Thursday, February 15, 2007

Who are we?



ar-I: underground in springfield
For me, Homer and Hegemony is about gaining the knowledge and creativity to unplug ourselves from the Matrix. I am curious how the single breath becomes a conspiracy, and how the spark of life reappears after centuries of death. I come to this blog via many paths, all of which repeatedly converge on a redwood forest near the northern california coastline. My purpose is to dissect the belly of the Beast while recognizing that there are beasts within each of us. My hope is that someday we will all be asking different questions from a higher plane of consciousness, but I fear that day will come too late. I am interested in exploring costellations of all shapes and sizes, from the microscopic to the intergalactic. Eternal fires burn beneath (post)modernity's electromagnetic glow. Can we stoke them? My reading list includes Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmad, James Clifford, Gabriel Kolko, Amy Kaplan, Michel Foucault, Lisa Simpson

RE: R
My goals here are to think through problems of historiography and theory, to question my own understandings of the political and the ethical as they relate to my reading, my writing, and my life. I am particularly interested in the narratives we construct to frame our identities and to inform and justify our actions---I am interested in what makes a particular story compelling in a particular time and place, and in historical memory and the affective power it can command. I am also interested in imaginings of the future and in our assumptions about what might make a more perfect world. On my current reading list: Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra, Michel Foucault...


The Anatomy of A E S L:
In order to contribute to "Homer and Hegemony" I've decided to lay out, at present, the interests and questions that have brought me here. To begin, my analysis tends to focus on power and knowledge. I am drawn, in particular, to the discourses of culture, sexuality, and race; and the circuits inside and in between. In addtion I want to examine the political and ideological relationships between the family, the home, and the state; what some have come to call the domains of the intimate. Because of this interest in the intimate's articulation of pop culture and mass media, I tend to interrogate Hollywood/television images and the political discourse of hip-hop and indie/punk cultures. Finally, broader questions concern colonialism, exile, nation, history, and its production of identities. Works I wish to become more familiar with are those by Gramsci, Foucault, The Frankfurt School, Althusser, Fanon, Memmi, and Butler.