Sleeping Julius Playlist

Fyfe | Conversations
Blue Hawaii | Try to Be
Pollens | Helping Hand
Savages | One Step to Eternity
Dirty Beaches | Speedway King
Hookworms | What We Talk About
These New Puritans | 5
DJ Koze | MY Grandmotha
Jai Paul | Jasmine
Deptford Goth | Feel Real
Balacade | Ghost Car 
Purity Ring | Loftcries
Port St. Willow | Orphan
Dexter | Deep in the Juju
Anna Merideth | Never Wonder
Natasha Kmeto | Brushstrokes
jj | Fågelsången

a collapse in habit

“It may be a habit that once acquired is never lost… But being loved of course, is being loved because, or being loved despite, or being loved… Most habits occur because of laziness. We over drink because our friends do. We overeat because our parents think we need more flesh on the bones. And perhaps my worst habit is over loving. And like those that live to excess I will be broken in two by my unwillingness to control my feelings.”
                                                                                                             -Nikki Giovanni | Habit

The Boudoir Bible

Betony Vernon's The Coudoir Bible is set for release this coming month, and this was a wonderful interview with her. Remnants of Foucault line the beginning, as she delves into the taboo of power. Under the rule of monotheism and medicalization, Foucault (1978) points out that sex becomes (ab)normal, treated, watched, and even silenced as a mechanism of control; as hegemonic oppression through the mechanism of repression formed by socio-historical processes. Through our fear of engaging it wholeheartedly, we reify the stigma associated with sex and pleasure. Our treatment of sex as taboo legitimates our interactions and power relations (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Have a listen while she grapples with some of these issues in a lovely accent.

The cuckoo clock

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love: they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
                                                                -Harry Lime, “The Third Man” (Orson Welles)

The Demise of “Instinct” and Mana-tized Truths

            I'll start out by saying that this was written for a Contemporary Theory class that I am currently taking. It was bound to get out of hand with James, Freud, Adorno Horkheimer, and Said on the list, but it should have kernels of interest and contempt for all! I hope you enjoy! Of course, if you have any comments or critiques (including spiteful ones), I'll take 'em in the comments section or by email at bkramer.ru@gmail.com.

            Lacking a coherent place to start, I will dive into this entry with the help of an author that was not on the required reading list. Gaston Bachelard connects quite well with this week’s readings. He was mentioned overtly by Bourdieu last week, was a contemporary critic of both Freud and James, and was an influence on the Frankfurt School (i.e. Horkheimer and Adorno), Foucault (who Said draws from quite heavily), Derrida and Althusser. His concept of the “epistemological break” is explicit in each of these entries, apart from Freud. He states that “scientific progress always reveals a break, or better perceptual breaks, between ordinary knowledge and scientific knowledge” (Bachelard 1949: 270).  Affectively, he is challenging us to see through the doxa, and understand that we are approaching our own inquiries with a pre-established frame of reference, that in some cases, muddles our interpretations beyond repair. He is careful, like Bourdieu, not to take a nihilistic jump, but says rather that science is indeed useful for our understanding of the social and natural world.

            William James approached this in a new way around the turn of the century. I can sympathize with James’ notion of pragmatism, which is built on the implications of practice in any epistemological realm. He does well in turning away “from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins” (Kivisto 2008: 169). With this method, we are then free to use various theoretical tools to aid our understanding of the world. Like Nietzsche, he mentions the Almighty and his control over Euclidean space. Yet, as Nietzsche says “God is dead” (Kivisto 2008: 160), and thus so too is an a priori Euclidean understanding of space if we implement a pragmatic approach. Bachelard also took this prospect up with great diligence in his work on time-consciousness. Both show that by undermining some of these assumptions we can make progress in scientific understanding, among other things. Our new opinions proffer these epistemological breaks in thought, and from there we can construct a new concept of the world; with innovation and the openness of scientific experimentation.

Yet, where James lost me is when he asserts that “to a certain degree… everything here is plastic” (Kivisto 2008: 171). Our construction of a knowledge base becomes slippery and specious. Bachelard called this the “easy tolerance of the Pragmatists” (Jones 1991: 49), and is unfortunately a rather pervasive way of thinking; whether it be in the Thomas Theorem’s famous princess example or the apparent belief system of the Tea Party to ignore events that “actually” happened. In the right hands, this method can benefit us greatly, but it can also be a crux for the lazy scientist. But who does this right? Where do we start? Nietzsche forbade us from starting on theistic grounds, Said undermines the West-centric perspective, and Horkheimer and Adorno deem the tenets of the Enlightenment “totalitarian” as well. It seems we need to go back to the hegemonic forces that shape those frameworks and assumptions that we have in the first place, and as Bourdieu said, take up a barrage of arms to better conceive of our social milieu.

Freud offers some intriguing tools to help us interpret both psychological and macro-social phenomena.[1] Freud’s conception of drives is exemplar as an observation of closed systems (more on this later), as are the heuristic applications of the id, ego, and superego in clinical settings. I found his work on dreams intriguing, and, according to this clinical psychologist, is an applicable tool used toward understanding anxieties that are displaced in obsessive-compulsive tendencies (e.g. like checking fire alarms). This attests to the section about the repressed being manifested through the displacement of fear/anxiety in other real world objects (e.g. in hoarders). I would even agree with Freud’s approach to the oedipal complex, though only to a degree. I have my own reservations about the libidinal aspect of his theory, preferring to conceive of Eros and Thanatos more broadly, as propulsionary factors of closed systems in the physical world. It’s tough to say how much of this was implemented after Freud’s theory became popular, but the application of the oedipal complex is ubiquitous (see TLC’s Strange Sex Season 1, Episode 1 for an example of young men pursuing “cougars” in New York City). The “O.C,” more generally taken to examine conflict between cross-sex relationships with parents, has also been useful in dealing with friends and family in the past. Unfortunately, the defense mechanisms he lays out are all too real, especially when trying to suggest the prospect of change to those unwilling to listen. Interestingly, Willer (in press) uncovered some of these defense mechanisms experimentally in the case of the hyper-masculine.

However, my main discontent with Freud’s theory is his treatment of “instincts,” which is ultimately a lack of foresight in human ontogeny and of neural systems in particular.[2] This may not be pertinent to others (a necessary prerequisite to a tangent if you’ve ever read one), but I feel the application of his theory is a principle reason for the “nature vs. nurture” dichotomy and, consequently, the misconceptions that much of the public has regarding biology, sex/gender, and sexuality (Blumberg 2009; Foucault 1974). In other words, this, to me, demonstrates his hegemony over biological and genetic knowledge, even to the careful scientist without a background in those fields. In the article, he confounds “instincts,” “at birth,” and “innate.” To say these three things with the same intention is erroneous and has left scientists bickering for over a hundred years. We as “social scientists” don’t seem to care that cells exist prior to birth, because there is no behavior to observe and, thus, no “socialization.” For instance, Bergesen (2004) is perpetually sighted in cultural sociology texts, attesting to the pervasive imperialism that nativist-based evolutionary psychology, and best-selling authors like Elizabeth Spelke and Steven Pinker have over our field and the public at large. This happens even with suggestive evidence that they are the same sloppy scientists we condemn for wearing disciplinary blinders (see Spencer et al. 2009). Freud’s, and now our own, lack of understanding of how biological processes unfold in any environment (which is the social, provided there is a source of action (Latour 1997)), perpetuates the idea that we become objects that are overly-determined by miniscule genetic puppeteers. With this said, I fail to see how Freud’s conception of “innate drives” turns into anything different than a shadowy determinism based on the same mana, which he seemed so profoundly opposed to. We can circumvent these problems if we pick from a larger, denser “tree of knowledge” in order to better understand ontogeny and phylogeny (Maturana and Varela 1981). I believe this is what Bourdieu meant by arming ourselves with the weapons of a cross-disciplinary discourse to chat with our colleagues in the natural sciences. This is assuming again that the fruit we pick fills us with self-reflexivity, rather than vacuous presuppositions.  Of course, I am likely preaching to the choir here, since, for instance, biology is absolutely imperative in helping us strengthen our understanding of sex/gender. This is one example of an ongoing struggle that has been pervasive in science.

I was captivated by Said’s piece on Orientalism, and how he spoke of the Occidental framing the Orient. Sticking with science, I was brought back to the History of Science and Technology of Islam in Istanbul. Having visited a couple years ago, I remember how suspect I felt regarding many of the exhibits. I was brainwashed by my own education in the American empire of science, and I didn’t realize at the time how much innovation was stolen. This was especially pertinent since I was living in Córdoba, Spain; one of the most permeable centers of exchange between the “Occidental” and “Orient” up to la Reconquista. The heteronomy of the Roman-Catholic church is still strong there today, as I remember reading that three Muslims were arrested on charges of public disorder for praying in the now-dubbed “Catedral” in the city’s center. To a degree, I wonder if I know anything about the city now that its history seems so clearly Occidentalized to me. In the end, I suppose this suggests caution on all of our parts. Just as Freud’s “mana-tized” theory of instincts eventually monetized the American fetishism of consumption (i.e. Century of the Self) and Nietzsche’s “will to power” was strategically used to ignite the rise of struggling dictator in the Weimar Republic (Shirer 1959), we must all be reminded that our work will someday be seen as the hegemonic dogma of a generation pushing forth toward “progress,” “truth,” and “enlightenment.”

Bachelard, G. 1949. Le Rationalisme Appliqué. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris.

Bergesen, A. J. 2004. “Durkheim’s Theory of Mental Categories: A Review of the Evidence.” Annual Review of Sociology. 30: 395-408.

Blumberg, M. 2009. Freaks of Nature. Oxford University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. “On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology.” Pp. 373-386 in Social Theory for a Changing Society, edited by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman.

Foucault, P. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction. Random House: New York, NY.

Horkheimer, Max & Theodor Adorno. 1944.  Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press.

Jones, M. 1991. Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist. University of Wisconsin Press. 

Kivisto, Peter (ed.) 2008. Social Theory: Roots and Branches, Third Edition: Oxford.

Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F.J. 1987. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala: Boston, MA.

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. Vintage Books.

Shirer, W.L. 1959. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany. Touchstone Publishing.

Spencer, John P., Mark S. Blumberg, Bob McMurray, Scott R. Robinson, Larissa K.

Samuelson, and J. Bruce Tomblin. 2009. “Short arms and talking eggs: Why we should no longer abide the nativist-empiricist debate.” Child Dev Perspect. August 1; 3 (2): 79–87.

Willer, Robb, Christabel Rogalin, Bridget Conlon, and Michael T. Wojnowicz. 2013. "Overdoing Gender: A Test of the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis." American Journal of Sociology. In press.

---

[1] My inclinations toward Freud have always been negative, though this bias has recently been alleviated by an ongoing discourse with a clinical psychologist.

[2] Of course, he did better than Bergson or Mead as psycho-physiologists, or their attempts thereof.

On Bachelard, Bourdieu, and a Sociology of Knowledge

Over the holiday break I was fortunate to stumble across a book that had been lying dormant on my shelf for some time. I had attempted to pick it up last summer when a good friend gifted it to me, yet found it buried amid the transition to my new career. This book, McAllestar Jones' Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist, explicates the scholar's view on epistemology, poetry and time consciousness. The former and latter have been great interests of mine, especially since reading Berger and Luckmann's The Construction of Social Reality and G.H. Mead's Philosophy of the Present when I was an undergraduate. Bachelard's conception of time in particular was something that I had hoped to delve further in, as he undermines Henri Bergson's conception of la durée, a canonical idea in the study of temporal consciousness. Although the matter of time will inevitably fill later blog entries, I will centralize on how his conception of epistemology has influenced the discourse of "discipline" in academia. 

Jones does a fine job of summarizing Bachelard, and points out that his epistemology has influenced some of the great social theorists of the past three-quarters century such as Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser, and Bourdieu. It was the latter of these theorists that penned the required reading for this week's theory course. Bourdieu's entry "On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology" comes as an epilogue of a synthetic conference of sociologists in 1991. At the time, and as remains the case today, sociology is a fragmented discipline. We are broken into critical theorists, race scholars, social psychologists, network methodologists, medical sociologists, and the list goes on without any of the above being mutually exclusive entities per se. The problem with sociology, as many see it, is that the "polycentric" conception of knowledge that sociology proffers (Becker 1986) "cannot be controlled completely because of its very fragmentation and diversification" (Bourdieu 1991). In other words, sociology as a discipline seems to suffer from the multivalent streams of research being produced in its academic confines. 

If we focus strictly on the power relations and ever-embedded nature of political influence that sociology seems to have in the social world, it is clear why many find this problematic. The monetary resources that almost any academic field depends on are controlled by the hegemonic forces of the political realm. For instance, the NSF and NIH are both reportedly reducing their budgets toward social science and humanities-based research. Perhaps, this is due to the "identity crisis." Maybe it is our anti-scientistic tendencies. Regardless of the true reason, Bourdieu prompts the reader to question herself: which logic do we pursue as sociologists and scientists more generally? The first logic he proposes is that we function on basis of the power groups associated and controlling the field (i.e. funding agencies, academic journals) or if we pursue the logic of the scientific field, impelled by Spinoza's "intrinsic force of the true idea" (Bourdieu 1991). He points out that many sociologists, among countless other academics, tend to see the latter through the lens set into focus by the former. Essentially, we are ruled by the dominating social forces of our historical landscape. As a result, we become hypnotized by dissident monologues that attempt only to subvert the opposing perspectives in our field as well as the other disciplines that threaten our own. The critical theorists scoff at the social psychologists, the quantitativists spit in the hair of the qualitative crowd, and so on. We are all seemingly guilty of a prolongated inferiority complex. Yet, Bourdieu argues that this will get us nowhere if our real objective is to engage in the latter of the two proposed logics.  

Bourdieu points out that in order to move forward an advantageous practice of science we must understand the "working dissensus" of the field and arm ourselves, not with disciplinary strongholds, but with the weapons of discourse. We must engage in a metasociology of omega means, rather than an alpha end. This entails a "epistemological vigilance" that, like Bachelard, is based on the process of a dialectic. The ultimate goal of a scientific discipline is not to be scientistic, objective, or to locate the a priori truths that we have all seen undermined since Berger and Luckmann's (among others) treatise on the sociology of knowledge. The intersubjective perspective that both theorists propound is careful not to fall into the rabbit hole of a nihilistic escapism, but believes instead that science can help us better understand the world; to aid us in overcoming the power relations that negatively shape the social world. However, we must be willing to learn the language of our counterparts and to engage openly about the strengths and tribulations of our (inter-) disciplinary discourse in the creation of knowledge.

This is the most challenging aspect of my academic career thus far. Most sociologists are not open to the idea of interdisciplinary work, especially with that of the "natural sciences." These specious and, at times, unnecessarily dichotomous categories thwart the nature of a true scientific discourse. Though I have witnessed this proclivity from scholars at both of the institutions I have attended, it is by no means limited to sociology. I have recently spoken with clinical psychologists, English literature students, and even philosophers who stymie through their studies bewildered by the shackles of "discipline" as a social force. Just as Bachelard and Bourdieu propose, I hope to delve into many fields; to melt physics into poetry. I hope this objective will someday come to fruition, but it will undoubtedly need the motivated pursuit of understanding on the part of my colleagues as well. The good news is that some of the disciplinary confines are beginning to crumble; largely from the propulsion to understand the world in truly scientific terms. My frail edge of science bridges sociology and biology: social neuroscience and neurosociology. The contradistinction is necessary in an inappropriate and largely superficial sense, but when I -we- look back on this years later we will either understand the line drawn in the sand as the residue of a merciless power dynamic or snicker at the gaffe of such divides in a theory of knowledge. 

Becker, H. 1986. Writing for Social Scientists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berger, P. L. & T. Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. “On the Possibility of a Field of World Sociology.” Pp. 373-386 in Social Theory for a Changing Society, edited by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman.

Jones, M. 1991. Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist. University of Wisconsin Press. 

Mead, G.H. 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Prometheus Books. 

Post-Sandy Narrative

I have been absent from the blogosphere since the onset of my graduate school experience largely because of, well, being inundated with reading and research. That said, my graduate experience is surpassing my expectations. I will leave the details of research out for the time being, but I will soon have some thoughts on a few eccentric topics you may find interesting. For now, my Sandy experience...

As I watch the local news two weeks after Sandy initially hit, I realize how many communities were devastated by the Frankenstorm. The tiny towns that line the ocean front are tattered. People lost their homes, and are devastated that they have nowhere to go. Imagine yourself with no home to go back to and nothing you can do about it. I, on the other hand, am one of the lucky ones. It was late Friday when I heard about Sandy. I started watching the news that evening and took the news correspondents seriously. It seemed hard not to when 15 of the 17 models showed this massive storm heading right for my home. I had a tough time believing that it could miss, and, alas, I was right. I spent Saturday buying canned foods, bread, and cooking. I used up all of my perishable food in the fridge and only took a break to leave for Sears on Sunday where there was only one small light left on the shelf when I arrived at 11:00 in the morning. I frantically worked all day Sunday and Monday to complete what I could on the computer. My assumption was that the power was going out, but when? It was 7:19 PM on Monday evening...

The storm was a bit of an experience. The primal song of nature whispered, then chanted, then screamed... By the time everything went black in my apartment, the wind streamed wildly through the trees outside and the rain pounded against the sidewalk and windows. Kids were playing tag outside, obviously displaying their fearless Jersey (sound it out in the accent) nature. I spent Monday evening with my roommates Atul and Jing as well as my neighbor Yuling playing ukulele and guitar with the nifty little LED flashlight showing us our way to each fumbling chord. Since I had prepared beforehand, I retreated to my room at 10:00 to read by candlelight. The book was Eviatar Zerubavel's The Elephant in the Room, which is a sociological look at silence. It seemed even more fitting days later, when I realized I was seemingly one of the few that took the storm seriously, choosing not to treat the impending disaster as a matter of collective denial.

The next thing I knew it 4:30 AM and the loud pounding of resident assistant riled me. We were informed that we were being evacuated. We were swiftly lined up and retreated to a gymnasium nearby. Think thousands of kids in a gym and three other racquetball courts without food, blankets, or pillows. Yes, it was fun. The main issue was that not many realized they were going out of their places for more than a few hours. To me, this is pure naivety. One could expect that being evacuated may entail a couple of days of hurricane homelessness. As a result, the immediate class divide was the most interesting thing to see. Several Chinese exchange students huddled playing cards until nearly 7:00 AM. Others sat glaring at them, supposing that the going cross-eyed might somehow translate to Mandarin. It didn't. With my little light and cozy blanket, I could watch them, chuckling. In total, we spent the next three days displaced from our apartments. I might add, though, that this was a rather exciting three days. My foresight, or "projectivity" as we call it in Cultural Sociology, was the key factor for loving the disorder that ensued.

The next day, we were moved to a campus center that had power on the other side of campus.  We got relatively comfortable cots and free food from Tuesday-Sunday. The coolest part of all this was that we got to hang out together. Atul rarely leaves his room (actually, only to run and make this rice-yogurt-sugar combo and run), but was elated for several days to experience this overwhelming feeling of community. Yeh, we were evacuated, but we were all evacuated together. Besides the stigma of being the "evacuees", it wasn't too bad at all. Of course, I did banter at the onlooking undergraduates gawking at me. They are my new favorite group to lash out at needlessly. Good times, great oldies.

On Thursday of that week, we got to go back home. After cleaning out the fridge, we were all happy campers mooching off the free lunch tickets and stuffing ourselves... while we still could. However, that was hardly the end of the Frankenstorm. I was appalled to see the news. The top stories were about the New York marathon being cancelled. Several said this was an atrocity, and that the people of New York should band together to offer a symbolic gesture of strength. Are you kidding me? People were still found drowned in their basements in Staten Island after that. Outlandish, but not surprising. I can't believe people watch that stuff and believe it.

Anyways, all and all the storm hardly affected me. I did make some solid observations during the displacement process. People are blind to the relative lives they lead. Countless people told me afterward how bad they had it, and how awful the entire hurricane experience was. Yet, they lived. They have homes. They have their families, etc. Many people are still without power, and are clearly not happy about it. Still, I have my qualms with these people griping. Sure, this is 2012 and this is America. But guess what? People live like this everyday: cold, starving, and hungry. We hardly do them any favors by voting for pro-monopolistic law makers and the like. I hope that we, as a nation, can come to terms with our privilege and the inequality that we push on to millions in our own country. Whether it by the pompous Barbie doll or the Occupy protester, we have to be a bit more conscious of our situation.

Blue Velvet (1986)

You stay alive baby. Do it for Van Gogh.

-Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper)

American Basketball at the Olympics: Who's Dreaming?

I might start off by saying that everyone is certainly tired of this comparison by now, and justly so. I honestly think that the 1992 Dream Team would out do the 2012 Redeem Team 2.0 (in a best of seven series) if they were both able to compete against each other in their primes. However, I would like to make the case for the current team. I have avoided the large majority of the televised/blogsosphered debate, apart from Stephen A. Smith's substantive points made against a seemingly clueless Skip Bayless. Still, an analysis must be made. 

First off, we know that the '92 team was stacked: Laettner, D. Robinson, Ewing, Bird, Pippen, Jordan, Drexler, Malone, Stockton, Mullin, Barkley and Magic. What most may not consider is the status of some of these players. Magic had just retired because of his health stigma (HIV) and Bird had significant back problems, which would force him to retire immediately following the gold medal run. Stockton was coming off a broken bone in his leg, and not at his best. This, to me, is evident because he only played four of eight games. The outside threats would have included Mullen, Stockton, Magic, Jordan, Drexler, and, yes, Barkley (who shot 87.5% from beyond the arc in the Olympics that year). Let's face it: the strong point for the team was inside, a point which I will make more evident later on. 

The 2012 team is not too shabby either, however. They have Tyson Chandler, Durant, James, Westbrook, Deron Williams, Iguodala, Kobe, Love, James Harden, Carmelo, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis. Tyson Chandler (8.3 per) and Anthony Davis (yet to play an NBA game) are the only two averaging a career points per game total under 15.3 PPG. Five average career totals above 23.0 PPG (Kobe, Carmelo, Durant, LeBron and Westbrook). To me, the noticeable thing about this squad is who is not in it. Lacking Dwight Howard (three-time reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year and six-time NBA All-Star), Derrick Rose (2011 MVP), Chris Bosh (seven-time NBA All-Star), Dwayne Wade (eight-time NBA All-Star), Andrew Bynum and Blake Griffin (all due to injury or laziness), I ask how this is representative of the USA's Best of 2012? In comparison, who is the 1992 Dream Team missing: Tim Hardaway, Dennis Rodman, Hakeem Olajuwan (in his prime) and a -fresh-out-of-LSU- Shaq. A great cast, but the fact that the 2012 is missing five players in their prime. In other words, I will make the bold prediction, even though they will lose Kobe, the USA team four years from now will be, hypothetically, much better than the current one. This is beside the point, since I am sure I will make this argument then.

The big thing you have to look at is how they fared against their competition. The 1992 Dream Team beat their opponents by a whopping 43.75. Wow, right? These teams were notable, though, in this sense. If we made a list of NBA players from each of the other teams the US played that year we would have an All-Star cast of Detlef Schrempf, Toni Kukoc, Dražen Petrović, Luc Longley, Carl Herrera, Alexander Holkov, and Stojko Vrankovic. Three of these players helped Croatia win the silver medal. The rest have won a total of five NBA championships (three from Longley, who played with some guy sporting a 23). This year the Redeem Team 2.0 had a different setting. They still won by an average of 32.1, but played more quality opponents. The only team they played without an NBA player was Nigeria, which they drubbed by 83. They actually had two close games against Lithuania, who has two NBA pros, and Spain in the championship game. Spain is an international oddity, as it is a promising cast: the Gasols (both NBA All-Stars), Ibaka (2012 All-Defensive First Team), Sergio Llull (Spanish League MVP), Calderon (NBA point-guard), Navarro and Fernandez (past NBA players who now play for Real Madrid). I would argue that this team has more star power than the "International All-Stars" offered for all of the other Olympic teams combined together in 1992. This goes without mentioning the 2012 team played eight of their thirteen games against top nine opponents in the world, all of which have at least four NBA players apart from Lithuania. 

Regardless, if we excluded the two games against Lithuania and Spain, the 2012 and 1992 teams have nearly identical totals for points won by (43.5 vs. 40.1) and points per game (117.25 vs. 115.5). Each team averaged five players in double digits, with one on each averaging nearly 20 (Barkley and Durant respectively). The big difference, which is obvious, is the style of play. The 1992 team dominated, and would continue to dominate, inside. Barkley (18.2), Ewing (9.5), Malone (13.0) and Robinson (9.0) had the paint covered, and to say that Love and Chandler could have handled those four would be a mistake. We saw that they could not handle Pau in the final, so to me it is evident that the 2012 team would perish in the half court game. The thing is that I am not sure how these games would be played out if we managed to manipulate the space-time continuum. Would it be a slow, laborious game with the 1992 team continuously passing inside to these big guys? Or would we see an up-pace scorcher from the Redeem Team?

The 2012 guys averaged over 36 three-point attempts every game while still maintaining a 44% average. Lining the perimeter: Durant, Anthony, Kobe and Paul. (LeBron hit a big three down the stretch as well that essentially clinched the gold medal game, but then air-balled one just moments after to cancel that out.) These threes would offset the course of play, in my humble opinion. If the tempo sped up enough, you would see a very different final. The ball would have stopped going low each and every time, and instead you would have likely saw Jordan try to take over. With LeBron or Kobe the most likely to guard him, foul trouble may have ensued. The real question is: Could the Redeem Team stand up to the type of pressure they would feel, and/or knock down the threes they needed? The Dream Team was older (relative to their average age in that Olympic year), but arguably more efficient. If the 2012 cast were to be slowed to a half-court game, would they look like the 2011 Miami Heat team that was better on paper, yet took stand up jump shots that ultimately culminated in their demise to the Mavs.

Oh, the hypothetical reality we can only imagine! As I mentioned before, I have the 1992 Dream Team winning. If you see the 2016 team play in Rio with Howard, Bynum, Durant, James, Melo, Love, Griffin, Rose, D. Will, Paul, Wade and your pick of any other American player in the league (Davis, Iguodala, Harden, Westbrook, Hibbert, or Rondo) that team will trump the Dream Team of 1992. I am already starving for more Olympics, and for good reason.

On Surrealist Liberty... in the Real World

La libertad es un fantasma.  Es un fantasma de niebla.  El hombre lo persigue, cree atraparlo, y solo le queda un poco de niebla entre las manos.

Liberty is a ghost, a ghost of clouds. The man who follows it, believes he can catch it, and only ends up with a little cloud between his hands. 
Luis Buñuel

a baron bridge of the missingippi (2012)

a baron bridge of the missingippi (2012)

brandon lee kramer

the floods of the past five years have caused havoc on the central united states. our so called bible belt is supposed to be exempt from such harsh reality, from the perverse punishment that noah had to endure. instead we, as a geographical entity, have gone through chaos. our crops, university buildings, homes and churches have been devastated by natural disasters; occasions one could hardly fathom, let alone prepare for appropriately. now god has begun his tricks once again. stringent heat for days -no- weeks on end. the sounds of summer have set in only to be overtaken by the biding sting of the sun. the photograph above depicts a reminder that he, or whomever you deem guilty, of such tumultuous cynicism still has a sense of humor. the lake that was once here and the bridge that once led children over the wetlands have both been devoured by his hands. this charlatan says little, but rather flicks his wrist with assertion. "i give you water to take it away," he posits, and destiny ensues. to me, it is funny how we regurgitate the myriad of information we have at our finger tips...

the american narrative is rich: "the end is coming," we say. we are compelled by that notion. columbus said we would find the garden of eden in america. i think we have, and adam/eve were not alone. we have become that manifestation: the ultimate sinners. we deny our responsibility, the truth that we produce our own illnesses, that we cause the lakes to dry up, and that the end is, in fact, not going to happen (like the mayans supposedly said). the irony in it all is that we won't blame ourselves. "how could something so horrific be because of me? the goodhearted, loving parent/sibling/child? i mean no harm... i am just afraid." it is this fear that pushes us forward. we can't take a step back to stop our rampant use of resources, especially amid an economic crisis. we cannot stop production, making more jobs, etc. this just is not in the cards.

i had always wondered what we are in such a big hurry to do. where are we going? surely, we must have some destination, no? is it heaven? is that where our three cars are taking us (we need that many to be american, right)? or is all of this for another reason? to me, it seems that we are not going anywhere, but rather trying to create as many detours as we can to obscure the line of where we are going: to death. though it seems morbid, is this not what all of this is for? we buy fast cars, tvs, bigger houses and more ornate visions only to block the reality that none of this really matters. we are going to die and there is nothing we can do about it. america facilitates the ultimate lie, that of complete self-denial that we have to die. we live for the "embedded now." this point in space-time that we are shielded from the lions and tigers that hunt us, from the starvation that would ensue if a plague really existed in today's usa. it is our middle/upper class relativism that blocks a pure vision of america. we need to wake up and realize that the end is not near, but rather here. we need to do something now, so that the poor that most do not seem to care about do not turn out to be the same goodhearted, loving parent/sibling/child you claim to care about. please, start caring america.

an anonymous assemblage

this photograph sums up a complicated, yet compelling, year thus far. draper (because of the glass and the hat, at least) clearly shines through, but tinged -maybe even tainted- by the surrealistic qualities of what is/is not. are we here? dreaming? or there? before, after or both? i have always felt a deep attraction to donnie darko, an eccentric film about time travel and less obviously about a mythical reenactment of the passion. some would debate the latter, but i think the meditative potential of that statement is something one must truly ponder. regardless, the notion of time travel was brought back to my attention last night after finishing david lynch's twin peaks. i have always pondered what ghosts may be, and have even heard some unsubstantiated claims that science could explain what we perceive as ghosts as overlapping bits of space-time crossing into now. i would not go as far to say i agree, but it is intriguing. this year has brought the eerie, surrealistic nature of life and death to the foreground. ernst becker's pulitzer prize winning the denial of death has been treating me to some of the best reading i have ever come across. it speaks to me: reiterating the hyper-analytic posturings of kierkegaard with post-freudian psychoanalytic theory. it makes me wonder about death, meaning, myths, and the stars. yet with all of this "profound" and indecisive speciousness looming, we our confronted more directly with things that "matter" like society, structure, marriage, love, jobs and money. how and why should we care about these mysterious things when we have reality bashing us in the face everyday? like the picture, this year has made me ask myself: is "it" there? where is "it?" this money they speak of and the millions of jobs that our president is supposed to be creating... where are they? are they real? is any of this real? and when will "it" happen? consider these things in the words of gaston bachelard's wonderful words:

"who speaks? the dreamer or the world?"

photograph taken by koel gibbs 2012. edited by brandon lee kramer © 2012

the ethics of david foster wallace

“This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values, and it’s our job to make them up.”

-David Foster Wallace, 1993 Whisky Island interview

oh woman, oh woman, why?

"...perhaps the most damning characteristic of women is that, in the face of horrifying evidence of their situation, they stubbornly claim that, in spite of everything, [they] 'love' [their] Oppressor."

-Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, p. 105

This is quoted in Hanne Blank's Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, which is a great read I highly suggest you take the time to read.

a footstep forward...

The Aymara Peoples of Peru, Bolivia and Chile have a unique manifestation of time. Where most European derivative time perception sees the flow of time as both forward and right-directed, the Aymara feel past as being directionally forward (nayra, which also means eye, front and sight). Backward then would represent the future (qhipa), something yet to be seen? This, of course, has not been passed down to the next generation (Nuñéz and Sweester 2006); something Steven Pinker probably could not account for with his rigid genetic determinism (Pinker 1994). It seems that temporal hegemony is not only limited to the rhythms and schedules of post-industrial socities (Bluedorn 2009), but also the temporal embodiment of acculturated indigenous of South America.

shrine of the dendrites (2012)

shrine of the dendrites (2012)

brandon lee kramer

between galena, il and dubuque, ia is a small abandoned stone building, pillaged by a unforgiving, weathered time. the western sunsets reign over its decaying last gasps. sprouting dendrites of a sickly brown grow at the base of its convoluted foundation, blurring the distinction of passer-byes: those still willing to feign a vacuous glance. there, amid the moss and mold is a morceau of what freedom was, what our homeland was founded on. when the fox co-existed with the bucolic whispers of mother nature. when the finch sang in an unabashed melody of adolescence, not fearing anything -one with the stars- before they were just that. would whitman or thoreau divulge petty secrets to the tree frogs if they were still here?  warn them to be patient, assure them of an eventual coup d'etat against the foolish harlequins of the mississippi harbor? or would they rather hold their tongues? like i, like we, should? waiting. waiting. waiting, for them all to devour themselves in the push-button politics of our au courant debacle. if we just sat quiet, minds deaf and hands still, maybe we could hear the echos of chernobyl and auschwitz, of waterloo and thermopylae, pleading for a tranquil homophily to bleed through. to espouse, not divide. we could, we can be a consort for the novel, the most romantic of sorts. one that finds a refined valor in the decay of defiled -tested and true- world we are now: the lost time of a lost world. 

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

fumar mata (2012)

fumar mata (2012)

brandon lee kramer

composed of used cigarette cartons from various european countries (18 total) and metal no smoking sign, mounted on cardboard, 61 x 51 cm

Brandon Lee Kramer © 2012

anselm kiefer

Schwarze Flocken - Für Paul Celan Artist Book, Germany

2005, Acrylic, charcoal and branches on photograph, mounted on cardboard, 62.5 x 42 x 15 cm

Courtesy of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris

Salzburg Photograph by Charles Duprat

Kiefer is a personal favorite. I had the opportunity to delve into his work at a fairly early age, discovering him roughly six years ago now. I love the gloomy nature of his work, the blacks and blues being an aesthetic that attests to my natural projections of beauty; an "innate" sense of despair and suffering. I was blessed to stumble upon his work in 2009 while in Palma de Mallorca at the Museu d'art modern i contemporani. I remember being in a state of pure bliss as I stumbled in with a friend - amazed - that Kiefer's work was there. There were giant pieces of convoluted constellations doused in gloom that leaped of the canvases. It was a lovely experience. In fact, another favorite Am Anfang (origin or beginning in German) is still in permanent residence in Palma. If you ever decide to go to the Balearic Islands make sure you stop by the museum on your way to Ibiza.

vigilius haufneinsis

"whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate." from the concept of dread 


bonus points who anyone who actually knows who this is without using the internet to find it...

frederica mathewes-green

"it is possible for cultures to change for the better, once given a dose of truth. like a body, a culture has innate impulse to health. though this can be subverted in a million ways it can be nurtured as well. this should give us hope."