EMP 2008 Pop Conference

Bump a bit (since I don't know if people noticed this). My coherence is rapidly dying today so I have nothing to add beyond the belief that there is a middle ground which is always negotiable in situations like this.

Yep

"Heteronormative" seems useful, but actually muffles the impact of the words you'd use to describe its concept. (You could say the same for "heterosexism," which is even broader, but most people at least know what that word means.) Isn't it more pointed to say that someone endorses a homophobic view of what's normal and what isn't, rather than say that person is being "heteronormative"?

Actually, Pete, "homophobic" and "heteronormative" mean two different things. I can elaborate but I'm not sure you're still reading (or if this is even the proper place for it).

In any event, the question that rarely gets asked in these debates is WHO exactly is getting effected by such jargon? There's rarely an assessment re: the precise damage it's supposedly causing.

And I must reiterate what Culture Rover said in his blog post. Journalists are just as susceptible to these charges as academics. "Jargon-free" does not necessarily mean "easy to read." My love for Xgau is well-known. But even the man himself admits his writing is difficult to wade through. I'm still not 100% certain why he likes Daydream Nation judging purely from his original Consumer Guide entry. And while "kvetch" and "kvell" are hardly jargon per se, his review of KC & The Sunshine Band's Greatest Hits read like a communiqué from Planet Xavion to a suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old who had no clue what those words meant (or even that they were words in the first place - "kvell I" looked like "kvell ONE" to me). Also, he's sprinkled his writing with academic jargon at least as early as using the word "signifier" in his review of Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places (1981).

Oh and check that thread where some ILMers freaked about his Vaughan/Bogan review and claimed he-wasn't- talking-about-the-music even though he was using the "impolite discourse" of rawk inn rawl.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

But you're kidding yourself if you think it goes down easy. In fact, every essay I've read so far in the latest issue of the academic Cinema Journal, for instance, is much easier to understand than Scott's review. And the same goes for Dave Queen's masterful Scorpions discography from Marooned (or many of his threads here - check the Siren vs. Oh No It's Devo one). Or Stewart Voegtlin's stuff for Stylus. Etc. All great. All very difficult.

Finally, I've never read anything academic (not even Spivak) as impenetrable as Meltzer's The Aesthetic of Rock. And I even have a mind as august (and academic!) as Simon Frith to back me up on that one.

ILM wouldn't let me link to ILM in that post for some reason. So voila:

Xgau takes music criticism to a new level

Roxy Music 'Siren' vs 'Oh No, It's Devo'

I don't think anyone's arguing for a Manichean approach to rockcrit. Thanks to respectful demurrals by Carl Wilson and Michael J, Kramer, I've been answering emails for three weeks.

The bottom line: anyone who knows my work and tastes (and what I do to pay the mortgage) can't mistake me for an anti-intellectual. A pedant maybe.

You know-nothing revanchist jingoist. Oh wait.

Thanks for posting, Michael, and I half agree--like I said, good babies in that EMP bathwater.

But jargon is bad by definition. That's why one person's jargon is another person's exact term. When Noam Chomsky spoke at UW in the late '80s, and someone asked him why he didn't use "ruling class" and "capitalist" in his speech, Chomsky said he didn't see the need for Marxist jargon. To the Marxists, Chomsky's use of "elites" was the jargon of an anti-Marxist.

In truth, jargon lies in the ear. The question to ask is: What is being communicated besides simply what is being said? And why? And to what effect?

E.g. if you say "Let's interrogate this discourse," you probably mean:

1.) "Let's talk about this debate"
2.) "I've slogged through a lot of the same shitty postmodern textbooks as you have"
and if you mean this ironically:
3.) "I'm making fun of people that have slogged through these books" or "woe is us"

The precise damage being done is that a lot of smart people have not slogged through those books, often for the perfectly good reason that they're shitty postmodern textbooks, and this (I'm assuming very large) audience either tunes out on impact when they hear this jargon, or has to do the additional mental work of translating what you're saying into English.

By definition, jargon has the opposite effect of poetry or poetic prose: it numbs and clouds where better language makes vivid. Rather than shine the light of strangeness, it casts the pall of routine.

But Pete, what exactly counts as jargon? Do "kvetch" and "kvell" count? I mean, they aren't even English in the first place whereas at the very least "interrogate" and "discourse" are.

One can definitely substitute "a Xgau (or Seward or Queen or Voegtlin or Meltzer) review" for "shitty postmodern textbooks" and make the exact same argument you're making above.

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

And Soto, somewhat hilariously, I didn't understand your last post (well, really, just the second sentence).

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

Ah! Capice.

x-post

Kevin, if what you're driving at is that "heteronormative" also includes the simple ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality, isn't that also better put just by saying "ignorance of any norms outside heterosexuality"? I don't see how combining all these different things (including, as I said, homophobic attitudes toward what's normal) into one vague word is an improvement, much less an innovation.

It's as if I decided that we should have a word for how war has become the norm in our time, and peace the deviation, and called this concept "warmalcy." It would actually take me more work to define the coinage over and over again than to just get across what I'm talking about in words that thousands of people have already used before to describe the same thing. But then maybe I'd get less credit for having nothing new to say.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more it kind of pisses me off that this sort of thing is referred to as "theory."

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?"

And was Soto wrong to use "Manichean?" To be honest, I had no clue what it meant. But I looked it up and all is well. Or so I thought...

And fwiw, Theory is extremely unpopular in academia right now.

x-post

And I've never understood what's so bad about doing additional mental work. If it's smart people we're talking about here, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

I hope I make my listeners and readers work. Work is fun. But the work should be worth it: It takes work to see the connections between ideas, to start making connections yourself as you listen or read, hearing ideas come together almost musically. It's work to "get" the subtle things someone is trying to put across (I left a lot between the lines in my EMP talk just because I figured it's best to start with what people most likely don't know, or don't agree about). In the case of a writer such as Christgau, there are also the references and slang and jokes and send-you-to-the-dictionary words I already mentioned.

The kind of work I don't like is the communication equivalent of someone throwing a book on the floor and asking you to pick it up versus someone handing you a book: Sure, I could use the excercise, but fuck you all the same. I get nothing out of the work it takes to translate "interrogate the discourse" to "examine the debate." Whereas even indirectly, Christgau has taught us both something good. "Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it. "Kvell" I didn't know until I looked it up, but it seems like a great Yiddishism to me. "Signifier" meanwhile isn't really academic jargon; it might be an academic word, but it means exactly what it is.

I can't defend a bunch of writing I haven't read, so I'll just repeat that I'm against jargon in any setting--oh, sorry, "context"!

Why not just say "irrational fear of homosexual men and women" instead of "homophobic?

Well first of all because that's not what homophobic means, but I've already given you enough to argue with here.

Here's Wiki:

"Homophobia (from Greek homós: one and the same; phóbos: fear, phobia) is a term used to describe irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuals.[3][4][5][6] It can also mean "irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals".[7] Homophobic is the adjective form of this term used to describe the qualities of these characteristics while homophobe is the noun form given as a title to individuals with homophobic characteristics."

And here's Answers.com which Google links to whenever you search a word:

"Fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men."

Ok we could probably go back and forth here all night as I have some major problems with what you're saying. I just want to address this for the record:

"Kvetch" is most definitely English by now, having entered American usage as "complain" through Yiddish, and I'm surprised you haven't heard it.

The suburban Midwest nineteen-year-old me had never heard it before which I hope doesn't surprise you. I certainly know the word now. Oddly enough, I've never heard it without "kvell."

Whoops, sorry to read so sloppily, Kevin.

I'd argue that Wikipedia is wrong when it comes to "homophobia" (and on a lot of other words, like "irony"). Leave asside the fact that "discrimination" is used to mean exactly its opposite (a lack of discrimination based on prejudice, "homophobia" is modern slang; it doesn't come from its Greek roots; if it did, it would mean "fear of same." It's a made-up word combining homosexual with phobia, and the way it's commonly used, it encompasses the spectrum of attitudes towards homosexuals that "racism" does when it comes to race, or sexism does when it comes to sex. "Irrational fear" would be last on the list: The common comeback "I'm not homophobic, I just hate gays" is nonsense.

Sorry to go on, obviously words are something I like to argue about...

I can't force anyone to use the words I want, but 95% of the time, I use the term "homobigotry" instead, and stress it so that people realize I'm asserting that word and not the weak colloquialism Pete just called out. I only use "homophobia" if it is literally that, which is far rarer than the former.

ass-ide

ass interface development environment?

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

I've gotten flak for remarking that there was an awful lot of academic jargon at EMP this year.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, May 6, 2008 4:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

yes, and frequently divorced from any of the academic rigor with which it is (more usefully) deployed to better effect.

"hegemony" was definitely the word of the weekend.

"neoliberalism"

What I really wanna know is, which if any academic jargon phrases would make the best band name? The Valences? Discourse? (Maybe for a disco group?) The Jargon (pronounced with accent on syllable 2: "Jar-Gone") would be a great name for an alien race that bedevils Doctor Who. "There's been an outbreak of Jargon at EMP."

Did someone say jargon. Then again, we are talking about Dartmouth, as reported on in the Wall Street Journal:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways."

"neoliberalism"

Ha, don't get me started.

I took Alfred's criticism to mean that while these words may have larger meanings behind them, a lot of people weren't using them that way, but were instead obfuscating their otherwise-understandable ideas, and that this is bad.

The problem seems to me that each term has essentially a moral argument associated with it, and that when someone just throws it out there you'd have to take all day to push back against the premises inherent in the jargon, so it really limits debate.

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences.

Poor Northwestern.

Hahaha

Always amazing when the left and right go so far around the bend they meet up again. Sounds like (based admittedly on no direct exposure to her writings) her quasi-progressive critique of science's aspersions to truth would dovetail quite nicely with the recent fundamentalist attack on science.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

Skot (and I as his significant other) got death threats from "Jukies" in response to that review. It really riled some folks. Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

holy shit, that first paragraph is hysterical

The second for me:

El-P's rhymes are as wack as a lumberjack swinging an ax made of wax from the ears of Tears for Fears after they drank all the beers and found Britney Spears in arrears for illiciting too many middle-aged leers and hipster sneers. On the other hand, instrumentally, he's good.

Yeah, I haven't read much Scott Seward, but every time someone posts something of his, I find that it's the new best thing ever written. Line Ned posted is definitely a favorite from the El-P piece.

"I'll make ya quake. Scare ya so bad your ass will be Farrah and your drawers will be Cheryl Ladd."

*** *** ***

I suppose the value of academic/technical jargon is that it allows you to pack very complex ideas (and idea sets, ideas about ideas, references, etc.) into small spaces, where they can be played off each other. This assumes an audience familiar with the terminology and its implications, so yeah, it can impede broader communication, but broad-channel communication isn't always the #1 goal. Sometimes you just just want to get the concepts across as efficiently as possible.

Ned beat me to it. EXCELLENT review. The best line that sums up what I like and don't like about the latest El-P.

Like Skinny Puppy made a record and let their plumber sing.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

Ha ha, I'm imagining the guy furiously text messaging this.

Neoliberalism, neoliberal, neoliberals: know what they mean, can see why they're used, but avoid them myself. They might fall into the category of an ideology that goes nameless in order to pass itself off as "common sense," but conservatives would say the same thing about left-wingers who don't like communism, liberalism, or anti-Americanism as labels. I prefer openly argumentative language, such as "free-market true believers" or "free-market hucksters" or "the self-serving ideology of First World international lenders," etc.

At EMP "neoliberalism" was code for "Clintonism."

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

No you're not. You're managing to have a humane argument on ILM for which I'm grateful.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

You've got to be fucking kidding me! So much for the underground.

I understand your point, Pete, but the descriptive phrases you prefer fail to do what the word "neoliberalism" does so effectively: encapsulate a complex set of ideas and historical references into a small space. Neoliberal is (or can be considered) good jargon, because it's much more efficient than a sidebar on the history of economic liberalism.

As a buzzword, though, it plainly sucks. Maybe the difference between academic obfuscation and beat-to-death buzzwords figures in here.

I gotta ask, though, Pete - is your favorite book Madame Bovary? It's mine...

I take Pete for a Portrait of a Lady fan.

Loved Bovary in high school, but what's the connection?

Le mot juste

Flaubert was obsessed with finding it

A blog posting from someone who is on the committee planning the next conference http://swtos.blogspot.com/2008/08/politics-of-race-bodies-on-popular.html

was recently asked to participate on the program committee of a major popular music conference that happens each spring in Seattle. If you know pop music, you know I mean the EMP Conference. Seattle is home to the great Jimi Hendrix and EMP has a great exhibit happening now on Jimi. The program committee selects the upcoming topic and puts the call for papers together. Who attends the conference? A mix of music journalists and academics. And some industry folks and publishers of popular music from A to Z.The conference itself has always struck me as driven by the participation of predominately white driven set and discourse of POP music. It occurs for me as a black female scholar that EMP has been dominated by the musics that powerful groups of white folks like or white critics talk about (Kelefa Sanneh is an exception though he ain't Greg Tate). It has also been about hidden conversations by all us "minority" folk still feeling and perhaps making ourselves others but NOT taking a stand on program committees to say what is usually backroom conversation for blacks only or with a few radical white folks who we trust or who we think are like us -- have no real power in the matter.

The committee is assigned to choose a title in the next few days so the CFP (call for papers) can go out by early Sept. One of the popular titles arising has to do with the EROTICS OF POP. Committee members are talking about how bodies get left out but rarely are they talking specifically about WHOSE bodies are left out and HOW. Right now we are at the generalizing stage. I suggested this title two days ago and some liked it, others did not. For one, it's too long:

Share, Remix, Reuse : Social Media, Music & We the People in 2.0(09)

What was behind my proposition was bringing issues of diversity out without making it explicit -- race, gender, nation, class -- as well as musical and cultural diversity in approaches to music-making. Check out this great video on creativity and video remixes:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.htm

My specialty as a popular music scholar is race, gender and the body. What I have been privy to as a speaker/participant at EMP, what has driven my own concerns about participating has been that I feel white concerns about popular music run the atmosphere and the conversation. It seems inevitable with a critical mass of white journalists and scholars talking about pop.

I notice the committee's conversations seem to already use the term BODIES without politicizing what it means to different audiences and people. The politics of the people of color whose BODIES and VOICES have been consumed, always present, but often disenfranchised by the pop machine seems to always get lost when we don't privilege REAL PEOPLE in our themes and discourses not just their bodies.

So here I am on the program committee and if you've learned something about me from my previous posts -- offending the status quo excites me when I really have the courage to do it. But part of me is withholding what I always wanted to say now that I got a little power. Crazy thing.

So I said it. Black folks already got issues about the way bodies are consumed in popular culture and popular music from hip-hop to McDonald's commercials and jingles. I shared with the committee that I think we must politicize the way people MIX in whatever title we choose and use it as a metaphor about the MIX in music. It's about sounds and people mixing. Not just money and markets on some chart. I shared in my last communication, if we bring the politics of race and gender to the CFP then I'd feel more at home with my participation in EMP as a whole.

The hidden transcripts among some folks of color I've talked since EMP began several years ago, particularly some notables in journalism and academia, is that the issue of race might be a topic of some paper, but not a issue we talk about as people readin'/writing popular music. I also told my compatriots that RACE and WE THE PEOPLE and WEB 2.0 in 2009 is a national tie in for the conference this year. Which is I am considered proposing the following title: WE THE PEOPLE in 2.0(09) : FORMING A MORE PERFECT MUSIC

I also added that the keynote speaker should be someone of color to bend the ear of the conference goers in the direction of race, gender and the body in ways that people of color can and do without trivializing that WE are the ones who often get BOXED IN in conversations of BODY.

I still want Success with the Opposite Ethnicity/Sex/Gender/Nation/Age. I want to shatter the illusion but going to the place that is heard as different, other, or out of place. I want to pull our attention towards the MIX and REMIX of DIFFERENCE. Like...Agree to be Offended and Stay in the Conversation Anyhow!! Kyra
Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. at 11:15 PM