all shall be well all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well
julian of norwich
Friday, April 19, 2013
The word is sometimes used to refer to the methods and general approach to empirical research of a particular discipline, or even a particular large study, although the term ‘research techniques’ is perhaps more apt in this context. The principal concern of methodology is wider philosophy of science issues in social science, and the study of how, in practice, sociologists and others go about their work, how they conduct investigations and assess evidence, how they decide what is true and false. The topics addressed include whether the social sciences are in fact sciences; whether the social scientist needs to understand a sequence of social actions to explain it fully; whether there are laws in the social sciences which can predict as well as explain; whether research can be, or should be, value-free; causation and causal powers; inductive and deductive theory; verification and falsification; and other problems in the philosophy of knowledge and science (most of which are treated under separate headings in this dictionary). See also neo-Kantianism; neo-positivism. Oxford Dicitonary of Soc.
Originally: the branch of knowledge that deals with method generally or with the methods of a particular discipline or field of study; (arch.) a treatise or dissertation on method; (Bot.) †systematic classification (obs.rare). Subsequently also: the study of the direction and implications of empirical research, or of the suitability of the techniques employed in it; (more generally) a method or body of methods used in a particular field of study or activity.
OED
The general study of method in particular fields of enquiry: science, history, mathematics, psychology, philosophy, ethics. Obviously any field can be approached more or less successfully and more or less intelligently. It is tempting, then, to suppose that there is one right mode of enquiry logically guaranteed to find the truth if any method can. The task of the philosopher of a discipline would then be to reveal the correct method and to unmask counterfeits. Although this belief lay behind much positivist philosophy of science, few philosophers now subscribe to it. It places too great a confidence in the possibility of a purely a priori ‘first philosophy’, or standpoint beyond that of the working practitioners, from which their best efforts can be measured as good or bad. This standpoint now seems to many philosophers to be a fantasy. The more modest task of methodology is to investigate the methods that are actually adopted at various historical stages of investigation into different areas, with the aim not so much of criticizing but more of systematizing the presuppositions of a particular field at a particular time (see also naturalized epistemology). There is still a role for local methodological disputes within the community of investigators of some phenomenon, with one approach charging that another is unsound or unscientific, but logic and philosophy will not, on the modern view, provide an independent arsenal of weapons for such battles, which indeed often come to seem more like political bids for ascendancy within a discipline.
oxford soc
it's ironic, in the midst of anxiety and depression, how comforting and how triggering witnessing, even in the most abstract sense, a suicide attempt. green line going west was shut down at lionel giroux, i was going east.
Monday, April 15, 2013
I have been thinking of the supposed radicalism of the Annie's position of late, especially considering the natue of country's recent conservatism. The critical opinion seems to be that they are breaking apart the Post-Garth soft rock politeness. But country has not been very polite. The pendulum has swung of late--critics ignore what has occurred in the work of John Rich and his eventual descendants. The great thing (and I think the under rated) thing about this age of Rich, is that it's pretty gender neutral. From Gretchen Wilson onward--the fun has occurred to women as much as men. The Annies position on pleasure is not radically new. What is radically new, is it's use of pleasure as a disruptive strategy against a slew of targets, that seem to be obvious but haven't really been addressed. In Hush Hush, we can list family (especially the silence of the front pew), alcoholism (rehab, vodka being snuck, eggnog instead of beer), performative peity (the spectacular line "Well daddy's reading propaganda/And he's talking about the end of days), and even a discussion of grass so casual it might as well come from 70s outlaws. So what becomes new, is a different kind of integrative either/or. this is not partying on Saturday and church on Sunday--but a recognition of the tense negotiations between the south as a libertine's playhouse and the south as a sanctified space. The tension, is that though both of those exist at the same time, in the argot of the time, the Annies suggesting that not only the hypocrisy of it, but the silence of it is foundational is what is really left unsaid. That to expect the south to exist without the "hush hush" is to expect the south to exist not at all. (It's actually what makes the Annies great--but it sells, and it ends up on CMT, and it wins awards, and people sing along--so it's not subversive--one wonders what that means, if everyone knows what's going on, and everyone is speaking it aloud, does it become a steam valve where the real work doesn't need to be done--we talk about drugs and sex and Jesus and pot, but we don't write songs about how grand daddy fucked the maid, or that the one drop law is still a growing concern, or that Billy can't take his husband to Sunday dinner, or why all of those foreclosures, or the real history of slavery or what exactly happened at theTallahatchie Bridge) The personal is political. This is a political song. But it's politics will only go as far as the market will allow. (As a song--the brilliant chorus, the harmonics, the guitar work, how brilliant the whole thing hangs together, it's a ten--but the Annies always make me a bit nervous).
these collections of rent party cards, from Langston Hughes collections, suggest a way for communities of resistance to for, around the supplying of basic needs.
Phillp Sterns makes really lovely Glitch inspired tapestries.
these gifs of chicago ice flows are really great examples of representation and localised geography, plus, pretty.
Scott Pare Phillips v. subtle photos of the impressions that clothing leaves on womens bodies, has a spare eroticism and explains why i refuse to wear socks.
Agnes Martin, Milk River, 1963. (milk river is near lethbridge, the silt causes the water to turn white, milk weed grows on its bank, the sap of the milk weed is gummy and white)
Marricone's boycotting Tarintino's future work b/c of violence seems disnegenous.
being in quebec has made me realise how under rated hard edged abstraction is--these tiny and human scale geometric work by john mclaughin suggest a tiny bit of a revival, note how they look like bahuas era graphic design, and how that inspired post war american aesthetics. essay is worth reading too.
a conservators notes on some of the problems with still paintings that ha ve not seen the light of day in decades--including the usual cracking, and the unusal (black mould)
Sheila Hicks, 1974 (one of the things i love about fiber art in the 70s is how willing it is to be ugly)
twine game about the politics of the clinic, if you are transgendered, a little women's studies 101, but pretty perfect in it's use of a new medium.
read this article in the nyrb about the tensions between american and french academic culture, the nature of celebrity, the problem of location, and the culture of the academia, as it releates to derrida and then go stew.
a lot has been written about the new brad paisley single, some of which is by me at the juke box, but the linked essay is a really great run down of why he is important.
i have been listening to the Peter Pears rendition of the Britten Chamber Opera Turn of the Screw (literal chamber opera--james has never quite been american or english, and the poltiics of the parlour for the anglos are always a bit different) and i really love how horrorfied, and airless, and ambigious and freudian/family secret it is. Apparently the new Brooklyn staging is a mess (which is why i have been listening to the Pears), but the nonense latin is deeply intended and queer--which makes me wonder about how much the neo-classical instincts in early 20th century britian were a kind of queer cant (the article talks about Auden and Britten being school teachers, and that the latin in the opera coming from primers--but one could add Hausman, and Wilde's use of Latin--and so Britten' use of James as a way of discussing family secrets becomes a kind of way to parse James' use of english as queer cant, decades before Sedgewick.
reading this week's nyer, about a sex
scandal at Horace Mann (one of two or three there), the author buries
this ppgh: in recent years reports have surfaced of sexual abuse at
St Paul's, Andover, Exeter and other prominent private schools.
(51). He then goes on to mention Buckingham Browne and Nichols.
Canadians can add Selwyn Hall in Montreal, and UCC in Toronto.
Reports here, mean that those who have
gone to the police, or have resulted in settlemants—reports that
have been made part of the official discourse. The schools have a
number of things in common—they were at the time of the reporting,
or continue to be single sex, they encourage a kind of secrecy, they
cost a lot of money to get into, they are boarding or have
compoenents of boarding attached to them, etc etc.
Ironically—the closeness of a
boarding school, might have been the schools undoing. Just as the
homosocialness suggests a kind of boundry policing that allowed
teachers to have sex with students to isolate them, into thinking
that they were so special, that no one would understand the
practice—when students returned to schools or found each other
online, they found they were not alone, and a reversal of the loyalty
kicked in. each of these settlements came when a group of boys got
together, and worked collectively in order to find justice. There is
something in the effort to make butch corps d'espirt
(personal overshare—though some of
the recent renuinons online and in person have occurred since sjsa
have shut down, so many of the people in the school are committed to
it's program, and the loyalty does not seem to allow for this
reversal to occur. The idea that what occurred at sjsa was abusive is
not allowed to be part of the discourse. Also, the other schools
mentioned had a sexual breach—the homosociality was breached
sexually—noone at sjsa has admitted that they were fucked by other
students, or fucked by other teachers, much of the role that other
teachers had, was not to isolate and seperate students as a way to
make them part of the elite, but to strip any indviduality off them,
and working against the instincts of Selwyn or UCC.)
(which makes me think—is there
scandals that are left to emerge re: Lynn Ward or Fork Hill or etc.
Also, b/c of Byfield's influence—sjsa and most likely the other
ones, were so fucking weird, that their might not have been distincit
similarities)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Tried to explain to a flustered Adrienne Clarkson how the library at Mags worked today, and watched John Ralston Saul scare a baby into silence in the Communion Line. Didn't talk too him at Coffee afterwards, because i wasn't sure whether to say: Yr idea of the Metis concept of Canadian Identity is brilliant, or Yr reading of Foucault is hella fucked up.
Thursday, March 07, 2013
four thots post dinshaw
a) So if we can agree that the essentializing project of modernism seperated sodomy, making it a social identity (and this social identity was later politicised); the medeival traditon stated that sodomy was interlocked with a set of other sins (ie lust, simony, usury, gluttony, heresy), these sins could be described as sins of excess--does the question for a queerness that seeks historical context, but refuses the essentializing instinct, become one of intergrating this history of excess? b) could this excess of practice be seen as an excess of flesh? (thinking of Dinshaw's discussion of enlarged clits, Seneca's writing about dildos "sewn on", the dildos themselves, and how all of that could be considered a collapsing of sign and signifer? c) does the devolpment of a theology of transubstaiton in the 14th and 15th century be a way of making the metaphorical body of Christ a self contained system, that avoids these excesses of flesh (i.e the idea that one could not perform the sacaremnt if one had a wet dream the night before?) d) can we think of queerness in its idealizing the unstable and the liminal returning sexuality to its medeival orgins in sodomitical discourse, but w/o the prohibitive langauge?
Rita Abrahamsen explains why the intervention in Mali is not the same as the interventions in the middle east, and that Islam is not the same world wide.
Lisa Moore writes on why poetry was so important to the second wave feminist movement, including discussions of the interactions between Lorde and Hacker.
Fergus Filhey is an irish collagist and abstract artist, who does v, small, messy, historically minded, bright, and quite intelligent works that build up texture thru a combonaiton of hand created mark making (drawing, painting) and thru the building up of found materials (foil, wood, plastic). it continues the tradition of the armeature becoming part of the picture plane--and is a good example of a recent trend (several of the painters in the current Collision 9 show at Parasian Laundry in Montreal, for one)
hree thots about Benedict:
a) Though he has spent his life working his way to the position (see Earthly Powers by Burgess), i wonder if he actually ever wanted it in the first place.
b) For someone who is deeply respectful of tradition, this is genuinely shocking, esp. considering the health of his predecessor--I wonder if the work got to be too much for him, and i wonder how substantive his inner circle was/is.
c) Uta Ranke-Heinemann was his close friend, and she talked quite openly about how smart he was compared to his predecessor, i wonder if it would have been better if he had stuck as a moral theologian, as much as i profoundly disagreed with him the dude wrote well, and was terribly terribly smart. That his smartness was used to a set of political and social ends was intensely problematic, but being a leader of a billion people is an actively political position, and to think otherwise is profoundly naive. Religion is politics. Theology is politics. Of his politics think that his changes to AIDS policy, his books of theology suggested another way of looking at his role as leader. I mean we won't get a radical, Martini is retired, and Martini was the last of a certain kind of V2 nostalgia, and there are a number of ways that he made me feel very uncomfortable--i left when he became pope, but in the negotiating a western institution becoming post colonial, it's an impossible job, i wonder if we will get a gatekeeper, and be pleased by it. I also wonder if w. this resignation, they would be willing to find someone younger, but is there anyone younger.
Punctum, who did the book Rachel and I were part of, is publishing this really strong seires of texts on speculative medevialisms. The best one, is this new book on Chaucer, with it's third chapter the best thing I have read on depression and the academy. third chapter, free ebook.
the photographer David Taylor is attempting to record every boundry marker on the US/Mexico border, first put up in the 1890s. Link goes to a discussion of the practical problems of the project, with some strong images of the work itself.
old matchbooksmore old matchbooks (the best thing about them, is the image that goes through all the matches, so it becomes stattaco when images are absent)
Maya’s refusal to watch from the monitor points to her courage and integrity, but it also opens up a whole epistemological can of worms, because even seeing it up close (even making a film as rigorous as Zero Dark Thirty) can still never quite be the same as gaining perfect objective knowledge. So in a way the most terrifying line in the film is the rule Dan lays down for his prisoner-victim late in the sequence: “Partial information is treated like a lie.” There is of course nothing that anyone can give anyone in these circumstances except partial information. Therefore by the code of the interrogator, everything they’re given, indeed every unit of information they acquire, is a lie.
there is an essay to be written about Zero Dark Thirty as a problem of informtaiton control as it relates to bodily dissent, and the increase of taxonomic tasks in post-media ages.
Rasmussen's photo of the Faroe Island Whale Cull are a combonation of hyper tech (the orange plastic suits) and the ancient (the woman in the wool sweater standing beside a pool of blood. Difficult, but nessc. reportage.
These photos of spybases are interesting for what they are trying to impart--look at how the uk looks like a corperate hotel, france is totally incognitio, and the us is beaurcratic.
I haven't read Donald Westlake, he is a major gap in my crime writing knowledge (I was going to read him last summer but I found a whole bunch of Simeon for cheap), but using the idea of film adaptation with Statham as a hook, this review of the man and his writing, is sreally quite strong.
Luigi Ghirir, whose work was a highlight of the Martin Parr recent show on early colour photography, a show that resestablished europe as a source for an aesthetic that was previously thought to be mostly american. His colours were always bright, pop, and strange--his compositions were isolating, adn the work was just gorgeous. His best book is Kodachrome, which is impossible to find, and hella expensive. It has been re-issued, link goes to a review w, some page spreads. some individual shots
I can't help but to view this as delightfully meta--after a couple of years of hearing (mostly young men) trying to convince (mostly young women) about the importance of the 40, the back fields, the woods, the sticks, or other generic markers of semi-rural spaces as markers of sexual autonomy; the gorgeous harmonies of Lady Antebellum note the vitality of the flanuer (or more importantly the flâneuse) That it is a flâneuse who encourages pleasure and that the pleasure of the city, of the walking, the lights, the smoking and even the mannequins in the shop windows might lead to less obtuse pleasures, and that the avoidance of cities might suggest an avoidance of these pleasures, provides a stark rejoinder to the homosocial tensions that have dominated Nashville--even songs about fucking in the woods seem to be wryly intended for a public audience--the intimacy of the secret place remade for public consumption, this reversal, where the lack of intimacy of public spaces now remade for private consumption. Extra point for the last line of the song, with it's flirtatious wink.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Are the Best Artists working in Canada Today, all First Nation?
Beau Dick Kwakwaka'wakwa (aside from being a major mask carver, his strong belief in working with younger and mroe innovative artstis) http://www.justart.ca/beau-dick-photos.htm
Nicholas Galanin. Tginlit (http://galan.in/) In the radically reworked, vitally impt show on Hip Hop and First Nations Aesthetics at the Powerplant right now, his work merging breakbeats and traditional dance, recast the history of cross politioan in a matrice of competing signifers.
Larissa Healey Haida, (works with Bulpit)
Zacharias Kunuk Inuit, (Perhaps our best narrative film maker?)
David Garneu, Metis, one of Canada's smartest, most techincally proficent, great pure paintters, and really smart.
Small list--forgetting novelists, poets, dancers, fashion designers, graphic designers, playwrights, craftspeople, film and video makers, etc. et al.
Post 1970, does Canadian Art Exist w/o Aborginal Contrubitions--and if the answer is no, does this mean that we have to completely reconsider what that image and conception means--Think of Monkmen's porno odes among the romanticism of Cane, sail Coupland's canoe next to Jungen's Cetology, Think of the abstraction of Heaveyshield and then the abstraction of Bush, think of Haida work remade as Kitsch, then look at Reeves mask of Brando or Healey and Bulpit saying "whos streets our streets", try looking at another Richard Prince playing Marlboro Man after Garneua's Cowboys, Indians, and Metis?, Think of Weiland's middle class femminism, and then Belmore...
I don't want this to be a either or, but thinking about this--first nations creators have inserted, and by extension discredited the narratives of art history--a disruption that is needed, and joyous.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
no comments on the pazz and jop,
It took me months to warm up to "Pontoon," but it went from being mediocre in late summer to the best chorus I'd heard by early winter. It's mostly the craft — plus the almost-naughty double entendre in how they sing "motor-boatin'." —Anthony Easton
Dwight Yoakam's 3 Pears is a slight, spare and solemn record, whose skills at quiet understatement could be read as boredom. Instead we get a mid-career set of small discussions about personal failures and social misconnections — a miniature of perfect songs about terrible emotions. —Anthony Easton
Sunday, January 13, 2013
dinner at vices et versa, in montreal, with maggie, ray(!), lana, alex, jill, and me--had a charchiture platter and five ciders.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
you don't need to worry
if you need, need
everyone needs periods of balls-out neediness
some people need more or longer periods than others
on the rise of DIY abortions, excellent peice of writing, a combination of personal stories , larger histories and recent trends. The recent "fetus personhood" regulations and the refusal to legalise/medically supervise pharmaceutical aborofacients are important to note.
Enid Chadwick's Childrens Book of the New Year, has that early 20th century, popululist neo-medivealism, an updating of Morris or a more colourful Gill, just gorgeous.
Looking onto the Mies from Nun's island, artist unknown.
one of the questions that i had about martin, for decades, was how she worked so many hours, but produced so little--full 8 hour days, and maybe 12 paintings a year, and only a handful of drawings, and with a few exceptions, no distinct print practice. This interview with her galleriest, talks about how near the end of his life, that he helped her destroy paintings that he thot were gorgeous, but Martin thot were formally flawed. This suggests that the skill that Martin had was not only (or even perhaps not mostly) object curation but object creation.
speaking of martin, here is a great lecture by Katz on the implications of formal questions and how it functions as a matrice with her personal life:
documentary on Kaneshatake and first nations resistance.
This article from the star states directly what i have suspected for a long time, namely that the FOIA works as an obsfuctating tool, which might have been a feature instead of a bug, from the view of the gvt.
“Vertical-Horizontal Composition” (1916), a small, framed wool needlepoint tapestry by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture. The work bespeaks a subtle eye, a sober mind, and an ardent heart. If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it. You wouldn’t need any great reason. I was mildly shocked by how unshocking Taeuber-Arp’s work is, amid rooms of strenuous sensations from the epoch of abstract art’s big bang. But, in a show that raises the question “Why?” at every turn, I kept coming back to it
