Part three of this conversation (part 1, part 2). About privilege, rhetoric, and when it’s okay to tell your students you’re gay (especially if you’re not).
Ari asks Michael about privilege, so you have three middle-aged, tenured, straight white guys in a room talking about privilege. Well, you’re getting the insiders’ perspective, anyway.
There is no wiggling. Giblets and I are going on the lam, to a land where wiggling is properly appreciated.
In case you’re curious, the deal is, the YouTubes don’t do just-audio (afaik). So there needs to be a picture of some kind. One could simply stick on a still and have done with it, but I thought our readers would want more. And maybe you do, but you want a flavor of more—a non-wiggly flavor—I don’t stock.
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May 12, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Ben Alpers
Ari,
Is there really no room for tongue-and-cheek performance practices in one’s scholarship? Certainly not in print. But it strikes me that in our oral performances–panels, conference papers and the like–there’s actually lots of room for it, though it has to be used more selectively than in the blogosphere.
It does seem to me that there’s something almost oral about at least some blogging practices. But it’s late here, and I’m not going to put my finger on what that is right now.
(Thanks, Eric, Ari, and Michael, for this interesting series. I just got back from a few days out of town and away from the internets and it was wonderful to find it waiting online!)
May 12, 2008 at 5:48 pm
eric
Tongue and cheek is a deli classic.
May 12, 2008 at 6:08 pm
JP Stormcrow
Tongue and cheek is a deli classic.
Well sure, you’re willing to say that on a blog…
May 12, 2008 at 6:17 pm
eric
I would say it on a blog, and I would say it in a fog.
May 12, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Michael Bérubé
A land where wiggling is properly appreciated — ah, that would be a land of ham jello, would it not? Some say Giblets was born there. Other people claim he was born in Hoboken.
May 12, 2008 at 8:24 pm
ben wolfson
Static legless reclining Bérubé considered harmful!
Bring back the throbbing!
May 12, 2008 at 8:27 pm
ben wolfson
Ari has a villainous kinda look going on, hasn’t he?
May 12, 2008 at 8:39 pm
eric
There really is no pleasing you, is there, Ben?
May 12, 2008 at 9:12 pm
ben wolfson
I wasn’t really complaining about the throbbing.
The Dinosaur Comics in the first video sure as shit pleased me.
May 12, 2008 at 9:13 pm
JP Stormcrow
And one of the images was racist! I’m beginning to think Sokal was right about you guys.
May 12, 2008 at 9:23 pm
ben wolfson
You wouldn’t believe what Sokal told me about Ari yesterday, JP.
Absolutely. Shocking.
May 12, 2008 at 10:07 pm
JP Stormcrow
Actually, I would believe it, what with Sokal being an actual scientist and all. But then, damn, what if he is setting up another hoax? Was it in an academic context, or like on a blog? Are there any physics majors we can check with?
May 12, 2008 at 10:22 pm
eric
The physics of Ari defy belief. Yet the mathematics support them! What are we to do? Clearly my colleague exists in eleven dimensions, some seven (or so) of which are curled up in Calabi-Yau space. Or possibly it’s ten and six. I can never remember. Where did I leave my abacus?
May 12, 2008 at 10:51 pm
JP Stormcrow
Hmmm, sounds a little hokey, not really my cup of tea, you seem to be discussing the haecceity of Ari rather than the quiddity of an Ari.
May 13, 2008 at 5:00 am
Bérubé deliver us from evil | stuart noble
[...] This morning I came across this terrific explanation from Michael Bérubé, in an interview (part two) given by the two guys who run one of my favorite history blogs. See parts one and three here and here. [...]
May 13, 2008 at 5:12 am
Ben Alpers
There really is no pleasing you, is there, Ben?
Absolutely not.
I may at times appear to plant my tongue in my cheek, but in fact, such joking from me is a thin façade designed to mask the fact that I’m the kind of rootless cosmopolitan malcontent that has plagued academia for much of the last century.
May 13, 2008 at 6:04 am
Michael Bérubé
I had to recline unwiggling, because there was no other way for me to get onto the psychiatrist’s couch and imagine people interpreting Sokal’s essay for their own nefarious ends. Also, I had to be legless in order to fit into that tiny little Calabi-Yau space alongside Ari, who is indeed villainous in all eleven dimensions.
And Ben, I just wanted to say that some of my best friends are rootless cosmopolitan malcontents.
May 13, 2008 at 6:20 am
eric
I actually meant Wolfson, but okay, Alpers too.
May 13, 2008 at 8:01 am
Giblets
Oh Edge of the American West, you have broken Giblets’s wiggle-loving heart.
May 13, 2008 at 8:03 am
Yorick
Calabi-Yau space? On EotAW, the famous history blog? It was my understanding that there would be no math!
May 13, 2008 at 8:03 am
eric
Fear not, Giblets. Wiggling will return in new and improved form.
May 13, 2008 at 8:04 am
eric
It was my understanding that there would be no math
History is capacious, and includes math too.
May 13, 2008 at 10:24 am
ben wolfson
I was for wiggles before eric claimed I was against them.
May 13, 2008 at 10:56 am
ari
So you’re admitting that you’ve flip-flopped on wiggling?
May 13, 2008 at 12:17 pm
ben wolfson
No.
I’m admitting that I have a history of being pro-wiggle, and that eric’s attempts to tar me with the anti-wiggle brush are therefore laughable.
May 13, 2008 at 1:16 pm
eric
Wiggle-Boat Veterans for Truth will educate the public about your true anti-wiggle positions, ben.
May 13, 2008 at 1:19 pm
The Modesto Kid
Wiggle-Boat
Ooh! Where can I get my ticket?
May 13, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Colin
Sheer pandering, but the wigglers eat it up.
May 13, 2008 at 4:23 pm
charlieford
“But it strikes me that in our oral performances–panels, conference papers and the like . . .” Thank-you for clarifying.
May 15, 2008 at 6:37 am
The Edge talks to the Center. « The Edge of the American West
[...] and op-ed discourse, are (as Michael Bérubé noted here) not the only game in town for your public scholar and there’s a lot to hate about them; [...]