Philosophy as Medium & Material Practice

This past weekend at the American Philosophies Forum, I argued that philosophy is a medium and material practice, and that philosophers needs to (for reasons both philosophical and ethical/professional) engage transmedial practices. Basically, my argument was this: If philosophers are…

Rihanna's Melancholic Damage

Rihanna’s Melancholic Damage

Here is my looong, unedited, still-in-process post on Rihanna, “Look, I Overcame!” Gaga Feminism, goth damage, and multi-racial white supremacy. Unlike most people who talk about Rihanna, Breezy, feminism, & race, I will actually discuss her MUSIC–chords, compositional and performance…

Some questions for future research on Jankelevitch, Levinas, & femininity/gender

     I’m tidying up a paper on Jankelevitch, Abbate, musical ineffability, and implicit understanding. In the course of reading Jankelevitch, I came up with a ton of questions about his relationship to Levinas…questions which are waaaay beyond the scope…

The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Plain: On Sound & The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy

Here’s an excerpt from a rough draft of a paper I’m working up for the American Philosophies Forum at Emory in April. The theme of the meeting is “The Ineffable,” so I’m writing on Vladimir Jankelevitch‘s and Carolyn Abbate‘s work…

From the “Exchange of Women” to “Gendered Competition”

This is a collection of rudimentary thoughts from last night’s Feminist Philosophy class. We read Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in Women” and Luce Irigaray’s “Women on the Market.” Both of these are decades-old analyses of the “exchange of women”. Rubin…

Neoliberalism & Transnational Black Masculinities in Taio Cruz’s “Hangover”

Here I rework my earlier reading of Taio Cruz’s “Hangover” to show how neoliberalism actively cultivates transgression, producing what I call a “faux-gression” that gets fed back into neoliberal means of production, augmenting privilege, hegemony, etc. I cut this from…

Ludacris’s “Rest of My Life” and Neoliberalism

On 11/11/12, Ludacris (feat. Usher & David Guetta) posted a video for his single “Rest of My life” to YouTube. Interestingly, and awesomely, this video all but explicitly posits the main claim of my article on EDM and neoliberalism in…

NY’s Dance Tax, Art/Entertainment Hierarchies, and Women’s Bodies

New York State’s proposal to exempt erotic dancing from the tax exemption on dance performance is all about policing women’s work, women’s bodies, and class/race-based norms about the “appropriateness” and “significance” of female nudity. This NewYork Times editorial gets it…

Taylor Swift, Wominimizing, and the Opposite of (White) Mansplaining

Taylor Swift’s single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” has been all over Charlotte radio for quite a while now. Every time I hear it, though, I wonder about why she chose to go up an octave in the…

XContinental Philosophy Collective/Manifesto

The members of the XCPhilosophy Collective asked me to link to their manifesto/blog, and because I think it is amazing, awesome, and, well, right, I am more than happy to do so. You can find the whole thing here. Here’s…