What We Get Wrong, When We Talk About Abigail Zwerner

When I first heard about Abigail Zwerner's story, I had the strong feeling that we shouldn't talk about it. To clarify, I do not feel that the story shouldn't be addressed by the relevant community officials; rather, I feel that the widespread American public is inadequately informed to make meaningful statements about it. It is…

Reading One’s Body: On the Speed of Observation, Pt. V.5.2

Let's say that one were to read these comments while being an anti-natalist who still believes firmly in the importance of child welfare. Such a reader might want to look at how the affiliative dimensions of human cultural production--which is to say nurture, the care for the young and the establishment of linguistic, cultural artifacts--have…

Reading One’s Body: On the Speed of Observation, Pt. V.5.1

"Moreover, the persistence of the poetics of entanglement in these discourses suggests the possibility of an anthropological position, a position which attempts to identify how metaphors gain semantic valence according to worldly relationships, a position which may remain meaningful so long as these worldly relationships are shared among human bodies--even as those bodies become stretched…

Reading One’s Body: On the Speed of Observation, pt. V.5

"Indeed, Derrida closes his Truth in Painting with a series of associations that evoke fidelity, lacing, commitment, binding, and restriction--so maybe it's all tied together." Maybe. But part of what I am attempting to do is resist the temptation of those literary, "maybe" moments, those moments when an authorial voice dissolves into something called polysemy…