Feminism, Neoliberalism, & Goth

I’m giving two slightly different versions of a talk on Gaga Feminism, Neoliberalism, Multi-Racial White Supremacist Patriarchy, Rihanna, & Goth, one tomorrow at Wayne State, and the other in April at Luther College. Because I usually talk rather than read, I…

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…

"Just Ludacris Enough"

“Just Ludacris Enough”

I’m giving a talk titled “Just Ludacris Enough” several times in the next week or two. Here are links to the blog posts & articles I’m using as the basis of the talk: My article in The New Inquiry, “Loving the Alien.”This…

“Look, I Overcame!”: Feminine Subjectivity, Resilience, & Multi-Racial White Supremacist Patriarchy

In his recent essay in Radical Philosophy, mark Neocleous argues that the ideal of “resilience” has replaced the ideal of “security,” both as a structure of individual subjectivity and a principle of social/national policy.[i]Briefly, he defines resilience as “the capacity…

Rednexpolitation & Multi-Racial White Supremacy

Rednexpolitation & Multi-Racial White Supremacy

In 1993, Coco Fusco & Gabriel Gomez-Penia performed “Couple In A Cage”–they dressed up in stereotypically “native” attire and displayed their performance of exotic primitiveness for scopophilic consumption. The work interrogates the role of non-whites in liberal multiculturalism: whites prove…

Ancient Greek & Neoliberal Harmony Pt. 1: Sophrosyne as Proportion

Ancient Greek & Neoliberal Harmony Pt. 1: Sophrosyne as Proportion

It seems like the ancient Greeks are actually kinda neoliberal in some ways. In Disagreement, Ranciere calls consensus democracy “the perfect realization” of Plato’s Republic, and, as Shannon Winnubst notes in her great new article in Foucault Studies(which everyone should…

Scream: On Kelis, Human Capital, & Music

Scream: On Kelis, Human Capital, & Music

Recently, there have been a few EDM-pop songs about screaming: Usher’s “Scream,” will.i.am & Britney’s “Scream & Shout,” and Kelis’s “Scream” (which is older than these former two, but only by a year or two). I’ve written about “Scream &…

From Gucci Gucci to the Thrift Shop: white rappers & black culture

I was in the car this morning running some errands when (unsurprisingly) Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” came on the radio. Stuck in a bit of traffic, I actually listened to the lyrics this time.  It had always been obvious to me…

Sublime Human Capital: What You Buy, But I’m Not Selling

In this post I want to flesh out an idea I suggested in my CAA paper on neoliberalism’s 4D sonic episteme. Neoliberalism produces macro-level stability from micro-level variability/aleatory. So, individual subjects have to be flexible. If flexibility normalizes, then perhaps…