What do wine snobs, nukespeak, social media, and ideology have in common?
Following up on last month's Found Thanksgiving spoken word project, I've produced another found-text podcast project. This one is longer, a bit higher quality (I used the MakerSpace downtown to record--very nice!), and a bit more complex in scope and tone, but it should relate nicely to the subject of the Thanksgiving post, which meditated on ideology in U.S. literature.
A Found Discourse takes the discussion of ideology and focuses on the theoretical concept of discourse. It can be a bit tricky to talk about, but if you'd like a primer of sorts (as well as an outline of my thinking here), check out my recent essay on the subject.
Liner Notes (or, What this thing even is)
My project here is to explore the theory behind and examples of what happens when the way a group talks, socializes and positions itself prevents members or outsiders from communicating in a certain way or even, as you'll hear, excludes words or entire subjects from acceptable discourse. The project mixes reading of found texts with music and effects to convey an argument: the practices tied up with how we communicate have real social and cognitive effects--sometimes consciously effected, sometimes otherwise--that can exclude some people and pressure others within the circle to become silent.
This may well happen with the podcast itself: reading from academic papers and books alongside the more practically-worded narratives may produce the same kinds of exclusionary or silencing effects that they describe. This dynamic has implications for habits and practices in social networks, for what it means to be politically correct, for Internet conversations, for family ties, for how we understand ideology. The list goes on.
What does this mean for you and me on the Internet? Face to face? Across the room? And what can we--or should we--do about it?
Listen on your commute to work or during your lunch break, and tell me what you think in the comments, on the Facebook page, or on Twitter.
Trigger Warning: This podcast contains a very brief description of a scene after a nuclear attack, which contains vague (if potent) descriptions of human carnage.
Following up on last month's Found Thanksgiving spoken word project, I've produced another found-text podcast project. This one is longer, a bit higher quality (I used the MakerSpace downtown to record--very nice!), and a bit more complex in scope and tone, but it should relate nicely to the subject of the Thanksgiving post, which meditated on ideology in U.S. literature.
A Found Discourse takes the discussion of ideology and focuses on the theoretical concept of discourse. It can be a bit tricky to talk about, but if you'd like a primer of sorts (as well as an outline of my thinking here), check out my recent essay on the subject.
Liner Notes (or, What this thing even is)
My project here is to explore the theory behind and examples of what happens when the way a group talks, socializes and positions itself prevents members or outsiders from communicating in a certain way or even, as you'll hear, excludes words or entire subjects from acceptable discourse. The project mixes reading of found texts with music and effects to convey an argument: the practices tied up with how we communicate have real social and cognitive effects--sometimes consciously effected, sometimes otherwise--that can exclude some people and pressure others within the circle to become silent.
This may well happen with the podcast itself: reading from academic papers and books alongside the more practically-worded narratives may produce the same kinds of exclusionary or silencing effects that they describe. This dynamic has implications for habits and practices in social networks, for what it means to be politically correct, for Internet conversations, for family ties, for how we understand ideology. The list goes on.
What does this mean for you and me on the Internet? Face to face? Across the room? And what can we--or should we--do about it?
Listen on your commute to work or during your lunch break, and tell me what you think in the comments, on the Facebook page, or on Twitter.
Trigger Warning: This podcast contains a very brief description of a scene after a nuclear attack, which contains vague (if potent) descriptions of human carnage.
Found Texts (in order of first use):
Music:
- “The Wine Etiquette Guide - Your Defense Against Wine Snobbery,” Chuck Blethen, 2011
- “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Carol Cohn, Signs, 1987
- “A Helpful Guide to: Ideology, Discourse, Hegemony,” johnnyunger.tumblr.com, reblogged from thothofnorth 2012(?)
- Ideology: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton, 1991
- “What You Can’t Say,” Paul Graham, 2004
- “Self-Censorship in Public Discourse A Theory of ‘Political Correctness’ and Related Phenomena,” Glenn C. Loury, Rationality and Society, 1994
- “The ‘Spiral of Silence’ on Social Media,” Pew Research Center, 2014
Music:
the swing - lloyd rodgers / http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lloyd_Rodgers/ / Public Domain Mark 1.0