defense against people accusing him of being some kind electronics-evangelist, that he wasn't endorsing any of the new media. After all, when he rose to fame he was a classically-trained literary scholar, a grayed 50-something professor, but (and this is probably my favorite quote of his) one must learn about, study the new technologies and their effects in order to find the "off" button.PQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14491626995530401441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-31904750278895824682013-07-16T13:01:37.121-07:002013-07-16T13:01:37.121-07:00I think I got cut off. Perhaps the NSA wanted to ...I think I got cut off. Perhaps the NSA wanted to warn me to stop talking about avarice.<br /><br />Thanks for your suggestion; I may give it a whirl in September.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-73370486639741600552013-07-15T23:04:09.589-07:002013-07-15T23:04:09.589-07:00@ Eric: Thanks as always for the encouragement.
...@ Eric: Thanks as always for the encouragement. <br /><br />As you were writing your comment I was answering PQ and as you see, I went on...<br /><br />This is interesting: you really got cut off? If so, it took me a long time to realize that apparently, the blogger gets far more space to comment than the commentor-to-the-blog. Which seems unfair and wrong.<br /><br />Anyway: Why not start a blog with the Number of the Week idea? michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-35332202459391909602013-07-15T22:53:31.249-07:002013-07-15T22:53:31.249-07:00Thanks, PQ.
As far as I can tell from Marchand...Thanks, PQ.<br /><br />As far as I can tell from Marchand's notes, the ideas from MM about surv were from a "table talk" interview with Maclean's magazine, probably between 1972-1977, possibly as early as 1969 though I doubt it. <br /><br />Marchand's other dated notes for this chapter, from just before MM suffered the stroke that rendered him virtually speechless, were from 1972-77. These ideas about espionage and surv were left out of the subsequent print article of Maclean's. <br /><br />The footnote for that paragraph from Marchand:<br /><br />"'Table Talk,' Maclean's. Unpublished text of an interview with Marshall McLuhan by Professor Gary Kern, NA."<br /><br />Regarding the acceleration of media and ideas of privacy and identity, McLuhan wrote an editorial against abortion, published in the Toronto Star, July 24, 1974. While I disagree with him overall, it's one of the most interesting anti-abortion essays I've ever read. I'll see if I can find a link. (I found it in my copy of _Letters of Marshall McLuhan_, pp.502-503.)<br /><br />But get this part, germane to my topic: "Without rehearsing the arguments for the abortion matter, I would like to draw attention to some of the hidden _ground_ of this matter. As people become more deeply involved in each other by the sheer speed of information which covers them, there is a very great loss of private identity, with the consequent insecurity and rage and violence. When instant information exists around the entire planet, there is, as it were, inflation of human quantity which threatens all human values whatever and eliminates the experience of private identity. When identity is weak, all constraint and social restriction becomes intolerable."<br /><br />Here's a Catholic arguing against abortion, but throughout he rails against "inflation of human quantity" and never uses the term "overpopulation." He acknowledges this is paradoxical, but argues that a general sort of technological determinism sees pregnancy as something like "inflation" and a burden upon the personal economy of the mother, which is seen as easily fixable by technological means: abortion. He doesn't like this, and I think it stems from the deepest recesses of MM's thinking about "media": anything that denigrated the private, Gutenbergian "self" was a threat. Overpopulation is a threat, and so are non-book media, which threaten "all human values" and eliminate "the experience of private identity."<br /><br />What far too many readers of MM don't get is that, while he wrote with great insight about TV, movies, radio, etc, though he never comes out and says he sees these media as threatening to human existence, I think he did think that. Deep down he was a confirmed Gutenberg Man, far more than the OG is...or just about anyone else I know. (I don't know Sven Birkerts.)michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-87846727687993911882013-07-15T22:17:45.807-07:002013-07-15T22:17:45.807-07:00The problem is avarice.")
My comment ran too...The problem is avarice.")<br /><br />My comment ran too long.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-10717544247914674812013-07-15T22:17:06.309-07:002013-07-15T22:17:06.309-07:00Great piece. I've contemplated starting a Num...Great piece. I've contemplated starting a Number of the Week series of posts at alt.fan.rawilson, starting with 67. For 68 I imagine writing a scene of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Bob Wilson at the Playboy Club in Chicago during the Democratic Convention, discussing Ginsberg's visit with Uncle Ezra. I love the fact that Ginsberg played Sgt. Pepper and Dylan, etc., for Ezra. Allen asked Olga Rudge if Pound liked it, and she replied, "If he didn't, he'd leave." (Pound only spoke one line during the visit, cursing his "stupid, suburban antisemitism." This also reminds me of Pound's forward to his Selected Prose, where he said something like "Re Usury: I was out of focus. Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-74157292389307498922013-07-15T20:45:17.807-07:002013-07-15T20:45:17.807-07:00Love the McLuhan prescience.
Great stuff, Michae...Love the McLuhan prescience. <br /><br />Great stuff, Michael. PQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14491626995530401441noreply@blogger.com