Digital Commons Network^™

New And Now: A Plea For Historiography And Technology, Haidee Wasson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the word new was persistently attached to the term technology, a coupling intended to reference a vast range of phenomena -- computers, the internet, wireless telecommunications, satellite cinema and so on. Throughout this period, these technologies were widely heralded as global panaceas. In the pages of glossy hi-tech magazines and academic annals alike, the obliteration of racism, homophobia, sexism, and the great class divide became subjunctive to the problem of connecting everybody everywhere to emergent digital networks. Decentering old-world imperial powers and creating alternative cultural formations became battle cries for the new …

Reading Over The Shoulder Of The Future At The Library Of Congress, Samuel Gerald Collins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It is 2003 and I am doing some research at the Library of Congress, the de facto national library for the United States and the largest library in the world. Next to me sit some articles I've printed off of online journals on the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Total Information Awareness Project, a plan, still in its formative stage, to throw a panopticon net of surveillance across the United States through a combination of language translation technologies, data search and pattern recognition technologies, and advanced collaborative and decision support tools (DARPA). But I am also doing research …

Aircraft Picture Postcards As A Tool For Influence Through Images, Daniel Martel

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The era in which we live at the turn of the millennium is defined by most scholars -- depending on their specialisation -- as the era of worldwide economic integration, adoption of technologies of western origins, internal harmonization of institutions and working procedures, and cultural standardization. The roots of this can be traced back to the Renaissance, as well as the industrial revolutions and economic liberalism. Their driving forces are successful economic transactions and permanent innovation. According to this worldview, the ultimate goal of any such activity is the optimised individual situation of any human being or economic …

A Body Of Her Own: Cultural Constructions Of The Female Body In A.S. Byatt's Strange Stories, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Byatt's short fiction, from her first collection Sugar and Other Stories (1987) to Elementals (1998) is marked by a continuous preoccupation with the body: the body as the product of social signifying practices, the body as the site of desires, fears, and anxieties, the body as the source of experience, the body as creator and created. In brief, the body is treated as the centre of existence, consciousness and identity. Yet, these are constantly called into doubt in Byatt's stories, which depict heroines trapped between asserting their identity and submitting to cultural dictates of beauty and behavior. In …

Ravers At The Bush: Generation Ecstasy Goes To The Theatre, William C. Boles

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Determining that seminal moment when a new theatrical movement comes to life has been one of the points of debate surrounding the challenging new plays and their talented, twenty something authors that have appeared on the British stage since the mid-1990s. Plays and authors like: Mojo (1995) by Jez Butterworth; Blasted (1995) by Sarah Kane; Closer (1997) by Patrick Marber; The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996) by Martin McDonagh; Butterfly Kiss (1994) by Phyllis Nagy; Love and Understanding (1997) by Joe Penhall; Essex Girls (1994) by Rebecca Prichard; Shopping and Fucking (1996) by Mark Ravenhill; and Ashes and …

Teaching In The Middle: An Ordinary Revolution, Davin Heckman, Patrick Vrooman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

We teach in the humanities. We teach encounters with the Other. And yet, what do we want from an encounter with the Other?

Multi-Player Computer Gaming: 'Better Than Playing (Pc Games) With Yourself', Melanie Swalwell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the August 2002 issue of Business 2.0, Geoff Keighley sketches the profits that companies such as Sony, Disney, Microsoft and others hope to make, as they enter into, or expand their existing, online multiplayer gaming ventures. With Everquest attracting some 150,000 players within six months of launching, each of whom was prepared to pay $10 a month to participate in online multiplay, it is easy to see why those in the industry are excited at having discovered such an apparently reliable revenue stream, with Keighley citing Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment President, Yair Landau's claim that This is …

On Katherine Frank's G-Strings And Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars And Male Desire, Kristen Schilt

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Katherine Frank's book, G-Strings and Sympathy, provides an anthropological look into the fantasies of male strip club regulars in a Southern City she calls Laurelton. Turning the gaze onto the gazers, a group left unstudied in the majority of literature on sex work, Frank unpacks how trips to the strip club are closely linked with discourses about sexuality, consumption and masculinity. Through six years of participant observation at a variety of clubs in Laurelton and in-depth interviews with thirty self-professed strip club regulars, Frank delves into not only why these men attend strip clubs but how these visits …

Solutions/Fixations: A Transformation, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First two paragraphs]

As I write from the heartland, in a small rural town in Northwest Ohio, the world, with the help of my government, is undergoing a process of reorganization.

This has been going on for some time. Media and its various material incarnations have stumbled around the world and back, layering it with new meanings, creating new sites of production. Rays of feedback, echoes, have coated the world with a many-layered web of meaning.

The Electronic Polis: Media Democracy And The Invasion Of Iraq, Jeff Lewis, Kirsty Best

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The American-led victory in Baghdad was announced to the world with scenes of Iraqi citizens dragging down the statues of the deposed tyrant. Like the spectacle of World Cup Soccer or the Olympic Games, the image was transmitted live through the global media network to the billions of people who had been closely watching the three week invasion. President Bush shared in the celebration, announcing the dawn of a new age for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. This new democracy, the president proclaimed, would bring stability and prosperity to the region through the obliteration of terrorism …

Stuffed Animals And The Predicament Of Culture: Lost In The Bedroom Jungle, Walter Putnam

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

These preachings are from the gospel according to Reverend Billy, spiritual leader of the Church of Stop Shopping (qtd. in Kalb). For several years, Reverend Billy has been waging a guerilla war in Lower Manhattan against the likes of Starbucks and Disney, including agit-prop performances where he brandishes stuffed animals atop tall poles like skulls adorning savage palisades. His inversion and subversion of these multivalent emblems of consumer culture reinforce the anti-consumer message he delivers in our era of late capitalism and globalization. His conspicuous utilization of stuffed animals highlights the manner in which these ubiquitous and inconspicuous …

The Cia World Factbook: Marriage Of Archive And Empire?, Jack Shuler

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

A recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art cites the production of textiles as integral in establishing the power of the Mongol empire. In the accompanying notes to the exhibit, the museum curators write that, In the creation of luxury textiles and objects for the Mongol elite, Chinese artists developed a visual language that was an effective means of establishing their rule and continuous presence throughout the vast empire. These artists used certain motifs such as the dragon and phoenix, to create tangible representations of power. The mythical beasts integrated the ideas of cosmic force, earthly strength, …

Review Of Writing Back: Sylvia Plath And Cold War Politics, By Alan Clinton, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Mapping Tourism, By Stephen P. Hanna And Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Alexandra Ganser

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Homeland (In)Security : Roots And Displacement, From New York, To Toronto, To Salt Lake City, Marusya Bociurkiw

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

On September 11, 2001, broadcast and print media around the world narrated the destruction of New York City's World Trade Center and the deaths of thousands of its occupants. This paper will examine the ways in which television and its appendages (the telephone, the internet, the newspaper) operated to organize the discursive meanings of this traumatic event. I will propose that between September 11 and February 2002's Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, ideas about home, roots and rootedness (and their Others: foreignness, homelessness, nomadicism) operated as a discursive mapping of that which could otherwise not be …

Review Of Heredity, By Jenny Davidson, David C. Froemke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Fixations/Solutions, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When the idea of this issue’s theme came to me, I was standing in a crowd of my peers, members of my generation, listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As with all concerts, the performers left the stage to signal their eventual encore, and when they returned, they returned with the announcement that the U.S. military had begun its bombing, and formal invasion, of Iraq. Whether the idea for the issue had come to me prior to this moment, or as a result of it, I am unsure; I had, however, earlier decided that the summer issue we …

War If Necessary, But Not Necessarily War': The Canadian Paradox And 'Iraqi Freedom', Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The Canadian refusal to join the U.S. led “coalition of the willing” does not mark the first time the nation has chosen not to follow its “traditional allies” into a foolish, ego-driven, imperialistic and vengeful conflict. Indeed, Canada’s record in these matters is flawless. Peter C. Newman points out that “we went along with most presidential global adventures, except the Vietnam War. The other significant time we parted company with the Yanks was over our drive to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa, a policy we initiated and successfully defended despite American objections.” In fact, the objections …

Imperialism & Globalization: Lessons From Frank Herbert's Dune, Kevin Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

These are the words of The Preacher (a character in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune who is simultaneously the metaphorical reincarnation of the fallen prophet, Muad'Dib, and the self-exiled Emperor, Paul Atreides) as he addresses the masses enslaved by their devotion to his messianic Empire. These words, culled from the pages of science fiction, are more than mere exposition from Herbert's narrative, they point toward several important conditions facing the political world today. These conditions concern certain failures of democracy and effects of globalization spawned, in part, by an intensification of imperialist expansion in the name of democracy.

Review Of How A Film Theory Got Lost And Other Mysteries In Cultural Studies, By Robert B. Ray, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

On T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, R. Stewart Varner

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Critical theory never died. It just assumed the façade of an academic discipline that is as spectacular as it is impotent. However, behind the façade there still lurk a few radical lunatics who, at times, may really be on to something. One such figure is Hakim Bey.

Review Of Time For Revolution, By Antonio Negri, John Conley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Burn This Journal, Davin Heckman, Sarah Hildebrandt, R. Stewart Varner, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor introduction]

Originally published in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (1.1), our manifesto appears for its first time online, in its entirety, here (earlier pieces of it appeared in earlier editorials). In so doing, we hope to continue the discussion that it grew out of in a public forum, and to ask our readership to participate as well -- a new manifesto should be written annually. Because Reconstruction is meant to be an organic enterprise, we ask readers to interrogate the efficacy and plausibility of the material herein: What must be changed, and what must be added/subtracted in order …

Paratextuality And Economic Disavowal In Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, Sarah Brouillette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Dave Eggers' recent novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), concerns two friends who suddenly stumble upon a lot of money, feel guilty about it, and travel around the world trying to give it away. Like almost all of what Eggers is involved in producing, Velocity is profoundly self-justifying. In fact, if we follow Gerard Genette's model and understand a work's paratexts to be all the physical and social texts that attend its existence, controlling its dissemination and reception, then Velocity thematizes paratextuality and practices it, as a text about Eggers' career and his overriding concern with the …

Text As Technology: Reading N. Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

N. Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines is a beautiful little book. Thanks to the innovative spirit of MIT Press' Peter Lunenfeld, the graphic design prowess of Anne Burdick, the multimedia talents of Sean Donahue (creator of the book's website ), and the insights of N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines arrives as one of the first installations of the Mediawork Pamphlet Series, and offers one possible line of development to follow for any scholar concerned with the future of The Book.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Mediums And Media: Review Of Ghostwriting Modernism, By Helen Sword, And Haunted Media, By Jeffrey Sconce, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Time Wounds All Heels: Duncan, Ballet, And Bataille, Joanne Pearson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Any study of the birth of modern dance draws upon the work of Isadora Duncan and for too long her dance has been placed in opposition to ballet. Even today the contemporary Duncan dancer reifies the image of Duncan as natural, harmonious, unique and rounded [1]. This opposition of free dance versus ballet presents a two-dimensional portrait of past representations of femininity. I aim to re-think Duncan's disdain for the pointe shoe and her belief that barefoot dancing would encourage a liberated movement that would in turn free woman from her disgraceful position in dance and …

Animation Studies, Disciplinarity And Discursivity, Paul Ward

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Addressing how knowledge grows, develops and fits together is arguably one of the most testing tasks facing scholars. In a world where knowledge is increasingly viewed as a commodity -- and the teaching of that knowledge is often done in an instrumentalist fashion -- we need to come to a fuller understanding of how knowledge areas inter-relate. Such a mapping needs to move beyond simplistic models of disciplinarity (and its bolted-together variants, such as interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and the like) and explore the ways that a wide range of people in an equally diverse set of contexts might constitute …

Review Of Burger With The Works, Please! A Webjournal For Students Of The Humanities, Alexandra Ganser

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.