Author: marcusmcgee1r

I have to say, I was pretty surprised that there wasn't more scandal, shock, or at least some polemic surrounding the reception of the Baudrillard essay in class today. Isn't one of his opening arguments basically that everyone secretly desired the symbolic effacement of the towers--i.e. their violent destruction? Isn't his point on trauma, following … Continue reading Wasn’t Baudrillard Kindof Scandalous?

I originally wrote this as a reply to Sasha’s post, but subsequently realized that it was large enough to post on its own. So, that’s what I’m going to do! I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of the notions like ‘surfing’ and ‘surfaces’ in the readings for Wednesday. Sasha pointed out in his … Continue reading Surface/Depths in Massumi’s Politics

Our conversations this week about resistance, social change, and the cooptation of alternative media got me thinking (unsurprisingly) about the ‘politics’ in the politics of media. I realized that I have spent a lot of time reflecting on the different uses of the term ‘media’ in the class thus far (along side the various forms, … Continue reading How do we mean by ‘Politics’ of Media?

Following the substantial ethnographic themes in the works that we read for last week and the sort of ethnographic attentiveness that is demanded by the material for this week  (and me being an anthropologist-in-training—hammer, meet nail), I thought I would write a bit about ethnography and games this week. Something that first struck me in … Continue reading Ethnography & ‘Reading’

Most contemporary cultural anthropologists would be loath to tell you that we study ‘culture’. This aversion to ‘culture’ is a relatively new disposition in the discipline; it resulted from a series of debates and public disavowals that took place in the 1990s and early 2000s. While there is by no means a consensus that ‘culture … Continue reading — Meanwhile in Cultural Anthropology — Culture is Cancelled