It’s Space Cake, Not Spice Cake

Welcome to the official “I’m jetlagged or there’s no way I’d be up at this hour” edition of Super Bon. It’s too early to work and anyway I was going to take the day off (except for answering a slew of emails). So here’s a long, detailed blog entry instead.

We returned last night from our eight day journey to Europe happy to be home(1) but pleased to have gone. A week is a weird amount of time to spend in a place–just long enough to begin wondering about the non-touristy side of things and too short to do anything about it.

Business

As you may recall, we went because I had a speaking gig at a conference; it was called Transformations in Art and Culture. The whole thing was very interesting. The keynotes were each fascinating in their own way. Lisa Parks is doing this absolutely wild research on the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure as preparing the way for so-called globalization. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would like, seeing as it covers both destruction and infrastructure. Steven Kline I’d never met or read before, and he’s unique as far as I can tell — he speaks the cultural studies speak but does research in the media effects tradition. This of course was occasion for us to have an argument and I have promised him I will read any three things on effects research of his choosing to see if I change my mind. Nice guy, generally on the right side of things, even if we don’t agree on specifics. I didn’t actually meet the other keynote, Janneke Wesseling, but she was an art critic who had really harsh things to say about the state of art museums in the Netherlands. I liked it because it’s the first time that I’ve heard someone who has status in the museum world say publically that she thinks they have lost their way. I do too. In the Q&A I asked her about what she’d like to see, and her example of a good art museum was the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I grew up with this museum, and until I left Minnesota, I didn’t realize that the Walker was not a “run of the mill” art museum. For a year, Carrie and I actually lived a block away from there.

The second day of the conference was presentations by the working groups, made up of a faculty leader, a postdoc and a grad student (in slightly different configurations). that was also just great. Although I absolutely loved the work of the sound studies group, I probably learned more from the group dealing with globalization and the Roma in Eastern Europe. Mostly because I know so little about the Roma.

All in all a great event — lots of opportunities for talking during and after, which is what I love about small conferences.

Perhaps more interesting to readers of this blog (you know who you are)(2) is the fact that there was a Rob Schneider movie being shot elsewhere on the premises. On the second day, I walked right through the shoot and there he was directing traffic. Carrie saw it, as did Lisa, so it’s not just me. It appears to be a sequel to “Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo.” We’ve never seen any of his movies, but now I think I’d better see at least one.

The other ‘work” part of the trip came on Wednesday in Maastricht, where I gave a guest lecture to an STS (Science, Technology and Society) working group at the University of Maastricht. That was just great. I met a bunch of wonderful people, including my host Karin Bijsterveld with whom I’d only ever corresponded (she was also at the NWO even in Amsterdam). Karin is the kind of person with a drawer full of projects she wishes she had time for — on top of her current work and all of which are fascinating — and she has a really sharp, creative mind. Between talking with her, talking with the other faculty there, and the audience response to the actual talk, I’d say this was one of my most useful guest-speaker trips ever. I have tons of notes for the mp3 project, which will be very useful this summer.

Carrie also did some work, but she can narrate that herself if she wants. She interviewed people about the Theo Van Gogh killing, and the video. We saw the video and I am quite certain it pushed all the right buttons, even as its substantive critique — that religious fundamentalism can harbor sexual violence and patriarchal relations between men and women — is pretty “garden variety.”

Play

Amsterdam is a whole lot smaller than I thought it would be. We could walk amost everywhere, though if we were tired or in a hurry, we could talk the trams around. We did the usual tourist things, I suppose, if not in the usual sequence. Since our plane got in at 6am and we couldn’t check in to our hotel until 2pm, we wandered around in a daze and began what I call the “Nazi Atrocity” tour of Amsterdam, first with the Anne Frank House. The thing about this place is that it’s the kind of thing tourists do, and yet it’s got an authenticity to it that I rarely find. Walking through there was quite moving and they handled it very well. Perhaps the thing that blew me away most was a copy of Otto Frank’s identity papers (Anne’s father). His mother’s maiden name? Sterne.

After that, we walked around a bit. Descartes’ old house is actually around the corner (but you can’t go in), as is a lesbian/gay monument.

The next morning, before the conference, we hit the old Sephardic Synogogue and Jewish History Center, which had an amazing exhibit by a Russian photographer who travelled around with the Soviet Army during WWII. the only problem is that in the Jewish History museum, you don’t find out that much about Amsterdam’s Jewish community. You find out a lot about Jews (I went to Hebrew School for several years. I know everything I want to know). Worse yet, it conflates antiZionism and antiSemetism, including a photo of a 2002 demonstration against Israeli violence against Palestinians as an example of contemporary antisemitism. Not cool. End of Nazi atrocity tour.

Other touristy highlights:

–the Amsterdam history museum, which was fascinating but also exhausting. Lots of detail, and lots of combing over old oil painting for clues to the history of the “golden age”. I think I pay too much attention in most museums. I want to look at everything and inspect it carefully. The thing is, the place is designed for you to browse a bunch of stuff and just do that once in awhile. I can’t seem to do that. The highlight, though, was a working stereoscope with street scenes from the 19th century in all their faux-three dimentional splendor.
–the canal boat tour, which we liked so much, we actually went twice. The second time was just to ride around in a boat on the canals.
–I was surprised that I actually liked the Van Gogh museum even though I’m not that fond of impressionism and
–the most touristy thing we did was the “museum of cats” (I can hear the groans all the way from wherever you’re sitting. just be quiet for a minute.) Yes, it was totally a tourist trap, but the fact of the matter is that once you get past the smell (someone’s “thinking outside the box”), they have some amazing stuff, and we scored a couple cool posters; one for my office.

Of course we ate a lot. The only things worth reporting, though, are the best filled doughnut I have ever had, and the best ice cream I ever had (the latter in Maastricht).

Speaking of Maastricht, I did a little touristy stuff there too. I can’t remember anymore what the oldest structure is that I’ve ever seen, but the city wall from 1229 might be it. There was also a chuch that had materials from 1000AD in it, and some gravestones built into the floor. Freaky.

Actually, I think the best part of the whole trip was probably just getting around, looking at all the buildings and moving through the narrow medieval streets. The most disurbing thing is that like most downtowns at this point, it’s kind of a museum of itself, crossed with a shopping mall. Hey, they have a Mexx, just like downtown Montreal!

I also took my first train trip of my life (round trip Amsterdam Maastricht), which I just loved. Can’t believe I waited this long to do that. The views were great, and I also worked through Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal, which is the first Agamben I’ve read. Fascinating stuff, though with a disappointing ending. I may have more to say when my head’s not spinning from the trip.

By now, you’re probably wondering where my schtick about the coffeeshops is. What coffeeshops?

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1. I don’t know if other pet owners have this phenomenon, but whenever we go on a big trip, we start missing our cats right away. It’s probably because we’d actually have some leisure time to hang out with them if we were there.

2. You may recall the anonymous football fan. I think I’m going to develop a whole cast of characters. We now have anonymous Rob Schneider fan.

Last Thought on the Way Out the Door

A couple years back, I called my American Long Distance provider to inquire about calling card rates for various parts of Europe. I was put through to the international division. The rep I spoke with was happy to help me but had never heard of Prague or Zagreb.

Today, I call Fido Wireless to activate our European roaming.

I am absolutely certain that I told the rep I was calling to activate European roaming.

I tell the rep we are headed to the Netherlands, with stops in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Maastricht and we’d like our phones to work in all three cities. A snippet from our subsequent conversation:

Rep: “Your North American roaming appears to already be turned on.”
Me. “The Netherlands aren’t in North America.”
Rep: “Oh.”

Tomorrow, it’s Amsterdam for a week

and I don’t expect to have much web access, so sorry in advance for the continued slow blog. I’m back for the summer (with a few short trips) in early June.

Here’s the latest report, in the style of Harper’s Index. All passive voice refers to me and/or Carrie.

Number of cool new people met and conversed with today at length over lunch or drinks: 4
Number of Canadian folksongs that sound like they are generations old but were actually written in the 70s or 80s first heard tonight: 2
Ultimate cause of Darth Vader: Inability to come to terms with his desire for his mother
Biggest letdown of new Star Wars flick: insufficient quantity of wookie dialogue
Percent Chance that that the U.S. right will find some way to co-opt Lucas’ faintly liberal message: 99.9
Number of people disfigured or disabled in Star Wars who are not evil: 0
Number of important Canadian identity cards renewed today: 2
Chance that the cards will be stolen from our mailbox when they arrive in a few weeks: about 1/300
Number of times I have ordered a taxi by phone in French since I learned how to do so a week ago: 2
Number of letters of recommendation dispensed in the last 36 hours: 8
Number of self-nominations for an award dispensed in same time period: 1
Number of powerpoint slides I intend to use for my keynote talk on Friday: 0
Length (in hours) of nap I will allow myself on Thursday afternoon in Amsterdam: 3
Odds that the fancy new “universal” charger I bought for my iPod will plug in to a hotel outlet when I arrive there: 50%
Chance that the voicemail on my cellphone will work in Europe: 20%
Minimum number of times each day we must move our car in order to avoid a ticket if we are parked on our block: 2
Number of times we moved the car yesterday: 1

Crescent St.

Here I was thinking I had a pretty good mental map of the space between McGill and Concordia downtown. But last night, after watching the very mediocre Unleashed (yes, I will be acquiring the Massive Attack soundtrack), we are walking down St. Catherine with a friend looking for a place to have a drink. We walk east for awhile, and then come to Crescent. Walking north, the place is roaring on a Friday night. Teeming hoardes of young people in very tight clothing, sometimes club clothing, moving from club to club. We found an emptyish bar-cafe at the edge of the commotion where we could sit outside, watch the action and chat. It was quite a sight, and I think we were all a little surprised to find it there — during the day, it looks like just another cross street in the neighborhood.

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I’ve been relatively silent here because this was — I sincerely hope it was — the last big week of meetings for year. At least that’s my excuse. The social life has also been starting to pick up for summer as people begin to feel the summerness of summer. For our part, we’ve been social almost every night since coming back, and I hope the trend continues when we return from Amsterdam. The range of awesome people is one of the perks of the place.

And Now, a Self-Indulgent Definitional Question

I don’t know how we got on the topic last night, but this seems like a story worth recounting in a blog, so here we go. Tuesday, during the set-up period for the radio show, the host asks what she should call me. For comparison’s sake, she will call Emily Thompson a cultural historian. This turns out to be a difficult question. My main training is best described as cultural studies and my PhD is in Communications, but neither field has an effective noun state to apply to its practitioners. i normally spend about zero minutes and zero seconds of my year thinking about how to define myself. It’s not a significant intellectual question. I have a faculty position and joint appointments and that’s that. My work is my work. But the question totally caught me off guard, and has caused me to reflect, if only for a moment.

In an otherwise lame and derisive essay (note that it could have been good and derisive but wasn’t), Todd Gitlin references people who do cultural studies as “cultural students,” which is actually brilliant. I quite like it. For a field that has displayed so much arrogance over the last couple decades, “cultural student” is a nicely modest monicker. However, to third parties, the term has no purchase. If we started using it, we’d just get a lot of confused looks.

Communications or Media Studies doesn’t fare any better. Communicationologist? Communicologist? Sounds like you’ve got a problem that I can fix. “Here, bend over and let me take a look. Ooo! Get me some gauze, nurse!” Mediaologist? Too close to meterologist. “Tonight’s weather is going to be sunny, with occasional tornadoes.”

This leaves other, older fields. I have been called an ethnomusicologist, a historian of technology, a cultural historian and an art historian. The last is laughable, but I guess people read “art history and communication studies” as my employement home and realize that only one of those fields has a noun state that can be applied to its practitioners. The others kind of fit (though not as well as cultural studies, media studies, or communications): I have training in all three areas, and I’ve published and been cited in all three areas. But to many historians employed in universities, anyway, “cultural historian” or even “historian of technology” means something slightly different, which is why I usually add “of a sort” to the end or “bizarre” to the beginning.

My deference in this respect comes from being on the other side of it, where guests speakers or others have claimed they do “cultural studies” or “media studies” and actually don’t do anything of the sort. It usually comes off as dismissive and condescending — for instance, as if to do “media studies” one merely needs to write a sentence about printing or television or whatever, and can skip the hard part where one does reading and research in the area. Now, I actually do know what history in history departments looks like and I read a whole lot of it, and I do bona fide archival research (though not for everything I write), so the analogy is not exact.

In any event, our friend, who will remain unnamed for reasons that will become immediately apparent, said that he calls himself a “cultural historian.” None of his degrees are in history and he does not work in a history department. I asked him whether he thought his work had any relationship to cultural history as done by historians, he said “probably not, but I don’t really care.”

Another Sweet Canadian Thing

Today’s Focus section in the Globe and Mail has a short piece about the relative health of journalism as a field. Two measures that appeared would never have clocked in the New York Times or any other mainstream US publication where blowhards go on about the state of journalism

1) whether it is possible to make a living as a freelancer. Freelancing is important because it fosters innovation.

2) how the alternative press is doing. The article mentioned The Walrus and Maissoneuve among others. Imagine the New York Times worrying about In These Times. Wouldn’t happen.

My Face was Made for Radio

or so the T-shirt says.

Today, I got to be on a Chicago Public Radio show about sound. For those of you who have slogged through The Audible Past, I don’t say anything new. But I do demonstrate remarkably self-restraint when during the call-in section I get a question about Walter Ong and the host turns it over to me.

My co-guest was Emily Thompson, whom I haven’t seen in a couple years. Turns out she’s from Pittsburgh and so we’d hang out when she came home to visit her parents. Emily is surpremely organized and the epitome of class. Carrie heard it and said I did not suck. So did one of Emily’s colleagues. We are inclined to believe them.

Anyway, it’s at http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/odyssey/. I don’t think the show’s up online yet but it will be.

The extra bonus for me was getting to go check out CBC/Radio Canada. The building is absolutely beautiful, and the studio I was in was really nice. My engineer preferred to speak in French and I swear I understood a good portion of what she said. I can’t tell you the French for “cough button” but I understood her perfectly.

The Library of Congress in New York City

File this one under “your cultural capital hard at work for you.”

Last Wednesday, Carrie and I are crossing the border into the U.S. When the agent asks us what we are going to do in the United States, I say “we are going to a lecture at the Library of Congress.” This was, naturally, the most American, most patriotic answer I could possibly muster. It was also true.

The agent looks at me with this blank stare. I look back at him. He finally says “in New York City?”

Now it’s my turn to face him with a blank stare. I am trying to figure out what to say. From the passenger seat, Carrie leans over and says “in Washington D.C.”

Now it’s really awkward. The guy doesn’t ask us any more questions. Instead, he mutters something about there being more than one Library of Congress. You know, the one in New York and in some other city. The thing is, there isn’t more than one Library of Congress.

Now, to be fair this was a total social class thing. It’s a bit asinine for the bourgeois professor to get all in a huff about the border guard not knowing where the Library of Congress is. On the other hand, we’re equally intimidated by the hard-ass and usually quite sour American guards who give us a tough time about going south over the border.

Bottom line: I thought I had an ace line and instead I wound up embarassing him. He let us go, but I was getting ready for the full body cavity search.

On the way back, Carrie and I tried to come up with a list of things definitely not to say to the Canadian border guard.

Q: Did you buy anything or receive any gifts while in the U.S.?

A: Nothing except this here leaky test-tube. Wanna have a sniff?

A: No, we left the radioactive materials in Washington.

A: Yes. We got this lovely small flying squirrel.