ramble through the bronx

yes, this here is ramble through the bronx, the continuing musings of a graduate student* who should be writing her dissertation, but honestly, living in new york city there's really so much else to do...

* and her commenting friends. And guest blogger.
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Friday, July 29, 2005

Procrastinating just a little bit...

I'm working at the library today, and have gotten some more work done on my proposal (mostly typing up some bibliographical stuff). I figured it was time to take a break so I checked out the NHL schedule -- the Leafs aren't playing in NYC against the Rangers until February, so that gives me time to save up some money for tickets (the cheapest tickets, this season, are $29, and if I want to drag Josh I should probably buy his ticket too). Anyway, then I wondered what Tie Domi was up to these days, and found the Official Tie Domi website. There are some cute photos up; my favourite is this one:


Ah, Tie, you're so sweet. (There are also some lovely shots of his wife, which always remind me of the story told by a university friend about the time he saw a really hot blonde woman, started to yell "Hey...", then realized the man on her arm was Domi, and at the last second changed his yell to "Hey... it's Tie Domi!").

I wonder if Tie Domi wants to come visit me in the Bronx? My neighbourhood is getting more & more Albanian by the minute, but there's also lots of Italian food (which, according to the website, is his favourite.) Maybe when he comes in February.

What does Bryan McCabe's wife look like? Oh, wait, there's a photo most of the way down this page. mm, I think I'm cuter, but I'm kind of over Bryan anyway.


jane 12:55 PM [+]

Thursday, July 28, 2005
Update -- cause for huzzah

1. Megan and Natalia are in town this weekend; we shall live fabulously. Huzzah.

2. My friend Dale from high school is also in town, so hopefully we can all meet up for drinks. More huzzah.

3. My roommate is moving in this weekend; she arrives in town tomorrow night. She seems cool. More huzzah.

4. Still more huzzah, I called my ex-roomie Mike today & he said he put a cheque in the mail on Monday for $100, leaving $700 he owes me. Hey, it's a start. Huzzah-licious.

5. My proposal's coming along... eek, it's almost August! Still, I'm up to ten pages or so. And no, you can't see it yet. (Once it's finished, I'll email it to anyone who really wants to see it, but I strongly doubt you will.) Someday it will be done. Huzzah-velous.

6. I raided the department supply closet today for office supplies. Huzzah!! Anyone who wants me to write them a letter on fancy schmancy philosophy department letterhead, let me know. It makes me feel very Professional. Huzzah-tastic.

7. I got another cheque from Father Stroud yesterday for another $100. Someday I will be able to buy myself a nice bottle of Talisker with the De Mello money. (Probably not de Mello's idea of spiritual goodness, but definitely mine!) Huzzah, and cheers!

jane 8:40 PM [+]

Thursday, July 21, 2005
YES! I know this is what you've ALWAYS Wanted, a.k.a., I love the American Library Association

An Orlando Bloom poster from the www.ala.org American Library Association.

They also have a pretty hip Batman poster. And a cute Sandman bookmark (the Neil Gaiman poster is actually a bit of a weird picture... Neil with facial hair!). OK, and a wicked Gandalf poster. And a Simpsons poster.

OK, and Ani DiFranco. And Salma Hayek. And Tony Hawk. And The Rock.

OK, everyone's getting ALA stuff this year. Like a Dewey Decimal System nightshirt.

I love the ALA. Here's the list of issues they're involved with. Such as Banned Books Week, which this year is September 24 - October 1.

Also, recently I decided that I loved interlibrary loan so much I want to make an i [heart] interlibrary loan t-shirt. I love it! I ask for things, and they come to me, from all over! so happy-making!!

Meanwhile, the Canadian Library Association does not have as much cool merchandise, though the picture on the Look. Men read. See men read fundraising calendar is kind of cute, and waterbottles and travel mugs are always handy. But sorry, the t-shirts are lame. And I want my Coolio poster (well, ok, maybe not that one in particular, but oh well).


jane 10:10 PM [+]

Handy website

Here's a list, straight from the Vatican's website, of Doctrinal Documents from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, a.k.a., the list of Church statements on various things, like certain theological positions, liberation theology, homosexuality, abortion, etc.

I draw to your attention:

* Men & Women in collaboration (i.e., us as vital helpmates. yee-haw!)

* Same sex marriage

* Hysterectomies - good if mom in danger, bad if just for sterilization.

* 'Respect for Life' - blarg. (Compare to the Jesuit statement, Standing for the Unborn, which emphasizes need for strong social safety net, public education, etc. Well, yeah, still pro-life.)

* Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons - yup, the act is still wrong; the inclination itself, well, sketchy, so better keep reminding 'em that the act is morally illicit!

* Liberation Theology - apparently not good as theology.

Oh well. I miss Doug the Jesuit.


jane 9:45 PM [+]

procrastination + archives = fun!

Hey, Jennifer, I never would have known you'd been lookin' through my archives until I found this comment, dated January 17, 2005 attached to this post, dated August 25, 2003 (for some reason it says "0" comments, but Jennifer's comment is there plain as day). Funny, too, that it's in reference to lookin' up old stuff on google.

OK, no more procrastination for me. Though it makes me wonder what else is buried back there....


jane 8:40 PM [+]

Wednesday, July 20, 2005
oh, those clever people at friendster, still trying to reel us in

Just wanted to say that, after a helpful and slightly pleading email from the people at friendster, I've added a link to my public profile URL up top (see? is that sufficiently small-capped and subtle?). As the email says,
Now all your non-Friendster friends can view your public profile without having to sign up or log in. So go ahead, don't be shy! Link to your public profile on your blog, list it in your email footer, write it on the bathroom wall, or publicize it anywhere else you please!
Well, I don't know about the bathroom wall, but, well, for what it's worth, there it is. But I'd be interested to know how many people actually use Friendster, on a day-to-day kind of basis, instead of just logging in now and then when some new friend suddenly "discovers" it and is all excited to add you as their friendster.

I seem to remember reading some article about that, actually, saying that friendster did indeed have the problem that no one really stayed logged in for very long - people don't really linger. I see they're all revamping it to encourage lingering, but... meh... has anyone reading this actually met a new person on friendster?


jane 6:01 PM [+]

Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The academic life

Huh. What a day.
10.00 am. Father Clarke, a 90-year old Jesuit, calls me to invite me for dinner.

11.00 am. Call Father Stroud at the De Mello Spirituality Center re. when I should stop by for him to show me what I need to do (I picked up another job 'round campus).

11.15 am. Sort laundry into two bags (hot/cold).

11.20 am. Clean up cat-sick on bathroom floor. Yuck. Trouble's been ill lately. I'm too broke to go to the vet....

11.30 - 12.30 am. Sit in diner, drinking coffee, eating sandwich, reading Hegel's essay, The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy

1.00 - 2.15 pm. Meet Father Stroud in front of Faber Hall, get shown where the De Mello Spirituality Center is (just down the hall from Cardinal Dulles's office!). He and his assistant show me what to do (my new job involves mailing out books & tapes). He gives me a cheque for $100 for my hour & a bit's work. I'm supposed to go in 3-4 times a week, an hour a day or so, and keep up with the mailings, for $25 an hour. Sweet! Their secretary is ill. This job will last for a few weeks, and possibly into the school year. Huzzah, I can afford to take Trouble to the vet!

2.30 - 3.00 pm. Argue with Ariane about what the end of the sixth Harry Potter book means. (who else has read it? wanna discuss?)

3.15 - 4.45 pm. Laundry. Euch.

4.45 - 5.20 pm. Wonder what to wear to dinner. Sweat. It's in the mid-90s Fahrenheit here in NYC, and with the heat index apparently feels like 104F. Bleauch. I know no one in Canada has sympathy for me -- I've been seeing your heat warnings. Summer sucks.

5.40 - 7.30 pm. Dinner and drinks with Father Clarke in Loyola, one of the Jesuit residences (home of lots of old, old men). We talk about Aquinas, Fichte, Hegel, relational autonomy, feminism, substance, California, Ecstasy, raves (apparently there's such a thing as "liturgical raves"?!?), what happened to the Yale philosophy department a few years ago, etc,. etc. Fr. Clarke (a.k.a. "Norrie") gives me a paper he wrote about Aquinas, "To Be is To Be Substance-in-Relation" that relates to some of what I'm working on, metaphysically.

7.35 pm. Check my email in the department. 46 new emails regarding this fall's ancient & medieval philosophy conference. I decide to put off going through them until tomorrow (I already dealt with 30 emails yesterday).

8.00 pm. Blog post.
So, I feel like I've been working all day, even though I technically haven't. But it's hard to decide whether, say, having a conversation with somebody about philosophy (specifically, explaining my project to Norrie & getting his ideas on it) counts as doing work. It's not really. It all just sort of weaves together....

jane 7:49 PM [+]

Friday, July 15, 2005
Yay, it's a 'Gate'!

The whole Karl Rove / Valerie Plame / Miller / Cooper / CIA leak / Bob Novak / Fitzgerland thing is now a "-gate" -- as in, 'what did the president know and when did he know it'.

Huzzah! Just what we've all been waiting for!

(well, I'm sure Canadians have better things to worry about... but this is all we've been thinking about down here. Well, that, and when Rehnquist will resign, and what to do with O'Connor's vacancy, and baseball).


jane 4:11 PM [+]

Wednesday, July 13, 2005
argh!

Richard's dating a Canadian!

For some reason, this really bothers me. As does the fact that she's been to South Carolina & met his family and he's been to St Catherines and met hers. Already.

St. Catherines!

Why does this bother me? It shouldn't bother me! But it does! Grrr!

(remind me never to send "hey, how are you, how's your summer" emails to recent ex boyfriends... for some reason, I never like what I hear back...)


jane 5:48 PM [+]

Monday, July 11, 2005
Yeah, Johann Gottlieb's a bit of a jerk

Just reading some Fichte. Check this out, from the Science of Ethics, trans. 1907 by A.G. Kroeger --
To the non-philosopher it may seem curious and, perhaps, ridiculous to require anyone to become conscious of a consciousness; but this would only prove his ignorance of philosophy and his inability to philosophize.[p.37]
Ah, Fichte. OK, back to the Ego.


jane 6:47 PM [+]

So long, Froky

At first glance, this article about pet names might seem silly, but by the time I got to the end of it I was really touched.

just thought I'd share.

any good pet name stories, anyone?

UPDATE, JULY 13TH: 'Froky' responds -- and she's not happy about having been written about.


jane 3:42 PM [+]

Thursday, July 07, 2005
Divine stick shaking

I have to love these people, even just because they use the phrase "more Gods than you can shake a stick at." Check out Godchecker.com, for all your godly needs. Complete with a God of the Day -- today's is Kokopelli, huzzah!


jane 8:26 PM [+]

Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Toronto the Good?

What the fuck is happening in Toronto? [scroll over the three highlighted words -- there are three links there]

I mean, it's not like these people had iPods or anything....


jane 10:07 PM [+]

The Germans! The Germans! Kant and freedom

OK, so where I left off last night (before Judith Miller went to jail and London rather than Paris (and certainly rather than NYC) was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics), was with the dilemma, within the feminist project of relational autonomy, of excessive, atomistic individualism vs. determinism -- in other words, the classical philosophical problem of freedom and necessity. How can we be both free and also be true to our important responsibilities to others and true to our social roots & values?

So, we go way back to Kant.

Kant's central problem is how to reconcile freedom and necessity. If everything in the physical world is determined by natural laws, then how can we humans still have free will? This is still an important problem -- witness all the nature-nurture debates, and the debates over consciousness, neuroscience, psychology, and the brain. Where is our free will located? Etc.

What Kant famously argued is that within the natural world everything really is determined by physical laws. However, the natural world is only the world of appearances, or phenomena ('phenomena' is basically just Greek for 'appearances'). We only experience this world of appearances -- how things appear to us. We don't actually experience the things in themselves.

Now this kind of division makes sense at first -- just think of the difference between the table as I perceive it and the table as described by physics (atoms, quarks, blah blah blah). But Kant wants to go even farther: the world as described by physics is part of the world of appearances, the phenomenal world. Everything we can possibly experience or have scientific knowledge of is part of this phenomenal world. This phenomenal world is governed by the laws of nature, which are deterministic, rather than free.

Wait! you might say. What about all the stuff that's come out about physics on the quantum level -- eensy weensy particules popping in & out of existence at random? That doesn't seem deterministic, does it?

Well, Kant would reply, it's still not free. For one thing, these things on the quantum level still seem to follow regular statistical patterns. For another thing -- and this is important for Kant and all the idealists following him -- arbitrary actions are not free.

What does that mean? It means that if Natalia suddenly jerks her arm and hits Paul, then she didn't freely hit Paul. Free actions require volition; they need to have been freely willed. True freedom is neither determined/forced by something outside of it, nor does it happen at random. The utterings of a Tourette's sufferer are not free. A free action on my part is something I meant to do.

Why is this important? Because I can & should only be held responsible for things I freely do, not for things that I did accidentally. (This principle goes back at least as far as Aristotle). Further, it means that the kind of free self-determination that will be important for autonomous action should also be self-determination that is accompanied by reflection & volition. I should be able to take responsibility for my autonomy. But more on that later. (that's not very well put, either... I'll work on that.)

OK. So, world of appearances = unfree. So where's freedom?

In addition to the world of appearances is the world of things-in-themselves (the noumenal world, the world of noumena). Freedom's over there. Even though we can't experience freedom itself, it's still there. Tricky, huh? I had a lot of trouble explaining the two worlds to my students. It's notoriously difficult to understand how we're really free, as humans, but not in any way we can directly experience. The only way we know we're really free is because somehow we recognize a moral law that is not part of our experience. Wacky, huh?

What we experience of ourselves is the way we're conditioned by our upbringing, by memories of traumatic experiences we had as youngsters, by our biology, by our social environment, etc., etc., etc. All these things are fairly deterministic. But in our ability to somehow rise above these things and freely decide for ourselves what the right thing to do is, in a way undetermined by considerations of greed, inclination, realpolitik, etc.*

When we act according to the moral law, therefore, we are not acting in a determined or in an arbitrary manner -- we are acting freely. And we are only acting freely when we act according to the moral law. When we act according to the moral law, Kant says that we are giving ourselves the moral law - accepting it for ourselves - and that we are therefore autonomous. We are heteronomous (the opposite of autonomous) when we are controlled by things outside ourselves - i.e., by our emotions**, by greed, by an unreflective allegiance to political or religious authority, etc.***

OK, so , for Kant: being free = following the moral law = being autonomous = being self-determining.
Being unfree = not following the moral law = being heteronomous = being controlled by something outside ourselves.

Capisce?

Hm, this post is spiralling out of control into a big Kant lecture. I'm going to read some Fichte now, and I'll get back to you on how this then builds into Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. But I promise, it'll be good.



* There's a whole debate over whether this works, obviously, and particularly whether it's right that Kant also wants us to rise above inclination -- since he includes emotions as part of inclination, and sometimes, surely, our emotions can also help reveal to us the correct moral action. That said, I'm going to leave that debate to the side for now.

** Yup, see footnote * again. It really is a big issue.

*** This is part of why Kant is such a hardcore Enlightenment thinker. Have a look at his essay, An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment" for a good statement of what all this freedom & autonomy means on a political level. He says things like "The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!" and criticizes the majority of folks for simply blindly obeying authority. (Actually, this might be a clearer translation)

jane 7:46 PM [+]

ewwww....

Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite....


jane 3:47 PM [+]

Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Relational Autonomy: Resources in Feminism and German Idealism

Doesn't that sound like a good title? I met with Michael Baur today about my ideas for my diss* and he said he thought it was a very good project. Yay!

I had been worried that he wouldn't accept my project as it was and would suggest a lot of changes to it -- I didn't want to change it too much, because it's really important to me that it's my project, not my professor's. All he wanted me to do, though, was to spend a little more time clarifying where things stood with Kantian autonomy, and to include Schelling as well as Fichte and Hegel in my treatment of freedom.

That's all well and good, you say, but what does this all mean? Well, here we go, I'll try to explain what's going on as best I can, since this project is going to be my life for the next two or three years.** Your comments are much appreciated. I have until the end of August to write up a 20-25 page (not including bibliography, which will be at least 6-7 pages on its own) proposal, describing what I plan to do in more detail. But for now, this is it.

Whew.

OK.

There has been a debate in recent (say, the last 15 years or so) feminist philosophy about the role of autonomy. By autonomy, I mean roughly self-determination -- deciding one's own course through life, making one's own decisions, that sort of thing. Autonomy, of course, literally means 'giving oneself the law' -- deciding, for oneself, the rules that one will follow. Some feminist philosophers have argued that this is an excessively masculine ideal -- kind of a 'Cool Hand Luke' kind of thing: I'm going to do my own thing and damn the consequences! No one can tell me what to do! Fuck all y'all!*** They think that a more feminine/feminist
**** approach should involve more attention paid & more value given to the relationships between people, particularly relationships of care and dependency, and to the ways in which we are responsible to and for each other. So, for them, autonomy bad, relationality good.

Other feminist philosophers, on the other hand, have argued that this is kinda wimpy, and the last thing that one would want to suggest to, say, abused women, or oppressed women in certain cultures. Rise up, they want to say, claim autonomy and the freedom to chart your own course! Claim autonomy as a value for you, precisely because you have been held down for so long! They see autonomy as a liberating ideal for women, that should not be rejected for its masculinist overtones.

Of course, the project the last 15 years has been working out how to have our cake and eat it too. How can we articulate a view of autonomy (all the good aspects of self-determination) that also recognizes the way in which we are socially constituted, the way we enact our freedom in & through our relationships with others, and that values these important relationships of care & dependency? The union of these two seeming opposites has been called "relational autonomy."*****

Well, even though people say that there's a happy medium, the challenge is still in finding it. So some folks, like Marilyn Friedman, say that we're basically still free individuals making our free choices, but, hey, our social upbringing & relationships are important, and we should examine them in the process of becoming more mature individuals. But we're still super-separate. (This is the liberal view.) Others, like Nedelsky herself, emphasize the relationality aspect to a greater degree - the way in which, like it or not, we're formed by our relations with others, and the choices we make reflect back on those others. Nedelsky likens it to a field (like an electric field), in which we're all interconnected. (I could go on about this & the neat way she connects this to property rights & the difference between the US Bill of Rights & the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms, but I won't. It's neat though.)

In other words, we still have the same problem. Excessive individualism on the one side, determinism (social determinism) on the other. Both poles are to be avoided. But how can the middle actually work?

This is where I go back to German idealism. They're all about freedom & necessity. [Stupid Oakland! Scoring 2 runs in the 11th inning, after Toronto tied the game in the 9th! Grr!]

You know what, though? I'm going to come back to this later. I could say it's to leave you in suspense, but really it's 'cause I don't yet feel as comfortable summing up what's going on for the Germans without resorting to a whole lot of jargon. But I'll say for now -- Kant & Fichte start setting up the autonomy stuff. Fichte moves into the territory of dealing with other people & the importance of socialization & upbringing & so forth. Schelling then clarifies the nature of freedom -- that we can't just ignore the things (e.g., nature, biology, social determinism) that we can't control, but have to build these things into our understanding of our selves as subjects. Then Hegel comes along (mighty Hegel) and explains everything. Self-determination, socialization, spirit, our relationship to each other, our relationship to the state, the whole package. He partly gets it wrong, but the ways he gets it right are great. And, I think, when you feed that back into the current feminist debate, you get a view of relational autonomy that's quite robust.

But all that for later.******


* Meaning, of course, not "disrespect," but "dissertation." Though the two are, of course, entwined, as demonstrated in the following exchange: "Are you dissing my diss?" "Yes, of course I am, it's about fucking autonomy." "Oh, Well, then, carry on."

** Scary, huh? It'll also determine the types of philosophy jobs I can apply for. With this dissertation, I can market myself as someone who does 19th century German philosophy, German idealism as such, Hegel, feminism, and social theory.

*** This is clearly not Official Academic Prose. But it works, no?

**** And, of course, working out the differences/connections between these two words is an entirely different can of worms. Oh, my, what a big can it is.

***** Pretty much everyone credits Jennifer Nedelsky with coming up with this term, particularly in her 1989 article on redefining autonomy. I took a great class with her at the faculty of law in spring 2002, that helped form, to a large extent, my views on this subject.

****** Are you still even reading this? congrats if you are!

jane 9:43 PM [+]

I don't know, are the NDP hot? Are the Bloc? I think Gilles Duceppe is hot.

Check out Hottest Canadian MP (excluding Ken Dryden, who apparently is "Hot MP Emeritus". Hm.)

I think Colin Carrie might have to be my pick, conservative or not.

(By the way -- my Quebecois slang's a little rusty -- but 'chaud' doesn't mean that kind of 'hot', does it?)


jane 9:13 PM [+]

Friday, July 01, 2005
The swing vote steps down

Sandra Day O'Connor has retired. Here's the Wikipedia article on O'Connor, and an excerpt:
The first woman appointed to Supreme Court, O’Connor has become one the most-watched justices on the Court. She is part of the federalism movement and approaches each case as narrowly as possible, avoiding generalizations which might later “paint her into a corner” for future cases. Although she formed part of the conservative axis during the later years of the Burger Court, with the departure of the last members of the liberal Warren Court, she is now regarded as occupying the ideological center. It is both O’Connor’s dedication to asserting her judicial power over that of other federal institutions and her pragmatic circumspection that has given her a deciding centrist vote for many of the Rehnquist Court’s cases.


I found out because Planned Parenthood immediately sent me an email -- on their website, they refer to the vacancy left by her retirement as ominous. Within days, Bush will appoint a successor to O'Connor -- and as PP points out,
Only five years ago, Justice O'Connor was critical to maintaining access to abortion in the 5-4 decision issued in Stenberg v. Carhart. When the court hears Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood later this year, the outcome with a new Justice could drastically affect women's health and safety.
(Here are some pieces on ayotte vs. pp -- it focuses on parental notification laws, but was ruled unconstitutional by the appeals court because it had no health exemption - i.e., health of the mother not a concern; it also forces parental notification; an alternative adult, supposing the parents to be abusive or estranged or whatever, is not acceptable).

More on O'Connor from Dkosopedia. She's also been a swing vote on separation of church & state.


jane 12:00 PM [+]

More on Tom and Katie

I enjoyed "Ick-led Pink", this article in the Washington Post:
Face it: This is a Harlequin romance in the era of chick lit. It's a Danielle Steel novel, not "Bridget Jones's Diary." To post-feminist, post-ironic women, it's a great big "ick," right up there with the marriage proposal on the Jumbotron at a baseball game.

jane 10:31 AM [+]

Happy Canada Day!

So, how about that Canadian economic history quiz on the globe and mail site today? Apparently the average score of 8/20 is the worst in the eight years of the survey. Do the quiz, and I'll tell you what I got.

(Let me know if you see any other Canada Day quizzes)


jane 9:39 AM [+]

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