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Most blogs’ recommendations of other blogs are little more than an embarrassing Freudian portrait of the blogger, and I suppose the extraordinary links on Giornale Nuovo fall into the same category, ultimately. But in this case, the trails suggested by the Freudian portrait appear to be worth following.
In other words, there are, along with a few thoroughly idiosyncratic choices, more exquisitely designed and content-filled blogs than one would ordinarily come across in hours of random searching.
The poetic names given to them provide little enough clue as to their contents. As with works of literature, they provide the hope that anyone with such title-giving imaginativeness will be worthy of investigation.
The experience deepens my conviction that there needs to be an online magazine that would explore the alternatives to alternatives, those dialectical blogs that are so unfashionable in their visual and verbal interests that they are, in their own way, extremely hip. The ones that hive off into the study of antique ephemera (as irritatingly untagged and uncatalogued as my own blog is) or nineteenth century poster design are, in the way they present their interests, utterly of our historical moment. They are as contemporary as the blogs that present day-to-day events alongside individual results of those irresistibly silly online personality tests that tell you which science fiction writer you are, or which figure in the Tarot you are.
So a collaborative editorial effort to present the best of this stuff seems more desirable than ever. Along with the online magazine presenting the best of the world’s unfashionable art exhibitions and…I would say works of literature, but there seem to be already a satisfying number of ventures that clue us in regarding that.
In that department, I look forward to seeing Interfictions, the anthology of writing from the Interstitial Arts Foundation that Small Beer Press is publishing. I’m not sure that what shows up in the category of the interstitial arts is all that similar to the interstitial phenomena that interest me, but I like the idea of genre-bending and genre-defeating works of imagination, every bit as much as I like investigations that fall between academic disciplines. Interstitial Studies Institute founder Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother is, by his account (I’ve heard him describe it but it is still part of my immense stack of “books to be read someday”), an interstitial narrative of an interstitial childhood, as lived by someone who not only existed between cultures but was treated by bureaucratic structures as not officially there at all; my kind of scholarly institute-establisher, in other words.
Examples of the aforementioned other investigations that fall between academic discipines but would not call themselves interstitial can be found, to take just one case, on The Valve, A Literary Organ. The site is apparently mostly if not entirely inhabited by doctoral candidates, who are not yet beholden to politicized tenure-determining academic turf wars and able therefore to kick some ass. See, for example, Joseph Kugelmass’ delectable evocation of Björk (on fashion symbolism) and Badiou (on universality) all in one essay, at the following URL:
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/2_for_1_do_we_do_theory_and_the_debate_between_balibar_and_badiou/
Unfortunately for those of us with other things to do, the first three links in that essay lead off in utterly fascinating directions, too. In fact, this one is so cool I must provide it right here (and the fact that the link will most likely go dead eventually is also dealt with in a Valve discussion about electronic archiving, which is a topic I already covered in this blog many months ago):
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2007/02/are_we_who_you_.html
I find therein, returned in different forms, ideas I first encountered in Wittgenstein and Geertz and other overthrown authority figures. Except that here they are ascribed to more acceptable names.
It would be horrifying if thought were totally governed by the flavor-of-the-month philosophy; one learns, eventually, that the secret is to discuss the ideas but not reveal where you got them.
This is why I occasionally throw in unfashionable thinkers’ names, but only occasionally. I avoid citing names that I know would send readers off screaming in irrational fits, except when I want them to run off screaming.
(Longtime readers will recognize that as an instance of the “I meant to do that” coverup, but.)
In other words, there are, along with a few thoroughly idiosyncratic choices, more exquisitely designed and content-filled blogs than one would ordinarily come across in hours of random searching.
The poetic names given to them provide little enough clue as to their contents. As with works of literature, they provide the hope that anyone with such title-giving imaginativeness will be worthy of investigation.
The experience deepens my conviction that there needs to be an online magazine that would explore the alternatives to alternatives, those dialectical blogs that are so unfashionable in their visual and verbal interests that they are, in their own way, extremely hip. The ones that hive off into the study of antique ephemera (as irritatingly untagged and uncatalogued as my own blog is) or nineteenth century poster design are, in the way they present their interests, utterly of our historical moment. They are as contemporary as the blogs that present day-to-day events alongside individual results of those irresistibly silly online personality tests that tell you which science fiction writer you are, or which figure in the Tarot you are.
So a collaborative editorial effort to present the best of this stuff seems more desirable than ever. Along with the online magazine presenting the best of the world’s unfashionable art exhibitions and…I would say works of literature, but there seem to be already a satisfying number of ventures that clue us in regarding that.
In that department, I look forward to seeing Interfictions, the anthology of writing from the Interstitial Arts Foundation that Small Beer Press is publishing. I’m not sure that what shows up in the category of the interstitial arts is all that similar to the interstitial phenomena that interest me, but I like the idea of genre-bending and genre-defeating works of imagination, every bit as much as I like investigations that fall between academic disciplines. Interstitial Studies Institute founder Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother is, by his account (I’ve heard him describe it but it is still part of my immense stack of “books to be read someday”), an interstitial narrative of an interstitial childhood, as lived by someone who not only existed between cultures but was treated by bureaucratic structures as not officially there at all; my kind of scholarly institute-establisher, in other words.
Examples of the aforementioned other investigations that fall between academic discipines but would not call themselves interstitial can be found, to take just one case, on The Valve, A Literary Organ. The site is apparently mostly if not entirely inhabited by doctoral candidates, who are not yet beholden to politicized tenure-determining academic turf wars and able therefore to kick some ass. See, for example, Joseph Kugelmass’ delectable evocation of Björk (on fashion symbolism) and Badiou (on universality) all in one essay, at the following URL:
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/2_for_1_do_we_do_theory_and_the_debate_between_balibar_and_badiou/
Unfortunately for those of us with other things to do, the first three links in that essay lead off in utterly fascinating directions, too. In fact, this one is so cool I must provide it right here (and the fact that the link will most likely go dead eventually is also dealt with in a Valve discussion about electronic archiving, which is a topic I already covered in this blog many months ago):
http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2007/02/are_we_who_you_.html
I find therein, returned in different forms, ideas I first encountered in Wittgenstein and Geertz and other overthrown authority figures. Except that here they are ascribed to more acceptable names.
It would be horrifying if thought were totally governed by the flavor-of-the-month philosophy; one learns, eventually, that the secret is to discuss the ideas but not reveal where you got them.
This is why I occasionally throw in unfashionable thinkers’ names, but only occasionally. I avoid citing names that I know would send readers off screaming in irrational fits, except when I want them to run off screaming.
(Longtime readers will recognize that as an instance of the “I meant to do that” coverup, but.)
