Taking it Outside

Abstract: Through an examination of Parliament-Funkadelic's lyrics and music, this paper explores shit, dirt, and the funk, investigating their relationship to George Clinton and his band's desire to darken the Humanistic project of Enlightenment, their desire to soil language, and thereby question conventional, bourgeois values. The author argues that Funkadelic participate in what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the "peculiar logic" of the carnivalesque, detourning status quo notions of culture and society, creating complex contortions through the blurring of the good and the bad, the cerebral and the carnal, the sublime and the mundane. In essence, Funkadelic are a musical carnival that exists to dismantle the normal and the everyday, that provides a new lens through which to look at contemporary culture and engage with its many contradictions.

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During the 1920s, Robert Park, redeveloped the work set out by Davenport and, to a certain extent, Boaz. He believed, much like Davenport, that racial traits were biological legacies which are coded into our blood, and can be understood by our interactions with each other and form a type of biological capital which explains the racial hierarchy that had formed in his era. With the development of rapid mass-transportation systems, industrial capitalism and mass migrations of cheap labor, diverse groups of people will begin to come into contact and develop a "race consciousness." He also believed the "desire to survive" would lead many immigrants to search out better developed and material successful nations. However, unlike Davenport, Park viewed assimilation as a successful way to absorb the new immigrants from Europe. His racial category of "white" incorporated all Europeans, whereas Davenport believed each nation (and at that time most nations in Europe were developed around a primary ethnic group), was a separate racial group. While Davenport's survival of the fitness framework sought to keep the Aryan (Anglo, Nordic, Teutonic "races") pure, thus strong; Park believed the natural evolutionary course was further mixing among most European ethnic groups in the United States and then the world, with Europeans leading the way. He developed a theory, concerning race relations, which was to resemble the nature cycle: contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation. For Park, it was primarily, behavioral attributes, not biology nor social structures, which were the determining factor concerning racial relationships in the United States.

 

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Nothing to do with anything, but this discovery is so cool. An unemployed metal detectionist (if that's a word) discovered an Anglo Saxon hoard from the 7th century. I did two years of Old English, and it's always been a period that fascinates me. Comments on Beowulf, the Normans or on the vagaries of chance.

 

The following post will track the intellectual trajectories of racial theories, in the social sciences, in the United States. I will attempt to lay out this history in a chronological sequence, fully aware that many of the theoretical concepts that have been developed recently are also theories I use to analyze the past. (I point this out because, academics must be prepared to understand that their work is being produced within a historical context, much like the theorists we analyze, thus a bit of humility must accompany our work). It's customary to begin with the work by Charles Davenport, but it is essential to understand the context within which he was working in.

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I am a grad student, in an American Studies PhD Program in Los Angeles. (American Studies? Think British Cultural Studies and Ethnic Studies). In general, I am interested in understanding how religion/faith/spirituality construct and inform issues of class, race, gender and sexual identities and the ways in which these identities inform and construct religion/faith/spirituality. In addition, how are relationships with THE STATE formed and informed, as a result. More specifically, how do these questions play out within Protestantism in the United States? Read More...

[url=http://www.examiner.com/x-21743-St-John-the-Baptist-Parish-Progressive-Examiner~y2009m9d10-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan--The-Worlds-Real-Nuclear-Threat]Theory why US is escalating action in Afghanistan[/url]

[url=http://thisfuckingwar.blogspot.com/]By way of ThisFuckingWar[/url]

 I tend to agree with President Obama that Pakistani nuclear weapons are the big threat right now; US military action apparently is based on keeping the Taliban and Al Qaeda from getting nukes. This is something that the administration will eventually have to reveal as a strategic decision, because so many people left and now even a few from the right are questioning what the deal is with this current "surge".

I was intrigued by the discussion of contrasting cultural patterns that sod mentioned and commented on, but given the link limitations at the mothership, I thought that he might have more things to discuss, so I've invited him to post over here. (The invite remains extended to any other ObWi regulars who want to post stuff longer and more link filled than comments)

 

I'll let him introduce himself. Play ball!

Just an open thread on the sudden outbreak of trolling over at the mothership. A good side effect is that it looks like Slarti may be given the new and totally revised sekrit handshake and callsign. I actually think that any number of sites would benefit from having a person who doesn't post, but weighs in every now and then to fire the ban gun and do aisle cleanup.

 

[update] if you need to get in touch with me, libjpn at gmail.

A pretty amazing scene, via MyLeftNutmeg, where a Spanish speaking bishop at a town hall, asks to speak in Spanish to Jim Himes (who is fluent in Spanish). Watch what happens below the break. Read More...