Jacques Lu Cont, best (if unintentional) living interpreter of Nietzsche?
“I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 381,…
Gaga Variations, or Gaga on Bach and tonality
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/7221051/Lady-Gaga-Ive-always-been-famous-you-just-didnt-know-it.html Gaga, when you say stuff like this, how can I not totally
“This is why events unnerve me”: Teaching Neitzsche through Joy Division/New Order/Kylie Minogue
My Existentialism class is in the midst of reading Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. The GS deals with a lot of the themes and ideas in Zarathustra, which is what people usually assign in Existentialism classes, but the GS treats them…
Awesome review of white privilege in Avatar and other recent scifi
http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar” This review, by Annalee Newitz of i09, is spot-on. I wish *I* wrote it. Some of the highlights: — “Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people,…
“This is a song about faking orgasms!”
The title of this post comes from the introduction to the Au Pairs song “Come Again”. So, I’ve been thinking recently about Gaga’s relationship to post-punk — With all her homage to “The New York Scene,” the connection isn’t too…
UNC Charlotte Ethics Bowl Team
Here’s a video of UNC Charlotte vs. Univ. of Miami Team B in the Mid-Atlantic Ethics Bowl semifinals. Kathleen’s presentation about research ethics and Javan’s response to UM’s Kantian environmental ethics are *excellent*!! Students: Kathleen Lowenstein, Javan Lapp, Megan Norton,…
Beyonce/Gaga: Dear Dr. Mulvey, Video Is Not Narrative Cinema
Beyonce and Lady Gaga have a newish video out for their collaboration “Video Phone”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtIdxk2zqXs The men in the video all have cameras for heads: This might be seen as a literalization of Laura Mulvey’s (in)famous article “Visual Pleasure and…
“Do you realize, that people are still having sex?”: Teaching the History of Sexuality v. 1 with 90s House
So, whenever I teach Foucault’s History of Sexuality, v. 1 to undergraduates, they usually have difficulty “getting” the book’s two main claims: (1) that sex is not repressed, and (2) that power is relational and productive, not a substance that…
Clones & She Wolves: Irigaray & the DISCOntinuum of female sexuality
Initially, while trying to make sense of Shakira’s “She Wolf” video, I hypothesized that this Shakira video was suggesting that straight white women’s sexuality is “closeted” – or, in more Irigarayan terms, what we understand to be “female sexuality” is…
“Neckties” vs. “Warlords”: Yeezy and HOVA’s contesting masculinities
So, in my earlier post about Jay-Z’s DOA, I argued that he was defending a more traditional ghetto-hetero-black masculinity against Kanye’s Autotuned insurgency into hip-hop and its canon of “proper” masculinities. Kanye’s LMFAO “Paranoid” remix (Youtube below) makes it clear…
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