More Thoughts on Violence

This is just an addendum. When I said “Americans,” I should have said “white Americans” and middle class white Americans to boot. I think it was Jerry G. Watts who, in an edited collection on the riots following the Rodney King verdict, wrote about the considerably more precarious experience of being poor and black in the U.S. and the degree to which a certain level of threat of violence is a part of daily life.

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As if to fulfill my own prophesy, or verify my own critique, I (along with Carrie and Hajime) went along with our original movie nite schedule as planned. We dined at the new (to us) taqueria and then headed down St. Catherine to the AMC theater to catch a film. On the way, we passed this sign. . .

. . . which offers a little trace of the kind of terror and anxiety people closer to the shooting (and people closer to the people closer to the shooting) were feeling at the time.

When we arrived at the Forum, the AMC theaters looked like this:

Closed. Dead closed, you might say. I can only imagine that when the whole thing went down initially, police closed down the whole area. Which makes sense since nobody knew what was going on. I hear that the metro wasn’t running to the Atwater station, either. Violence shatters the everydayness of everyday life, and here we were, along with a few other confused couples. Foolishly–obliviously–expecting that it would already be put back together.

A few words on violence

I’d hoped to write something profound on the 5th anniversary of 9-11-01 but nothing came out. Thus, I’m passing you on to Axis of Evil Knievel for commentary on that day. In the comments, he concedes that WWI may have been stupider than this third Gulf War.

At this time of year, I also need to give props to David Silver and The September Project, who are working to take September 11th back from the republicans, one library at a time.

Today, news breaks of another school shooting, this time at Dawson College. Carrie calls to ask that I tape the news for her research. I do. Later, I get a call at home from a student of mine now living in Ottawa, to make sure that I’m alright. The call is an incredibly decent act on his part–to be concerned for others whom he knows in the area. “Of course I’m alright,” I think. “I’m sitting here in my apartment on the East End.” The thought betrays me. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I or anyone I know might be affected by the shooting. I don’t know people who get shot. News happens to other people, right? It’s sheer folly, though. Dawson College is connected to the very Metro station I may visit tonight on my way to catch a movie. I could have been right there. Many other people were.

Meanwhile, wars continue around the world. It’s a tremendous privilege to be sitting here, typing away, sheltered from all of that violence and mayhem. But as the Dawson College shootings illustrate, we live life in a constant state of vulnerability. Perhaps the violent and disproportionate nature of the U.S.’s response to 9-11 (insofar as a premeditated attack on Iraq is a “response” to anything) has to do with the belief so many Americans hold that they are exempt from threats of violence, or that their comfort doesn’t somehow exist in tense relationship with all sorts of violence around the world. Clearly, even as I critique that mindset, I live comfortably inside it.

I don’t know whether to call that ideology or privilege. Or maybe it’s just enough of both.

For more on the Montreal Dawson College shootings, visit Metroblog.

First lecture is ready to go

I awoke inexplicably early this morning, and decided to use my mental freshness to rework my intro lecture to the sound studies seminar. Now I’m totally psyched to teach it and I have to wait 29.5 hours to do it. Oh well. Such is life.

I last taught the course 2 years ago in the fall of 2004. Since then, lots of material has been published and the field has really grown–and in some senses matured.

Not that I like maturity. Academics have a bad habit of legitimating new objects of study and then going back to the same old theories and methods to study them. Part of that, I suppose, has to do with the legitimation process: once a new object of study is brought on board, insecure types (or people who are more or less coerced to do so) must show that the new object can work within existing paradigms of whatever discipline in which it appears. And I’m all for old theories and old methods when they’re used with imagination and a little panache. But I found myself writing a lot of stuff that wasn’t sound-studies specific in terms of what I want the students to get out of the course, and what I thought was important about learning a field (and writing this just got me to jot down some more stuff).

We’ll see how it works out in just about 29.25 hours.

Somebody Sold Us Out

I just ended our second telemarking call in three days, after receiving no such calls in over two years of Quebec residence. I suspect that someone has recently sold (and bought) our information. And unless someone can correct me, Canada is behind the U.S. in at least one respect: in the U.S. we were able to add our names and phone number to a “do not call” list that telemarketers were legally required to respect. We still got calls from nonprofits, but that was much better.

Horror

Two of today’s headlines from the Globe & Mail:

“Bush admits to Existence of Secret Prisons” — like we didn’t know already? How is someone who so systematically violates the laws of his own country allowed to stay in office? It would be jaw dropping if it weren’t so routine.

“U.S. Army Forbids Use of Torture Techniques” — is it just me, or are they a little late in getting around to this one?