Super Bon!

Good to see some responses on the strike stuff. The big news now is that there are two more actions planned. The Student Society of McGill University is going on another 1-day strike on Thursday the 24th and there’s some big province-wide thing on Wednesday the 30th. I was downtown on Saturday and it seemed like there was a big march — but I wasn’t close enough to know if it was a strike-related event or something else. I have no idea if anything’s working more than it was before, but I will say that it’s pretty exciting. I heard that one of the French papers estimated the march I attended Wednesday at 80,000 people.

As for McGill students, I assumed that the reputation was a result of the internationality of the student body and their relatively higher class status with respect to students at other schools in town. But I’m also cautious enough to wonder if that’s a stereotype or if it’s true. I think some are striking out of solidarity or, maybe for the really young ones, just flexing their political muscles and seeing what it’s like. I’m sure there are others affected by the cuts. Bottom line is that the thing seems to have taken on a life of its own. In other words, even though the CEGEP and the McGill students may have “not that much in common” they recognize some shred of common interest, or it looks to them like by banding together they can actually make a difference for the better, which might be just enough motivation sometimes. Who knows? Anyway, it’s clear to me that the students are in the right on this one, and it’s really outstanding to see mass outrage at big cuts to education after years of watching cuts with little reaction in the United States.

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I can’t escape this original/copy thing. I saw a paper this weekend (thank you Ted Striphas!) that convinced me that it’s actually central to the current intellectual property debates, which I’m currently working through in order to get a grip for my mp3 book this summer (which, I must assert, is NOT about intellectual property law but about sound, technology and music). What’s interesting to me is how much American law mimics the conservative strain in cultural criticism that is so concerned about copies circulating in some form unmoored from the original. I don’t know what to do with it except to point it out for now and to say it’s one more reason why I don’t like that formulation. As for Benjamin, I pretty much stand by my original point from TAP: the footnote on the auratic status of a painting of the Madonna pretty much undoes the whole transhistorical thesis of the essay. Then again, Benjamin’s is a messianic philosophy and mine isn’t. That said, I’ll still probably teach that one in my repetition seminar next fall unless someone else covered it in prosem or something.

No whimsical commentary today. Along with 13 other people, Aaron Shuman, with whom I collaborated at Bad Subjects as a co-editor and co-director, begins a 4-month prison sentence today for protesting against the United States’ sponsorship of torture in other countries.

Read my Bad Subjects editorial here.

And I’m still not caught up on other people’s blogs. Guess that’s what happens when you have a party and don’t work on the weekend.

It’s been a great but busy week, including three nights out (though last night was spontaneous). Movie nite featured Be Cool which ought to have been entitled Be Lame. The Rock and Andre 3000 stole every scene they were in, partly because all the Hollywood stars were so busy mugging for the camera that they forgot to actually act. At least the Indian food and dinner company were excellent. Thursday night featured a great lecture on the history of gaslight and fireworks (ok, yes, I’m a geek but in my defense I did tell the speaker that I especially liked the parts of the paper where things blew up) and the subsequent dinner out with the guest and the usual HPS crowd plus a few new folks. James and Nick, the two main HPS organizers, are always very good about insisting that Carrie come to dinner (if not the talk) but she actually came to the talk this time. I was totally worried that she’d find History of Science stuff boring but she actually really liked it. It helps that the talk was quite good. Next week’s topic is alchemical fraud, but I’ll have to miss it, alas. Last night featured a spontaneous dinner out with our colleagues Ting and Bronwen which was lovely. I’d originally planned to finish reading a book to review and to go nowhere near my office, but the coffee shop was full, and I’d just had lunch with Tom Porcello, an ethnomusicologists who writes on sound recording, and I was real close to the office. Ah well! So much for getting work done. . . . I did find out that through a misprint I am listed as department chair in the new undergraduate bulletin. Since the new chair has not yet been announced, you might think this is a bad omen. I hope not: I’m already signed on for other administrative duty next year (graduate program director) and I’ve only been at McGill one year, which would make me a bad candidate. Nevertheless, the office staff thought it was the funniest thing in the world to congratulate me on my new post. Cruel!

Thanks to my colleague Darin, this week I learned what the “notwithstanding clause” is: it is one of the weirdest bits of constitutional law I have ever heard. Canada has a charter of rights and freedoms, which is sort of like a bill of rights. Except that there’s the clause that says that the government can pass a law “notwithstanding” the charter. For instance, in Quebec, if you run a business your sign must have French on it. The “notwithstanding clause” means that you can’t plead “freedom of expression” for an English-only sign. I understand the logic there, but you can quickly see how this can get out of control. It’s at the center of debates around whether the government can pass a law, for instance, on same-sex marriage.

One of these days, I will update my tiny blogroll and introduce you to the other blogs I read, which are almost exclusively authored by friends or acquaintances. But not today.

and I don’t mean McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

–Last night we threw a party for the ages. It was outstanding, massive and eminently positive. I am a little woozy today but in that good way that one is. As I said to Carrie, “I am quite pleased with us.” Our new friends and students are all awesome. Also our blonde cat turned out to be quite the party hound. Inasmuchas a cat can be a “hound.” Additionally, our “great room” is the perfect dance floor. Speaking of the floor, I must go get the vaccuum after completing this entry.

Two things that have caught my mind while cruising the ‘net:

—cartoonist Tom Tomorrow asks after the etymology of “wingnut” and “asshat”

—Charlie Bertsch wonders about what’s at stake in a guy calling himself feminist

And a question raised by the shooting of four Alberta mounties in a drug bust this week: what will happen to Canada’s slow movement toward more sensible drug policy?

So I read this book review over at salon.com on the forced removal of the acadians by the British, and it raises some interesting questions. If you’re talking about the land that now makes up the Maritimes during the 1500s-1700s, is that “Canadian history” or “American History” or something else? There were the usual range of letters from readers, but it does occur to me that we have a bit of a classification issue on our hands.

Note: Salon.com has a stupid and annoying ad policy. Thanks to my friend Steven Rubio, I have a free sub, otherwise I wouldn’t read their stuff.

…which means I can now get back to blogging my life. I’ve got a short entry on Ward Churchill and the right wing attack on tenure in the US over at the Bad Subjects blog, which will do for now.