It is surely inherently patriarchal to pretend that the ways in which penises differ from one another and the ways in which vaginas differ from one another are so much less salient than the ways in which penises "in general" are different from vaginas "in general" that we will treat those differences of all things as the foundation of all civilization.
This is one of the reasons why I find it so patently absurd and annoying that queersex is so regularly described as or, worse, thought of as "same-sex."
Of course, homo means "same," just as hetero means "different" -- hence "homogeneous" as against "heterogeneous" -- so the same-sex terminology is just a straightforward translation of homo-sex. But my point is that it is actually deranging of the sense of what queerness often practically and imaginatively consists to imagine that its formations are based less on the eroticization of salient differences than are the formations of heterosexuality, so-called.
Honestly, you'd think that those who assume a more primordial narcissism or mimeticism prevails among queer folks than among straights, whoever they are supposed to be, had never heard of tops and bottoms, butches and femmes, ferocious "type"-tourisms articulated around race, class, morphology, and so on. I personally have had sex with more women (one) than I have had sex with blond haired people of either sex (zero, unless it was really dark or I was really drunk), for example. Is that homo-sex or hetero-sex, after all? Is there even a name for that (help me, Krafft-Ebing)? Have I signed onto the wrong gay agenda all these years?
As I say, I think the identification of queer-sex with same-sex functions to obliterate the substance of much if not most of that sex, but also to blunt our openness to ways in which the register of sexuality promisingly connects human beings to one another -- and I don't primarily mean sexually so much as in their shared differentiating aesthetic projects, via sex and otherwise, of assertive-narrative self-creation -- by positing some of them and so policing all of them as instead ineradicably "opposite."
It is even clearer that this insistent opposition at the heart of the heteronormative understanding of queerness as same-sex is even more obliterative of the substance of those queernesses -- bisexuality, transsexuality, intersexuality, to name the most obvious -- which seem to provoke sex-panics equally among both the heterosexuals and the homosexuals who cling to this patriarchal opposition in order to stabilize their respective sexualities more or less into scripts in which conventional couples couple conventionally the better to get on with the more serious business of business.
Desire is provoked by difference, whatever its objects. To want is precisely not to have, but also, crucially, there is a having of that wanting that leaves us more than wanting.
And indeed desire is often experienced first as a shattering difference within oneself that demands of the self that it become otherwise ("that's when I realized I was gay…" "oh my god, I don't hate her, I love her!").
This is one of the reasons why it is right to say of sex that it objects: sex is an objection through which we find our way to subjection (if we are lucky).
That "sex ob-jects" is the crucial discursive operation disavowed in the foregrounding of the dismissively reductive phrase "sex objects," in which we name the fear that we risk a dehumanizing objectification through our sexual relations. I believe that the risk disavowed through anti-sex discourses of a threatening universalizing sexual objectification is, more often than not, a phobic recoiling from the risk of sexual subjectification, the threat/promise of the sex in which we risk objecting to the selves we have been and thereupon embark upon a different selfhood.
The risk in the face of which generalized anti-sex retreats looks to be the risk of freedom itself, the freedom without which it makes no sense to bemoan a loss of subjecthood in the first place. None of this, I hasten to add, should be taken as a trivialization of the violence of rape or harassment or exploitation, which seem to me rarely to be about sex, proper, so much as about control and its pathologies, and hardly seem to me to be the lens through which to think the sexual in general, however urgently they demand an accounting and accountability as well.
Far from a threatening site from which universalizing objectification in the mode of violations articulated by hierarchy spread, the sexual seems to me instead a promising site from which universalizing subjectification in the mode of affiliations articulated by differentiation spread.
Crucial to this formulation is the sense -- to take up too clumsily and quick Judith Butler's terms from Undoing Gender here -- that desire is a site in which we embrace our own undoing ("I have come undone in my desire for him") as the way in which we do ourselves, engage in the doings in which we are rendered as legible, capable, among other things gendered beings. To be undone by gendered desire is to do the gender we would have (in a performative account of gender, again to abbreviate brutally, it is in the reiterated doing of the conventions of gender that we substantiate for ourselves and for others the salience in the gender we then experience ourselves as having; the having is indispensably a function of an ongoing doing) and in having which we are legible as capacious, free beings.
That is to say, in doing our gender and in being undone by its desire we engage in the performative substantiation of ourselves as socially legible beings in the crucial register of sex-gender, and are read in the world as capable of bearing agency.
It is this ethical universality inhering in the sexual, this interminable affiliation in differentiation (directly correlated, I would say, to the constitutive tension of equity in diversity that articulates the scene of consent on which the whole democratic imaginary also uneasily rests, so the stakes here are really rather fraught) which would be circumscribed and domesticated by the gesture in which queersex is identified with the Same (in a way that is Other, and Other in a way that is always also less than) and straight sex with the Other (in a way that is always also less than).
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
It Isn't True That There Have Always Been So Many Commercials, Such Loud Commercials, or Permanent Commercials in the Corner of Ongoing Programming
Just as billboards should be attacked as pollution, television commercials should be attacked as harassment. Ubiquitous repetitious interminable ever-higher volume commercials are not just insulting, are not just stupefying, are not just undermining critical faculties on which democratic citizenship depends for its flourishing, but they amount to criminal harassment and should be litigated and regulated as such. The logic of short-term profit-taking is literally incapable of putting the breaks on this development, and hence this deranging demoralizing degenerating trend simply will not stop, stall, or slow, let alone reverse, until there are laws to see to it that it does.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Every Republican Accusation Is Actually A Confession
It's not accidental, it's not incidental, it's not superficial, it's not occasional.
When Republicans accuse you of racism for noticing the racism entailed by some claim they have made or of an outcome of some policy they advocate, their accusation that you are racist is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their own racism that it weirdly feels like it is.
When Republicans accuse you of elitism for caring more about everyday people than billionaires, their accusation that you are elitist is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their own elitism that it weirdly feels like it is.
When Republicans campaigning for a place in government accuse government as such of incompetence, corruption, profligacy, fraud, thuggery you can be sure that their accusation is precisely the confession of the assumptions that will guide their governance, and you can be sure that the incompetence, corruption, profligacy, fraud, and thuggery they author will further substantiate the accusation and confessional declaration of the next generation of Republicans to follow them into the slaughterhouse of their making.
When Republicans accuse you of pining for tyranny because you believe in good government of, by, and for the people, their accusation that you are a tyrant ready to unleash the jack-boots of police brutality is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the promptings of their own authoritarian id, the one that dismantles civil liberties and lies us into endless wars and sends riot police into citizen assemblies literally every time they are in any position to do so.
When Republicans accuse you of thwarting their "Culture of Life" theirs is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the hater of women who wants them to die in back alley abortions for daring to have pleasure in life, the hater of actually living children who wants them to die of starvation, abuse, ignorance, hopelessness, and should they survive long enough, eventually as cannon-fodder in their wars, the hater of laws regulating machine guns in our streets or poisons in our homes or the soundness of our children's educations or the safety of our food supply or the reliability of our infrastructure or protection against pandemic or catastrophic weather, they are instead the dread armies of a palpable Culture of Death, and their accusations stink of the death on their breath and in our their heartless hearts.
When Republicans accuse you of hating America their accusation is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their hatred for the actual diversity of American lifeways in this secular, multicultural, continent-scaled scrum of collaboration and contestation and everyday people, and for the actual democratizing promise, never yet fulfilled but always breaking out anew, of our American ethos, our founding, immigrating, emancipating, progressing, unionizing, New Dealing, civil righting, war-protesting, secularizing, ecologizing, queering, browning, legacies into a presence pushing from and into elsewhere and other-wise, peer to peer.
When Republicans accuse you of meddling in private life, undermining individual choice, strangling innovation their accusation is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the wiretapping spy, the anti-intellectual who thinks his is the Party of Ideas, the hyperbolic huckster who thinks his wishes are assets, the bully and bore who mistakes self-promotion for creativity, the relentlessly conventional individualist, the mocker of difference, the pinched, puritanical, moralizing crusader against the happiness of gay folks and women who choose to end unwanted pregnancies or facilitate wanted ones against convention and kids in school with questions and single folks and slackers and pot smokers and poets and freethinkers and people with a cause or an idea or a creation or who care enough to do something the least bit unexpected.
It is not enough to declare these perplexing displacements self-deceptions, propaganda lies, or even the Big Lies of fascist mass-mediation (although a full accounting would testify to all these facets): This projection is the quintessential gesture of alienated moralizing oligarchs in a modern (if I may telescope this brutally briefly, I mean "modern" in the sense of the ongoing and in fact interminable re-enactment of the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and, hence, yes, that "modern" includes late-moderns, post-moderns, a-moderns, and all the rest of that hoo-hah) that is to say, our whole secular/aestheticized ethical/democratizing sociocultural terrain. This confessional displacement into accusation is the very architecture of reaction that makes the politics of the Right what it is properly grasped as in its fundamentalism, in its moralism, in its hostility to democracy and worldiness -- in a word we seem all too readily and wrongly to have set aside -- Reactionary.
When Republicans accuse you of racism for noticing the racism entailed by some claim they have made or of an outcome of some policy they advocate, their accusation that you are racist is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their own racism that it weirdly feels like it is.
When Republicans accuse you of elitism for caring more about everyday people than billionaires, their accusation that you are elitist is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their own elitism that it weirdly feels like it is.
When Republicans campaigning for a place in government accuse government as such of incompetence, corruption, profligacy, fraud, thuggery you can be sure that their accusation is precisely the confession of the assumptions that will guide their governance, and you can be sure that the incompetence, corruption, profligacy, fraud, and thuggery they author will further substantiate the accusation and confessional declaration of the next generation of Republicans to follow them into the slaughterhouse of their making.
When Republicans accuse you of pining for tyranny because you believe in good government of, by, and for the people, their accusation that you are a tyrant ready to unleash the jack-boots of police brutality is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the promptings of their own authoritarian id, the one that dismantles civil liberties and lies us into endless wars and sends riot police into citizen assemblies literally every time they are in any position to do so.
When Republicans accuse you of thwarting their "Culture of Life" theirs is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the hater of women who wants them to die in back alley abortions for daring to have pleasure in life, the hater of actually living children who wants them to die of starvation, abuse, ignorance, hopelessness, and should they survive long enough, eventually as cannon-fodder in their wars, the hater of laws regulating machine guns in our streets or poisons in our homes or the soundness of our children's educations or the safety of our food supply or the reliability of our infrastructure or protection against pandemic or catastrophic weather, they are instead the dread armies of a palpable Culture of Death, and their accusations stink of the death on their breath and in our their heartless hearts.
When Republicans accuse you of hating America their accusation is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of their hatred for the actual diversity of American lifeways in this secular, multicultural, continent-scaled scrum of collaboration and contestation and everyday people, and for the actual democratizing promise, never yet fulfilled but always breaking out anew, of our American ethos, our founding, immigrating, emancipating, progressing, unionizing, New Dealing, civil righting, war-protesting, secularizing, ecologizing, queering, browning, legacies into a presence pushing from and into elsewhere and other-wise, peer to peer.
When Republicans accuse you of meddling in private life, undermining individual choice, strangling innovation their accusation is precisely the displaced and perplexing confession of the wiretapping spy, the anti-intellectual who thinks his is the Party of Ideas, the hyperbolic huckster who thinks his wishes are assets, the bully and bore who mistakes self-promotion for creativity, the relentlessly conventional individualist, the mocker of difference, the pinched, puritanical, moralizing crusader against the happiness of gay folks and women who choose to end unwanted pregnancies or facilitate wanted ones against convention and kids in school with questions and single folks and slackers and pot smokers and poets and freethinkers and people with a cause or an idea or a creation or who care enough to do something the least bit unexpected.
It is not enough to declare these perplexing displacements self-deceptions, propaganda lies, or even the Big Lies of fascist mass-mediation (although a full accounting would testify to all these facets): This projection is the quintessential gesture of alienated moralizing oligarchs in a modern (if I may telescope this brutally briefly, I mean "modern" in the sense of the ongoing and in fact interminable re-enactment of the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes and, hence, yes, that "modern" includes late-moderns, post-moderns, a-moderns, and all the rest of that hoo-hah) that is to say, our whole secular/aestheticized ethical/democratizing sociocultural terrain. This confessional displacement into accusation is the very architecture of reaction that makes the politics of the Right what it is properly grasped as in its fundamentalism, in its moralism, in its hostility to democracy and worldiness -- in a word we seem all too readily and wrongly to have set aside -- Reactionary.
The Dead Zone Decade
When VH-1 coughs up its hairball of false nostalgia for the Bush decade a decade from now, they will find that music and fashion and graphic design and commercial tropes that seemed fresh and fun in 1999 felt precisely as fresh and fun in 2010, they will find that the anti-french, anti-latte, anti-nuance, anti-science, anti-Geneva Conventions Appleby's America crap narratives endlessly circulated through the media puke funnels into phony consensus lodged in no one's spirit and in no one's memory, that nothing happened, that nothing began, that nothing was made, that even all the death-dealing dwelt in death...
The 90s GAP commercials have returned for the 2009 holiday season, the streets of Paris and San Francisco fill the screens of American films and television commercials again with the romantic vibrant French surrender monkeys and Pelosi values that almost no actual Americans ever really hated however loudly the corporate-militarists barked to the contrary for a decade, and even Appleby's now promises sandwiches with arugula on artisan bread in a last-ditch pitch for survival in the reality-based community we are all incarcerated in whatever our denialism to the contrary, and just look at all the non-closeted faggots and uppity negroes and competent women reflecting the real world back to us on our television sit-coms and home-renovation shows, all as if to cry out in anguish, in panic, in denial of all the denialism, it never happened! Bush never happened! America did not expose its rot, its rancidness, its ridiculousness to a world now yawning and calling in its debts, the regularly scheduled programming is to resume, the never begotten need not even be forgotten...
Even while the Teabbagers scream even now to illegalize abortions and re-closet queers and to deny the science on which they depend to survive and to murder or incarcerate or draft all the brown people into the wage machine and the war machine, weeping that White Warmaking Wal-Mart Baby Jesus wants Our America back for the Real Americans, in a full froth of hysteria and hate they want back the lie that passes for the life of dead-eyed life-sucking Republican life, the America that never really existed and that nobody really wants, all the while a few evil old angry white men with lies in their eyes lies in their lives making fists of their hearts smelling of death and madness hold hostage the Change millions voted for, the Chance millions broke their hearts for, the Sanity to save something of the world to save some few lives to correct course the least bit before all hope is lost...
And even now we are shutting down, just plain bushed by the decade of Bush, starting already to sleep-walk through the actually demanding shattering realization that the death-dealing dot-eyed denialist epoch of Republican rule was a vast wasteland of heartlessness, thoughtlessness, lifelessness, an unreality teevee show with an ugly fake tan and a beer gut and a soulless leer with twice the commercials and a logo in the corner of the screen that never goes away, that grinds into your brain to the place where consciousness and conscience should reside, denying a decade of denialist death in life that none of us will ever get back, and from which we may never in fact recover...
Meanwhile, the futurologists ever more hysterically still declared that technology is accelerating, that acceleration of acceleration is accelerating, a kind of stillness in their silly thrill shrill shilling unstillnessology still, we are rushing still ever toward that sooper-human "post-human transition," toward that sooper-intelligent post-historical "singularity," rocketing onward up and up, is all this on the up and up? and in the pastel-hued tonalities of soft-porn the television commercials match their hysteria, hawking fetish-phones in petrochemistench bubble-wrap already tugging toward landfill and happy-pills and boner-pills in consumer go-getter bubble-brains tugging toward suicidal depression and cardiac arrest IP-enclosure side effects in the unread small print scrolling by at the spped of light, while all the super-sonic passenger planes were grounded and our space missions exploded and our computers bloated and stalled and our actual health outcomes degenerated and our water and crops and energy supplies shuddered and our biosphere fever-sweated...
And all the white boys with all their plastic-digital toys lie louder and louder, especially to themselves, and flap their hands and show off their thumbs-up in their faith in The Future, high-five future-sooper-tastology, no limits, man, looking for all the world like the most abject fools imaginable, futurological fraudsters making one last desperate pitch for that death-dealing something for nothing knee deep in the shit of the financial fraudsters and hucksters and corporate-militarist scenarists who prepared the way for them, one last techno-immortalizing digital-totalizing plastic-fantastic teledildonic robo-nano-bio-neuro-info cornucopiasmic geo-engineering late-night informerical or motivational seminar or Ponzi scheme or think-tank pie-chart, one last faith-based initiative to eat the world to build a crappy crumbling McMansion before they do us all a favor and blow their brains out.
The 90s GAP commercials have returned for the 2009 holiday season, the streets of Paris and San Francisco fill the screens of American films and television commercials again with the romantic vibrant French surrender monkeys and Pelosi values that almost no actual Americans ever really hated however loudly the corporate-militarists barked to the contrary for a decade, and even Appleby's now promises sandwiches with arugula on artisan bread in a last-ditch pitch for survival in the reality-based community we are all incarcerated in whatever our denialism to the contrary, and just look at all the non-closeted faggots and uppity negroes and competent women reflecting the real world back to us on our television sit-coms and home-renovation shows, all as if to cry out in anguish, in panic, in denial of all the denialism, it never happened! Bush never happened! America did not expose its rot, its rancidness, its ridiculousness to a world now yawning and calling in its debts, the regularly scheduled programming is to resume, the never begotten need not even be forgotten...
Even while the Teabbagers scream even now to illegalize abortions and re-closet queers and to deny the science on which they depend to survive and to murder or incarcerate or draft all the brown people into the wage machine and the war machine, weeping that White Warmaking Wal-Mart Baby Jesus wants Our America back for the Real Americans, in a full froth of hysteria and hate they want back the lie that passes for the life of dead-eyed life-sucking Republican life, the America that never really existed and that nobody really wants, all the while a few evil old angry white men with lies in their eyes lies in their lives making fists of their hearts smelling of death and madness hold hostage the Change millions voted for, the Chance millions broke their hearts for, the Sanity to save something of the world to save some few lives to correct course the least bit before all hope is lost...
And even now we are shutting down, just plain bushed by the decade of Bush, starting already to sleep-walk through the actually demanding shattering realization that the death-dealing dot-eyed denialist epoch of Republican rule was a vast wasteland of heartlessness, thoughtlessness, lifelessness, an unreality teevee show with an ugly fake tan and a beer gut and a soulless leer with twice the commercials and a logo in the corner of the screen that never goes away, that grinds into your brain to the place where consciousness and conscience should reside, denying a decade of denialist death in life that none of us will ever get back, and from which we may never in fact recover...
Meanwhile, the futurologists ever more hysterically still declared that technology is accelerating, that acceleration of acceleration is accelerating, a kind of stillness in their silly thrill shrill shilling unstillnessology still, we are rushing still ever toward that sooper-human "post-human transition," toward that sooper-intelligent post-historical "singularity," rocketing onward up and up, is all this on the up and up? and in the pastel-hued tonalities of soft-porn the television commercials match their hysteria, hawking fetish-phones in petrochemistench bubble-wrap already tugging toward landfill and happy-pills and boner-pills in consumer go-getter bubble-brains tugging toward suicidal depression and cardiac arrest IP-enclosure side effects in the unread small print scrolling by at the spped of light, while all the super-sonic passenger planes were grounded and our space missions exploded and our computers bloated and stalled and our actual health outcomes degenerated and our water and crops and energy supplies shuddered and our biosphere fever-sweated...
And all the white boys with all their plastic-digital toys lie louder and louder, especially to themselves, and flap their hands and show off their thumbs-up in their faith in The Future, high-five future-sooper-tastology, no limits, man, looking for all the world like the most abject fools imaginable, futurological fraudsters making one last desperate pitch for that death-dealing something for nothing knee deep in the shit of the financial fraudsters and hucksters and corporate-militarist scenarists who prepared the way for them, one last techno-immortalizing digital-totalizing plastic-fantastic teledildonic robo-nano-bio-neuro-info cornucopiasmic geo-engineering late-night informerical or motivational seminar or Ponzi scheme or think-tank pie-chart, one last faith-based initiative to eat the world to build a crappy crumbling McMansion before they do us all a favor and blow their brains out.
Curriculum Vitae
DALE CARRICO
dcarrico@sfai.edu
ndaleca@gmail.com
amormundi.blogspot.com
CURRENT POSITIONS
Senior Lecturer, Liberal Humanities, San Francisco Art Institute, from 2004 to the present.
Lecturer, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, from 2005 to the present.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, 2005
Indiana University, Department of Comparative Literature, 1983-1986
TEACHING FIELDS AND AREAS OF ACADEMIC INTEREST
Aesthetics and Politics
Art and Philosophy in Greek and Roman Antiquity
Critical Theory
Digital Media and Network Criticism
Gender Studies and Queer Theory
Environmental Justice
Rhetorical History, Theory and Argumentation
Peace and Reconciliation Studies
Science and Technology Studies
ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
A Neoliberalization of Basic Income Discourse? Power to Persuade: Creating and Implementing Public Policy, Cross-Sectoral Debates, September 14, 2015.
Artificial Intelligence As Alien Intelligence, boundary 2, March 25, 2015.
Geekdom Is Having a Diversifying Effect on Culture, New York Times, "Room for Debate" forum, When Geeks Rule, September 18, 2014.
Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains, Existenz, Volume 8, No. 2, Fall 2013.
Review (originally titled, "Schlock and Awesome: Why Futurism Is Worse Than You Think") of the book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler (Free Press, 2012) published by the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, May 24, 2012.
Overview of "Geo-Engineering" As Futurological Greenwashing, on Worldchanging, August 10, 2010.
Superlative Futurology, Re-Public: Re-Imagining Democracy, June 2009.
Is Obama the Face of Ongoing p2p Democratization? Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, March 16, 2009.
Selections from My Recurring Column of Anti-Futurological Critique, published by the World Future Society:
Outstanding Instructor Award, Undergraduate Student Union (SFAI), 2019
Outstanding Faculty Award, Undergraduate Student Union (SFAI), 2016
LOGS Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, Legion of Graduate Students, San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), 2010
Departmental Research Award, UC Berkeley, 2006
Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), Summer Fellowship, 2004
Pedagogy Departmental Grant, UC Berkeley, 2004
Wollenberg Grant, 2003
Fletcher Jones Memorial Fellowship, 2000-2001
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley, 1998-1999
University Block Grant, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, 1998
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, PUBLIC TALKS, AND PANELS
"Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains," American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Annual Meeting, San Francisco, March 27-31, 2013.
Panel Chair, "Thinking Outside the Frame: Avant-Garde Calligraphy, Relational Art, and New Cinema," Drawing, Interpreting, Synthesizing: Robert and Colleen Haas Scholars Tenth Annual Spring Research Conference, University of California at Berkeley, May 2, 2008
"The Sense and Significance of the Emerging Netroots: Digby, Benkler, Arendt in the Progressive Blogosphere," Roosevelt Institution, University of California at Berkeley, October 24, 2007
“Media Tactics for the New World Order: A Screening and Panel Discussion of the Film Loose Change,” San Francisco Art Institute, October 11, 2006
“Alone With My Thoughts: Private and Public Faces of Cognitive Self-Determination,” Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights, Stanford University, May 27, 2006
"Pay to Peer: Basic Income and the Emerging Peer-to-Peer Network Culture," The Fourth Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network: "The Right to Economic Security," New York, NY, March 5, 2005
“Setting the Scene: Creating Conditions in Which Students Teach Themselves to Read and Write Argumentatively,” Center for Individual Learning, San Francisco Art Institute, February, 2005
“Parables of Virtuality: ‘Burning Chrome’ and the Dark Night of Bodies,” Representations of the Virtual, University of California at Berkeley, February 17, 2005
“Teaching the Four Habits of Argumentative Writing,” Pedagogy Workshop, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric, October 25, 2004
“Vulgar Biocentrism Among the Technophiles,” Art in the Posthuman Era, University of Toronto, August 6, 2004
“Doin’ What Comes Naturally: Margaret Somerville’s Bio-Conservative Deployment of the Precautionary Principle in Her Case against Gay Marriage,” New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics, University of California at Berkeley, March 12, 2004
“’Keep Your Laws Off My Body!’: Biotechnology and the Politics of Choice, from Reproductive to Morphological Freedom,” New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics,University of California at Berkeley, March, 11, 2004
“Problems in Teaching Rhetoric,” Department of Rhetoric Pedagogy Seminar, University of California at Berkeley, October 20, 2003
“Technocultural Singularity and the Shifting Terrain of Humanist Politics: Liberal Humanism, Transhumanism, Posthumanism.” Born of Desertion: Singularity, Collectivity, Revolution, Marxist Reading Group, University of Florida, March 21, 2003
“Abject Beasts: Impurity, Solidarity, and the Politics of Vegetarianism,” Subject, Object, Abject, University of California at Berkeley, February 28, 2003
“Animal Rites: Vegetarian Criticism, Vegetarian Selves,” Culture Is Ordinary, Bowling Green State University, April 18, 1997
“The New Market: Intellectual Property Rights and the Technology Debates,” Interface, Southern College of Technology, October 21, 1993
CONFERENCE ORGANIZING
Organizing Committee, Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights Conference, Stanford University, May 26-28, 2006
Chief Organizer, the 13th Annual, Boundaries in Question Conference -- Feminists Face the Future: New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics, University of California at Berkeley, March 11-13, 2004
Chief Organizer, the 12th Annual, Boundaries in Question Conference, University of California at Berkeley, February, 28-March 1, 2003
Co-Organizer, OutSouth: Queer Arts Festival, Asheville, North Carolina, September 24-27, 1992.
ACTIVITIES AND ACADEMIC SERVICE
NASAD Submission Committee for New San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) Degree Program, "Art, Place, and Public Studies," 2018
Editor, SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute) Adjunct Faculty Newsletter, 2016-2019.
Research Team and Draft Committee for the Liberal Arts Program Assessment at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), 2010-2011
Pedagogy Working Group, Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, 2004-2005
Steward, Dept. of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, Association of Graduate Student Employees, 1996-1998
TEACHING
Graduate Courses
CS 500 Introduction to Critical Theory (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2020
Trans Theories, Histories, Practices (SFAI, Independent Study) Spring 2020
dcarrico@sfai.edu
ndaleca@gmail.com
amormundi.blogspot.com
CURRENT POSITIONS
Senior Lecturer, Liberal Humanities, San Francisco Art Institute, from 2004 to the present.
Lecturer, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, from 2005 to the present.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, 2005
Dissertation: Pancryptics: Technocultural Transformations of the Subject of PrivacyM.A., Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University, 1995
Committee: Judith Butler, Chair (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature); Mark Poster (History, UC Irvine); Pamela Samuelson (School of Law and School of Information Management and Systems); Linda Williams (Rhetoric and Film Studies)
Thesis: Technology and Proliferating “Queer” BodiesB.A., cum laude. Department of English, Georgia State University, 1989
Committee: Timothy Renick, Chair; Linda Bell, Stephen Prothero
Many of the themes of the thesis were summarized and published as an article, Technology Is Making Queers of Us All, published by the magazine BetterHumans, January 5, 2004.
Indiana University, Department of Comparative Literature, 1983-1986
TEACHING FIELDS AND AREAS OF ACADEMIC INTEREST
Aesthetics and Politics
Art and Philosophy in Greek and Roman Antiquity
Critical Theory
Digital Media and Network Criticism
Gender Studies and Queer Theory
Environmental Justice
Rhetorical History, Theory and Argumentation
Peace and Reconciliation Studies
Science and Technology Studies
ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
A Neoliberalization of Basic Income Discourse? Power to Persuade: Creating and Implementing Public Policy, Cross-Sectoral Debates, September 14, 2015.
Artificial Intelligence As Alien Intelligence, boundary 2, March 25, 2015.
Geekdom Is Having a Diversifying Effect on Culture, New York Times, "Room for Debate" forum, When Geeks Rule, September 18, 2014.
Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains, Existenz, Volume 8, No. 2, Fall 2013.
Review (originally titled, "Schlock and Awesome: Why Futurism Is Worse Than You Think") of the book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler (Free Press, 2012) published by the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, May 24, 2012.
Overview of "Geo-Engineering" As Futurological Greenwashing, on Worldchanging, August 10, 2010.
Superlative Futurology, Re-Public: Re-Imagining Democracy, June 2009.
Is Obama the Face of Ongoing p2p Democratization? Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives, March 16, 2009.
Selections from My Recurring Column of Anti-Futurological Critique, published by the World Future Society:
Ten Reasons to Take Seriously the Transhumanists, Singularitarians, Techno-Immortalists, Nano-Cornucopiasts and Other Assorted Robot Cultists, March 15, 2012.GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS
Futurological Brickbats (A Selection), March 22, 2012.
Ten Futurological Admonitions, March 29, 2012.
What Are People Really Talking About When They Talk About "Geo-Engineering"? April 14, 2012.
"Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again" May 5, 2012.
The Unbearable Stasis of Accelerating Change, May 27, 2012.
SpaceX Space Cadets Set Their Sights On Libertopian Mars, June 3, 2012.
How to Write Your Transhumanist Article (A Helpful Guide for More Profitable Prophesying) June 13, 2012.
The "Financial Singularity" Is Not About Mystery But About Fraud, June 17, 2012.
Singularitarian Hype and the Denial of History, June 17, 2012.
"Am I Going To Become A Cyborg In The Future?" July 7, 2012.
"I Tweet From Basement, Home of Mom": Time For A Cyberspace Manifesto 2.0? July 15, 2012.
Performance Artist and Sousveillance Activist Steve Mann Assaulted in Paris McDonalds, July 17, 2012.
Exxon-Mobil's "Geo-Engineering" Discourse Is Just More Futurological Greenwashing, July 23, 2012.
All Humans Are Mortal. Socrates Is Human. Therefore, Socrates Is Mortal, August 1, 2012.
Tributaries: Somebodies That Used Gotye To Know Themselves, August 15, 2012.
Futurological Defenses of Automation, Outsourcing, Crowdsourcing, and Precarizing Labor, August 29, 2012.
Techno-Immortalists Exploit Dying Women To Peddle Pseudo-Science and Threaten Critics, September 3, 2012.
A Comment on Artificial Imbecillence, October 7, 2012.
Dressing for The Future, October 17, 2012.
Is "Geo-Engineering" Really Just Gardening? November 19, 2012.
Insecurity Theatre: How Futurological Existential-Risk Discourse Deranges Serious Technodevelopmental Deliberation, November 28, 2012.
Paul Krugman Flirts With Futurism, January 2, 2013.
"Driverless Cars" As Dead-Ender Car Culture Apologia, January 7, 2013.
Private Space Follies, January 10, 2013.
Tim O'Reilly on: "The Golden Age,"January 24, 2013.
p2p is EITHER Pay to Peer OR it is Peers to Precarity, March 23, 2013.
"The Future" Is Always Somebody Else's Pain and Payment for Our Sins, April 3, 2013.
Why Does Tim Wu Side With the Technoblatherers?, April 14, 2013.
Farhad Manjoo's Camera Reassura, April 19, 2013.
Zuckerberg's Privation, April 27, 2013.
Peter Thiel Against Hollywood Against "The Future," May 15, 2013.
Googlenature, May 16, 2013.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tweet, June 1, 2013.
Transcending the Lawnmower Man, April 17, 2014.
What Is the Futurological?, November 29, 2014.
Eric Garner and the Cop Cam Sham, December 5, 2014.
Techbro Mythoppoetics, December 24, 2014.
The Inevitable Cruelty of Algorithmic Mediation, December 26, 2014.
Futurology's Shortsighted Foresight on AI, January 15, 2015.
The Yearning Annex: Google Commits Millions for Robot Cult Indoctrination in Plutocratic Venture-Capitalist Dystopia, January 28, 2015.
We Are The Killer Robots, February 4, 2015.
Artificial Intelligence As Alien Intelligence, February 25, 2015.
Tools for Techno-Transcendental Tricksters: The Turing Con and the Reductionist Shell Game, March 14, 2015.
#FuturologicalFollies, April 25, 2015.
Outstanding Instructor Award, Undergraduate Student Union (SFAI), 2019
Outstanding Faculty Award, Undergraduate Student Union (SFAI), 2016
LOGS Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award, Legion of Graduate Students, San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), 2010
Departmental Research Award, UC Berkeley, 2006
Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), Summer Fellowship, 2004
Pedagogy Departmental Grant, UC Berkeley, 2004
Wollenberg Grant, 2003
Fletcher Jones Memorial Fellowship, 2000-2001
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UC Berkeley, 1998-1999
University Block Grant, Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, 1998
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, PUBLIC TALKS, AND PANELS
"Futurological Discourse and Posthuman Terrains," American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Annual Meeting, San Francisco, March 27-31, 2013.
Panel Chair, "Thinking Outside the Frame: Avant-Garde Calligraphy, Relational Art, and New Cinema," Drawing, Interpreting, Synthesizing: Robert and Colleen Haas Scholars Tenth Annual Spring Research Conference, University of California at Berkeley, May 2, 2008
"The Sense and Significance of the Emerging Netroots: Digby, Benkler, Arendt in the Progressive Blogosphere," Roosevelt Institution, University of California at Berkeley, October 24, 2007
“Media Tactics for the New World Order: A Screening and Panel Discussion of the Film Loose Change,” San Francisco Art Institute, October 11, 2006
“Alone With My Thoughts: Private and Public Faces of Cognitive Self-Determination,” Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights, Stanford University, May 27, 2006
"Pay to Peer: Basic Income and the Emerging Peer-to-Peer Network Culture," The Fourth Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network: "The Right to Economic Security," New York, NY, March 5, 2005
“Setting the Scene: Creating Conditions in Which Students Teach Themselves to Read and Write Argumentatively,” Center for Individual Learning, San Francisco Art Institute, February, 2005
“Parables of Virtuality: ‘Burning Chrome’ and the Dark Night of Bodies,” Representations of the Virtual, University of California at Berkeley, February 17, 2005
“Teaching the Four Habits of Argumentative Writing,” Pedagogy Workshop, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric, October 25, 2004
“Vulgar Biocentrism Among the Technophiles,” Art in the Posthuman Era, University of Toronto, August 6, 2004
“Doin’ What Comes Naturally: Margaret Somerville’s Bio-Conservative Deployment of the Precautionary Principle in Her Case against Gay Marriage,” New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics, University of California at Berkeley, March 12, 2004
“’Keep Your Laws Off My Body!’: Biotechnology and the Politics of Choice, from Reproductive to Morphological Freedom,” New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics,University of California at Berkeley, March, 11, 2004
“Problems in Teaching Rhetoric,” Department of Rhetoric Pedagogy Seminar, University of California at Berkeley, October 20, 2003
“Technocultural Singularity and the Shifting Terrain of Humanist Politics: Liberal Humanism, Transhumanism, Posthumanism.” Born of Desertion: Singularity, Collectivity, Revolution, Marxist Reading Group, University of Florida, March 21, 2003
“Abject Beasts: Impurity, Solidarity, and the Politics of Vegetarianism,” Subject, Object, Abject, University of California at Berkeley, February 28, 2003
“Animal Rites: Vegetarian Criticism, Vegetarian Selves,” Culture Is Ordinary, Bowling Green State University, April 18, 1997
“The New Market: Intellectual Property Rights and the Technology Debates,” Interface, Southern College of Technology, October 21, 1993
CONFERENCE ORGANIZING
Organizing Committee, Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights Conference, Stanford University, May 26-28, 2006
Chief Organizer, the 13th Annual, Boundaries in Question Conference -- Feminists Face the Future: New Feminist Perspectives on Biotechnology and Bioethics, University of California at Berkeley, March 11-13, 2004
Chief Organizer, the 12th Annual, Boundaries in Question Conference, University of California at Berkeley, February, 28-March 1, 2003
Co-Organizer, OutSouth: Queer Arts Festival, Asheville, North Carolina, September 24-27, 1992.
ACTIVITIES AND ACADEMIC SERVICE
NASAD Submission Committee for New San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) Degree Program, "Art, Place, and Public Studies," 2018
Editor, SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute) Adjunct Faculty Newsletter, 2016-2019.
Research Team and Draft Committee for the Liberal Arts Program Assessment at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), 2010-2011
Pedagogy Working Group, Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley, 2004-2005
Steward, Dept. of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley, Association of Graduate Student Employees, 1996-1998
TEACHING
Graduate Courses
CS 500 Introduction to Critical Theory (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2020
Trans Theories, Histories, Practices (SFAI, Independent Study) Spring 2020
CS 500 Introduction to Critical Theory (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2019
HTCA 520 Designs On Us: The Politics and Anti-Politics of Design Discourse (SFAI) Fall 2018
CS 500 Introduction to Critical Theory (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2018
Un/Doing Subjects: Jewish, Queer, Crip (SFAI, Independent Study) Spring 2018
CS 520 Queer Manifestations (SFAI) Fall 2017
CS 500 Fact, Figure, Fetish (SFAI) Fall 2016
CS 500P Biopunk! Bioart and Bioethics (SFAI) Spring 2016
CS 500A Introduction to Critical Theory (SFAI) Spring 2015
CS 500 Designs on Us: Anti-Politics in Green, Media, & Medical Design Discourse (SFAI) Fall 2014
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2014
CS 500A Introduction to Critical Theory (SFAI) Spring 2014
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2013
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2013
CS 500 Fetish, Figure, Fact (SFAI) Spring 2013.
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2012
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2012
CS 500 What Now? Aesthetics and Politics Between Past and Future (SFAI) Spring 2012
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2011
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring, 2011
CS 500 Designs on Us: Anti-Politics in Green, Media, & Medical Design (SFAI) Spring 2011
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2010
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2010
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2009
CS 500 Design for Living: Artifice and Agency (SFAI) Spring 2009
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2009
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2008
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2008
Upper Division Undergraduate Courses
HTCA 520 Designs On Us: The Politics and Anti-Politics of Design Discourse (SFAI) Fall 2018
CS 500 Introduction to Critical Theory (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2018
Un/Doing Subjects: Jewish, Queer, Crip (SFAI, Independent Study) Spring 2018
CS 520 Queer Manifestations (SFAI) Fall 2017
CS 500 Fact, Figure, Fetish (SFAI) Fall 2016
CS 500P Biopunk! Bioart and Bioethics (SFAI) Spring 2016
CS 500A Introduction to Critical Theory (SFAI) Spring 2015
CS 500 Designs on Us: Anti-Politics in Green, Media, & Medical Design Discourse (SFAI) Fall 2014
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2014
CS 500A Introduction to Critical Theory (SFAI) Spring 2014
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2013
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2013
CS 500 Fetish, Figure, Fact (SFAI) Spring 2013.
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2012
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2012
CS 500 What Now? Aesthetics and Politics Between Past and Future (SFAI) Spring 2012
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2011
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring, 2011
CS 500 Designs on Us: Anti-Politics in Green, Media, & Medical Design (SFAI) Spring 2011
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2010
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2010
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2009
CS 500 Design for Living: Artifice and Agency (SFAI) Spring 2009
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2009
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Fall 2008
EMS 590 Thesis I: Independent Investigations (SFAI) Spring 2008
Upper Division Undergraduate Courses
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI), Fall 2021
RHET 116 "Introduction to Critique and Critical Theory" (UC Berkeley), Summer 2021
CS301 Critical Theory B: Peace in Pieces: Everyday Violences and Nonviolent Resistances (SFAI), Spring 2021
CS301 Critical Theory B: For Futurity: A Clash of Futurisms (SFAI) Summer 2020
HUMN 224 Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2020
CS300B Critical Theory B, "Queer Manifestations"(SFAI) Fall 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2018
CS300B Critical Theory B "Digital Democracy, Digital Anti-Democracy" (SFAI) Fall 2018
RHET 153 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Summer 2018
HUMN 237 Peace in Pieces: Nonviolence (SFAI) Fall 2017
RHET 166 Digital Anti-Democratization Under the Law (UCB) Summer 2017
RHET 153 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Summer 2017
CS301 Critical Theory B: For Futurity: A Clash of Futurisms (SFAI) Spring 2017
RHET 103A Patriarchal Conviction in Greece and Rome (UCB) Fall 2016
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2016.
HUMN 224 Are We Not Men? Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity (SFAI) Spring 2016
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2015
HUMN 207 Homo Economicus: Staging the Contradictions of Modern Political Economy in the English Comedy of Manners (SFAI) Fall 2015
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2015
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Digital Democracy, Digital Anti-Democracy" (SFAI) Spring 2015
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2014
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2014
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B Planetary Thinking and Environmental Justice (SFAI) Spring 2014
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2013
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2013
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2013
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B p2p Democratization and Anti-Democratization (SFAI) Fall 2012
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Summer 2012
RHET 103A Rhetoric in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2012
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2012
HUMN 300A Critical Theory B "Technoscience and Environmental Justice" (SFAI) Fall 2011
RHET 121 The Rhetoric of Narrative Selfhood in the Graphic Novel (UCB) Summer 2011
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Summer 2011
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Democracy, Peer to Peer" (SFAI) Fall 2010
HUMN 300A Philosophy to Post-Philosophy, Humanism to Post-Humanism (SFAI) Summer 2010
RHET 171 Altars and Alters to the Market: Rhetoric in the Neoliberal Epoch (UCB) Spring 2010
RHET 105 Homo Economicus: Setting the Stage for Enterprising Modernities (UCB) Spring 2010
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Green Theories, Green Practices" Spring 2010
Rhetoric 181: Green Rhetoric (UC Berkeley), Fall 2009
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Theory After Philosophy, Humanity After Humanism" Fall 2009
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Crisis and Critique," Summer 2009
Rhetoric 199 (Independent Study): Obama's Rhetoric (UC Berkeley), Spring 2009
HUMN 300B: Critical Theory B, "Theory and Technoscience, Peer to Peer" Fall 2008
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Theory, Science, and the Human," Fall 2008
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Crisis and Critique," Summer 2008
RHET 103B Politics and Aesthetics (UC Berkeley), Spring, 2008
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI), Spring, 2008
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B, “Nature and Criticism” (San Francisco Art Institute), Fall, 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Theory, Thing, Fetish” (San Francisco Art Institute), Fall, 2007
RHET 181 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Fall 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI), Summer 2007
RHET 189 Mediated Republic: From Broadcast to p2p [Peer-to-Peer] (UCB) Spring 2007
RHET 103B Politics and Aesthetics (UC Berkeley), Spring, 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A “The Enterprise of Interpretation” (SFAI) Spring 2007
RHET 121A "Biopunk and the Bioethical Imaginary" (UCB) Fall 2006
RHET 132 "Design for Living: Artifice and Agency" (UCB) Fall 2006
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B, “Theory Faces Technoscience” (SFAI) Fall 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI) Fall 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Thinking What We Are Doing” (SFAI) Summer 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Objectification and Objection” (SFAI) Spring 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Critique, Subjection, Prostheses” (SFAI) Fall 2005
RHET 110 Varieties of Techno-Ethical Discourse: Bioethics/Neuroethics/Roboethics/Media Criticism (UCB) Summer 2005
RHET 199 (Independent Study) Arendt on the Given, the Forgiven and the Gift (UCB) Summer 2005
HUMN 300B: Critical Theory B, "Political Discourse of Digital Networks” (SFAI), Spring, 2005
RHET 110 Deliberation, Demonstration, Debate about Technological Change (UCB) Summer 2004
RHET 110 Close Reading as Argumentative Discourse (UCB) Summer 2002
Lower Division Undergraduate Courses
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2019
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2018
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2016
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Summer 2015
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Fact, Figure, Fetish" (UCB) Summer 2014
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Fact, Figure, Fetish" (UCB) Summer 2013
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2012
RHET 1B Argument Against Violence, Argument As Violence (UCB) Summer 2011
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2010
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Summer 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Spring 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Fall 2008
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, Conviction, Compulsion, Obligation (UCB) Summer 2008
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "Persuasion, Violence, Nonviolence" (UCB) Summer 2007
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation (UCB) Spring 2006
RHET 1A Ranting, Raving, Writing (UCB) Spring 2006
RHET 2 Public Speaking (UCB) Summer 2005
ENGL 100 Composition A, Ranting, Raving, Writing (SFAI) Spring 2005
RHET 2 Public Speaking (UCB) Summer 2004
RHET 1A Technology and Democracy (UC Berkeley) Summer 2003
K50, Ind. Study “Rhetoric of Liberal Citizenship” (NYU, Gallatin School) Fall 2002
RHET 1B Ranting and Raving (UCB) Fall 2001
RHET 10 An Introduction to Rhetoric and Argumentation (UCB) Summer, 2001
RHET 1A The Craft of Writing “The Presence of the Future” (UCB) Spring 2000
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “The Violence in Everyday Life” (UCB) Fall 1999
RHET 10 Introduction to the Field of Rhetoric, with Jill Stauffer, Co-Instructor (UCB) Summer 1999
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “Derangements of Desire” (UCB) Spring 1999
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “The Subject of Pedagogy” (UCB) Spring 1998
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (UCB) Fall 1997
MASTERS THESES DIRECTED
Taylor Shell -- Fragile, Contains Feelings -- Public Intimacies: The Stressed Body in Contemporary Performance Art 2020 (SFAI)
Henry Chambers -- Anonymous Activist Artist Collectives and Occupation of Space Through Remnants of A Performative Assembly 2020 (SFAI)
Giuliana Funkhouser -- Software for Vibrating Bodies: Scores in Sympathetic Translation, 2020 (SFAI)
Jordan Taylor Holms -- After Necessity: Codifications of Labor, Space, and Difference in Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Maintenance Art, 2019 (SFAI)
Candace Cui -- Bridging the GAP: Audience Interaction in the Digital Age and the Google Art Project, 2012 (SFAI).
Ian Paul -- Border Politics, Border Poetics, 2011 (SFAI)
Bokyung Kim -- Presence in Present Tense: The Significant Moment in JoAnn Verburg, Carla Shapiro and Kimsooja, 2011 (SFAI)
Adam Prince, Dams, Discourse, and Development: Refiguring the Flows of Progress, 2010 (SFAI)
HONORS THESES DIRECTED
Jason Dang, "Just Laughs: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a Comedic Insurgency against Mass News Media," Spring 2009 (UCB)
Ian Ferguson, "Promoting the Progress: A Comedy," Spring 2009 (UCB)
Eugene Chow, "Peer to Peer: Ethnic Resistance By Way of Incongruity," Spring 2008 (UCB).
Nicolas Lauricella, "Godard on YouTube: Peer to Peer and True Montage," Spring 2008 (UCB)
Nicole Holly Gordon, "The Architecture of the Invisible: On Women, Workers, and Water in New Argentine Cinema," Spring 2008 (UCB)
Chad Lott, "Iron John Conner," Fall 2008 (UCB)
Bryn Esplin, "Reality, Tradition and Device: A Critique of Judgment in Reality Television," Fall 2007 (UCB).
CS301 Critical Theory B: For Futurity: A Clash of Futurisms (SFAI) Summer 2020
HUMN 224 Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity (San Francisco Art Institute) Spring 2020
CS300B Critical Theory B, "Queer Manifestations"(SFAI) Fall 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2019
CS300A Critical Theory A, "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2018
CS300B Critical Theory B "Digital Democracy, Digital Anti-Democracy" (SFAI) Fall 2018
RHET 153 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Summer 2018
HUMN 237 Peace in Pieces: Nonviolence (SFAI) Fall 2017
RHET 166 Digital Anti-Democratization Under the Law (UCB) Summer 2017
RHET 153 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Summer 2017
CS301 Critical Theory B: For Futurity: A Clash of Futurisms (SFAI) Spring 2017
RHET 103A Patriarchal Conviction in Greece and Rome (UCB) Fall 2016
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2016.
HUMN 224 Are We Not Men? Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity (SFAI) Spring 2016
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2015
HUMN 207 Homo Economicus: Staging the Contradictions of Modern Political Economy in the English Comedy of Manners (SFAI) Fall 2015
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2015
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Digital Democracy, Digital Anti-Democracy" (SFAI) Spring 2015
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2014
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2014
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B Planetary Thinking and Environmental Justice (SFAI) Spring 2014
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Fall 2013
RHET 103A Patriarchal Convention and Conviction in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2013
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2013
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B p2p Democratization and Anti-Democratization (SFAI) Fall 2012
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Summer 2012
RHET 103A Rhetoric in Classical Antiquity (UCB) Summer 2012
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Spring 2012
HUMN 300A Critical Theory B "Technoscience and Environmental Justice" (SFAI) Fall 2011
RHET 121 The Rhetoric of Narrative Selfhood in the Graphic Novel (UCB) Summer 2011
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A "The Point Is to Change It" (SFAI) Summer 2011
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Democracy, Peer to Peer" (SFAI) Fall 2010
HUMN 300A Philosophy to Post-Philosophy, Humanism to Post-Humanism (SFAI) Summer 2010
RHET 171 Altars and Alters to the Market: Rhetoric in the Neoliberal Epoch (UCB) Spring 2010
RHET 105 Homo Economicus: Setting the Stage for Enterprising Modernities (UCB) Spring 2010
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B "Green Theories, Green Practices" Spring 2010
Rhetoric 181: Green Rhetoric (UC Berkeley), Fall 2009
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Theory After Philosophy, Humanity After Humanism" Fall 2009
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Crisis and Critique," Summer 2009
Rhetoric 199 (Independent Study): Obama's Rhetoric (UC Berkeley), Spring 2009
HUMN 300B: Critical Theory B, "Theory and Technoscience, Peer to Peer" Fall 2008
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Theory, Science, and the Human," Fall 2008
HUMN 300A: Critical Theory A, "Crisis and Critique," Summer 2008
RHET 103B Politics and Aesthetics (UC Berkeley), Spring, 2008
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI), Spring, 2008
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B, “Nature and Criticism” (San Francisco Art Institute), Fall, 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Theory, Thing, Fetish” (San Francisco Art Institute), Fall, 2007
RHET 181 Green Rhetoric (UCB) Fall 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI), Summer 2007
RHET 189 Mediated Republic: From Broadcast to p2p [Peer-to-Peer] (UCB) Spring 2007
RHET 103B Politics and Aesthetics (UC Berkeley), Spring, 2007
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A “The Enterprise of Interpretation” (SFAI) Spring 2007
RHET 121A "Biopunk and the Bioethical Imaginary" (UCB) Fall 2006
RHET 132 "Design for Living: Artifice and Agency" (UCB) Fall 2006
HUMN 300B Critical Theory B, “Theory Faces Technoscience” (SFAI) Fall 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “The Point Is to Change It” (SFAI) Fall 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Thinking What We Are Doing” (SFAI) Summer 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Objectification and Objection” (SFAI) Spring 2006
HUMN 300A Critical Theory A, “Critique, Subjection, Prostheses” (SFAI) Fall 2005
RHET 110 Varieties of Techno-Ethical Discourse: Bioethics/Neuroethics/Roboethics/Media Criticism (UCB) Summer 2005
RHET 199 (Independent Study) Arendt on the Given, the Forgiven and the Gift (UCB) Summer 2005
HUMN 300B: Critical Theory B, "Political Discourse of Digital Networks” (SFAI), Spring, 2005
RHET 110 Deliberation, Demonstration, Debate about Technological Change (UCB) Summer 2004
RHET 110 Close Reading as Argumentative Discourse (UCB) Summer 2002
Lower Division Undergraduate Courses
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2019
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2018
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UC Berkeley) Summer 2016
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Summer 2015
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Fact, Figure, Fetish" (UCB) Summer 2014
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Fact, Figure, Fetish" (UCB) Summer 2013
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2012
RHET 1B Argument Against Violence, Argument As Violence (UCB) Summer 2011
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2010
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation, "Who Holds the Keys?" (UCB) Summer 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Summer 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Spring 2009
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" (UCB) Fall 2008
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, Conviction, Compulsion, Obligation (UCB) Summer 2008
RHET 10 The Rhetoric of Argument, "Persuasion, Violence, Nonviolence" (UCB) Summer 2007
RHET 20 The Rhetoric of Interpretation (UCB) Spring 2006
RHET 1A Ranting, Raving, Writing (UCB) Spring 2006
RHET 2 Public Speaking (UCB) Summer 2005
ENGL 100 Composition A, Ranting, Raving, Writing (SFAI) Spring 2005
RHET 2 Public Speaking (UCB) Summer 2004
RHET 1A Technology and Democracy (UC Berkeley) Summer 2003
K50, Ind. Study “Rhetoric of Liberal Citizenship” (NYU, Gallatin School) Fall 2002
RHET 1B Ranting and Raving (UCB) Fall 2001
RHET 10 An Introduction to Rhetoric and Argumentation (UCB) Summer, 2001
RHET 1A The Craft of Writing “The Presence of the Future” (UCB) Spring 2000
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “The Violence in Everyday Life” (UCB) Fall 1999
RHET 10 Introduction to the Field of Rhetoric, with Jill Stauffer, Co-Instructor (UCB) Summer 1999
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “Derangements of Desire” (UCB) Spring 1999
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “The Subject of Pedagogy” (UCB) Spring 1998
RHET 1B The Craft of Writing “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (UCB) Fall 1997
MASTERS THESES DIRECTED
Taylor Shell -- Fragile, Contains Feelings -- Public Intimacies: The Stressed Body in Contemporary Performance Art 2020 (SFAI)
Henry Chambers -- Anonymous Activist Artist Collectives and Occupation of Space Through Remnants of A Performative Assembly 2020 (SFAI)
Giuliana Funkhouser -- Software for Vibrating Bodies: Scores in Sympathetic Translation, 2020 (SFAI)
Jordan Taylor Holms -- After Necessity: Codifications of Labor, Space, and Difference in Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s Maintenance Art, 2019 (SFAI)
Candace Cui -- Bridging the GAP: Audience Interaction in the Digital Age and the Google Art Project, 2012 (SFAI).
Ian Paul -- Border Politics, Border Poetics, 2011 (SFAI)
Bokyung Kim -- Presence in Present Tense: The Significant Moment in JoAnn Verburg, Carla Shapiro and Kimsooja, 2011 (SFAI)
Adam Prince, Dams, Discourse, and Development: Refiguring the Flows of Progress, 2010 (SFAI)
HONORS THESES DIRECTED
Jason Dang, "Just Laughs: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a Comedic Insurgency against Mass News Media," Spring 2009 (UCB)
Ian Ferguson, "Promoting the Progress: A Comedy," Spring 2009 (UCB)
Eugene Chow, "Peer to Peer: Ethnic Resistance By Way of Incongruity," Spring 2008 (UCB).
Nicolas Lauricella, "Godard on YouTube: Peer to Peer and True Montage," Spring 2008 (UCB)
Nicole Holly Gordon, "The Architecture of the Invisible: On Women, Workers, and Water in New Argentine Cinema," Spring 2008 (UCB)
Chad Lott, "Iron John Conner," Fall 2008 (UCB)
Bryn Esplin, "Reality, Tradition and Device: A Critique of Judgment in Reality Television," Fall 2007 (UCB).
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Let A Bazillion Flowers Bloom
Upgraded from the Moot:
"Martin" in the Moot: So you wouldn't care about transhumanists if they dropped all pretenses of respecting science and just called their views a faith?
Yeah, pretty much, actually.
Of course, one has to remember that not all religious people disrespect science just because they are religious. The problem isn't that people deeply respect beliefs/values other than scientific ones: moral, aesthetic, ethical, and political beliefs are indispensable and can even be reasonable or unreasonable in my view in ways that are open to reasonable discussion, but are none of them properly construed by way of the criteria of reasonable scientific belief.
The problem arises when one confuses or seeks to reduce the terms proper to various modes of belief/value into those of another mode. I don't doubt that there are Catholics or Singularitarians who respect science (or sensible policy-making in relatively accountable and consensual diverse-stakeholder democracies) in a non-negligible way, but this wouldn't make them right to describe their Catholicism or Singularitarianism as scientific enterprises or policy think-tanks.
Even if the superlative futurologists admitted that they are essentially science fiction fanboy salons that have taken on the definitive character of sub(cult)ural faith-based initiatives aspiring toward faithly personal transcendence I would surely still think them quite silly -- as I do most forms of religiosity (being a crusty athiestical type myself) -- indeed, in their case, not just silly but also marginal and defensive faith-based communities aspiring somewhat sadly to become at most something like Mormonism or Scientology when they grow up.
Among the more interesting or reasonable adherents of their faith I would probably just quietly translate their expressions of faith into signals of moral/subcultural membership or assertions of aesthetic taste in order to make sense of them in a way that enabled me to engage with them as my peers on a case by case basis and not let their weird religiosity get too much in the way of keeping up the conversation. That's how I am with most religious folks so long as they don't try to convert me, or with nice and/or interesting people about whom I discover at some point that they have an unexpected religious side but thankfully which they almost never bring up because it is for them a personal matter and they grasp that it is not one of the things about them I am interested in.
But, again, if a person of faith tries to convert me, tries to insist their faith is not a faith but a kind of scientific or policy practice, or if their faith has an organizational life with anti-democratizing impacts I will publicly criticize and oppose those dimensions of their faith, while respecting their right as citizens to be faithful and celebrating the perfect reasonableness of their faith in its moral and aesthetic dimensions however much the form of those beliefs/values happen to differ from my own morals or tastes.
So long as people don't seek to undermine warrantable scientific belief-ascription by substituting the faithful/normative (the dissensus which depends on consent) for the factual (the consensus which depends on dissent) and so long as people don't work against consensual democratic equity in diversity, peer to peer, my rule is let a bazillion flowers bloom, hell, let a bazillion powers vroom.
However, to the extent that a faith takes on an organizational and political life, I will of course disapprove hierarchical or authoritarian tendencies that harm its members and I will criticize and oppose its work in the service of anti-democratizing ends, including anti-democratizing impacts it denies having a hand in either out of dishonesty or incomprehension.
"Martin" in the Moot: So you wouldn't care about transhumanists if they dropped all pretenses of respecting science and just called their views a faith?
Yeah, pretty much, actually.
Of course, one has to remember that not all religious people disrespect science just because they are religious. The problem isn't that people deeply respect beliefs/values other than scientific ones: moral, aesthetic, ethical, and political beliefs are indispensable and can even be reasonable or unreasonable in my view in ways that are open to reasonable discussion, but are none of them properly construed by way of the criteria of reasonable scientific belief.
The problem arises when one confuses or seeks to reduce the terms proper to various modes of belief/value into those of another mode. I don't doubt that there are Catholics or Singularitarians who respect science (or sensible policy-making in relatively accountable and consensual diverse-stakeholder democracies) in a non-negligible way, but this wouldn't make them right to describe their Catholicism or Singularitarianism as scientific enterprises or policy think-tanks.
Even if the superlative futurologists admitted that they are essentially science fiction fanboy salons that have taken on the definitive character of sub(cult)ural faith-based initiatives aspiring toward faithly personal transcendence I would surely still think them quite silly -- as I do most forms of religiosity (being a crusty athiestical type myself) -- indeed, in their case, not just silly but also marginal and defensive faith-based communities aspiring somewhat sadly to become at most something like Mormonism or Scientology when they grow up.
Among the more interesting or reasonable adherents of their faith I would probably just quietly translate their expressions of faith into signals of moral/subcultural membership or assertions of aesthetic taste in order to make sense of them in a way that enabled me to engage with them as my peers on a case by case basis and not let their weird religiosity get too much in the way of keeping up the conversation. That's how I am with most religious folks so long as they don't try to convert me, or with nice and/or interesting people about whom I discover at some point that they have an unexpected religious side but thankfully which they almost never bring up because it is for them a personal matter and they grasp that it is not one of the things about them I am interested in.
But, again, if a person of faith tries to convert me, tries to insist their faith is not a faith but a kind of scientific or policy practice, or if their faith has an organizational life with anti-democratizing impacts I will publicly criticize and oppose those dimensions of their faith, while respecting their right as citizens to be faithful and celebrating the perfect reasonableness of their faith in its moral and aesthetic dimensions however much the form of those beliefs/values happen to differ from my own morals or tastes.
So long as people don't seek to undermine warrantable scientific belief-ascription by substituting the faithful/normative (the dissensus which depends on consent) for the factual (the consensus which depends on dissent) and so long as people don't work against consensual democratic equity in diversity, peer to peer, my rule is let a bazillion flowers bloom, hell, let a bazillion powers vroom.
However, to the extent that a faith takes on an organizational and political life, I will of course disapprove hierarchical or authoritarian tendencies that harm its members and I will criticize and oppose its work in the service of anti-democratizing ends, including anti-democratizing impacts it denies having a hand in either out of dishonesty or incomprehension.
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