Public Corporeographies, Part II – by Josh Newman

Orchestrations of Public Capital

For now, let us return to the ways in which bodies are orchestrated in public space.  I would argue that the road (and other public mobility systems) now acts as a metonym for the social welfare logics that drove Western [auto-]modernity. This is the order of the neoliberal public. The street, the sidewalk, the railways are no longer viewed as great monuments of modern society—or lauded as egalitarian and transportive networks—but as inhibitors of neoliberal self-actualization(s) of speed, spatial conquest, motorway mastery, and gateways to suburban isolation and retreat. Public spaces such as park benches or bus stops are marked as aesthetic obstacles to the manifest market destiny; nodes of a dystopia created by losing social welfare policy-makers and [potentially] squatted by neoliberalism’s ‘failed’ worker-soldiers.

In this way, the street occupies both an imaginary and political corporeography.[i] Nowhere can the endless possibilities of consumer capitalism be performed and celebrated like in the street—it is a rich canvas of commuter and consumer identities. In the accelerated economies, the public is the space where we make the self and at the same time are besieged by technologies of governance, surveillance, and normalization. Increasingly, these disciplinary technologies are arranged in the image of market capital; orchestrating public life and the performances (local and global) along the impetuses of accumulation. Our freedom is framed, to again borrow from Butler, through the public exhibition of market mastery.

Public Corporeographies, Part I – By Josh Newman

“Whoever can conquer the streets can conquer the State!”

-       Joseph Goebbels (1931)

The next last battle for which we[i] are readying will be fought, like many that came before it, on the streets. It’s not likely to be televised, as football progeny Gil Scott-Heron rightly predicted—so there’s no need for us to go looking on FOX News or the BBC to find it. It may or may not involve acts of physical violence—a distinction, which Baudrillard imagines, will be of little consequence.

What will matter, and what we will need to be present for—to help enact and to transcribe—will be a change in tempo; subtle or (hopefully) spectacular interruptions to the public rhythms of everyday life.

We’ve seen it before. On the streets of Montgomery and Birmingham, at the Battle of Blair Mountain, in Detroit, Watts, and Chicago. We see it now in Zuccotti Park, in Tahrir Square, in Tripoli, at the Gaines Street Commons, and on U.S. college campuses from Florida (e.g. FIU) to California (e.g. UC Davis). And although we tend to overcomplicate and over theorize it, these flashpoints in history—by the very nature of being disruptive—remind us of a simple “rhythmanalytic” truth: order is established by the organization of space, time, and bodies.

Why am I doing this?: An act of reciprocity… by Bryan C. Clift

This contribution is a cross-posting with the blog at Back On My Feet (http://blog.backonmyfeet.org) and, as an act of reciprocity with Back On My Feet members and organizers, illustrates how selective elements of the research process, in addition to serving the interests of scholarship, can translate into a meaningful engagement with and for those involved in the research process. As part of  my research with Back On My Feet I created narratives about the experiences of its members for Back On My Feet organizers to use in demonstrating the program’s potential for positive change.

After a few runs with Back On My Feet, I found myself on a four-mile run early one morning and asked myself, “What am I doing? Really, why am I doing this?”

I wouldn’t consider myself a runner, I don’t particularly enjoy it, I have never challenged myself to run regularly in the past, and I’m unsure if I want to work toward a marathon in the future. As I ran with the group I saw many non-residential members who love to run. In fact, many are extremely active – diving into mountain biking, ultra-marathon racing, long-distance running, and  other activities. I also saw residential members who have trained for and completed marathons with Back On My Feet. I told myself, “the guy next to me has [struggled throughout his life with drinking and drug use]…If this guy is out here doing this, then I can do this too.”

Reflection on UMD Kinesiology’s discussion of “Born to run”… by Bryan C. Clift

Every year before the start of the fall semester, our Kinesiology Department sits down for a discussion of one book read by all faculty and graduate students. This year we read Christopher McDougall’s book, Born to run. Graciously, Chris joined us for the discussion. My response here is partly addressed to the text but more importantly addressed to our Kinesiology department and PCS students and scholars.

The text was specifically chosen because its content was relevant to All Kinesiology personnel at Maryland. However, I quickly became surprised at just how divided the Kinesiology department truly is. 

Silent survival: American nationalism among family, war, and sport… by Bryan C. Clift

Sound is saturated with worlding capacity. Yet, Western knowledges, noted for ocular-centrism, often reject, marginalize, or overlook critical and theoretical inquiries of the auditory. For example, through music Paul Gilroy, in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, illustrated how cultural nationalism both constructs immutable and absolute ethnic differences among “black” and “white” people while also providing the courage to survive. As perceived minimal or lack of sound silence is worthy of investigation too. In the middle of a quieter event less prominently recognized sounds come into the fore; amid silence you may find yourself alone with your thoughts; and most importantly, meanings form and are formed through sound and silence. Probing silence as a modality of meaning and meaning making contributes toward contextual and critical understanding.

Experiencing silence. Sitting in the Baltimore terminal the gate-agent announced my flight was boarding. Like most other passengers I scrambled myself together and proceeded to clog the walkway while waiting for the broadcast of my boarding zone, zone six. One group of people, though, did not resemble the rest of the passengers; it was a family of four. One woman and man and I presumed their two daughters huddled close together just to the side and rear of the line of overhasty passengers. The mother and wife cried. The two daughters were sad and excited; they looked as though they had done this before. The husband carried a look of concern, preparation, and determinateness. As the Man walked away and inserted himself into the boarding column of people, a seemingly vapid line to me, I realized this was for him both a trial and node of transformation. The near silence of the moment overran all else.

The sociological imagination as the common cultural denominator: Are we just kidding ourselves? – By Oliver Rick

“For that imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another – from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two” (Mills, 1959, p.7).

Having now been at the University of Maryland for a year I have had the opportunity to teach eight discussion sections for the undergraduate class KNES287 – Sport and American Society. One of the key components of the course is the discussion and understanding of, but also hopefully, the eventual use of C. Wright Mills sociological imagination. Based on this concept being core to the course I have read Mills definitions previously but it was not until this semester that I had the opportunity to really sit down and get into Mills book. It was from this reading that something stood out to me, something I want to discuss here. The passage that I wish to discuss comes from section four of the chapter “The Promise” found in The Sociological imagination regarding what Mills calls the “one style of reflection [which] tends to become a common denominator of cultural life” (Mills, 1959, p. 13). It is indeed Mills contention that the sociological imagination (as defined above – although in a brief excerpt) has come to be this common denominator for western culture, taking over the mantel from Darwinian and Newtonian physical science. But as I taught my way through two semesters I asked myself ‘can I agree with Mills? Is the common denominator of these students, before they enter our class, a critical and dialectic conception of reality, society and culture?’ and sadly I would have to say no. This is not to say that there is some genetic/general dumbing down of our student populace but instead I believe that our society and our educational institutions as a major part of this – both in being shaped by and shaping society – are not rewarding, encouraging or facilitating this sociological imagination as the common denominator.

Twisted, Mister. … by Margaret Austin Smith

Frank Deford, I like you. And I like your weekly spot of “Sweetness and Light.” But this morning, on your way to (duly) celebrating the triumphs of the UConn Women’s basketball team, you said something that made me stomp my casted broken foot so hard I’ll be stuck in this boot another six weeks.

“To be frank,” you say (and by all means, let’s be frank), “female fans have themselves miserably failed their sisters; they’ve not yet come to support women’s teams as men do their own athletes.”

Myth Busters: Do Black People Swim?

Do black people swim? Of course they do. I am black and I can swim. Myth busted.

Not so fast.

A 2008 multi-phase study out of the University of Memphis revealed that 58% of black children could not swim, they drowned at 3-times the rate of their white peers and that simply being black reduced your rate of participation in the sport by almost 60% (MSNBC, 2008).

Phase I of the study entitled, The Mythology of Swimming: Are Myths Impacting Minority Youth Participation?, was commissioned by USA Swimming and spearheaded by Richard Irwin (2008), a professor from the Department of Health and Sport Science.  One predominating myth influencing participation that was addressed was the idea that, ‘black women don’t want to get their hair wet’, and although Irwin believes they proved the relation between hair and swimming to be negligible, I beg to differ (p.12) While these studies have been lauded as a landmark investigation of minority swimming participation and a wake-up call to recognize swimming proficiency as a major public health concern, I am left unimpressed as I feel they fall short of understanding this crucial cultural phenomenon.

on “gut feelings” and embodied politics – jacob bustad

While we might disagree on the nature and potential meanings of the concept, the idea of “gut feelings” – those intuitive and often subconsciously enacted beliefs and opinions which enable us to make sense of the larger world – is undoubtedly an element of our lived realities. It might seem strange to discuss what some might see as a psychological feature of the human brain, or others might see as simple “common sense,” in the context of a blog primarily focused on elements of physical activity and the body-in-movement. Yet it seems that to avoid such a banal aspect of our everyday interactions risks missing the importance of the messy details of daily life, the likes of which are central to the cumulative formation of Raymond Williams “whole way of life” (i.e., culture).

That we act on our “gut feelings” is a common proposition; indeed we seem to often hear of an individual’s actions as emotionally rationalized within the moment, both in sporting contexts and beyond. Thus on one hand, we see this discourse of feelings appear in the rather mundane circumstances of organized sport – for example, NBA player J.J. Redick described his decision to sign a free agency contract as a process in which his “gut feeling changed about seven times” prior to his signing, sports columnists explain that placing the PED-using Mark McGwire in the Baseball Hall of Fame goes against a “gut feeling,” and Maryland men’s basketball coach Gary Williams states that he has a “gut feeling” that the new athletic director for the University will be great to work with. But this same discourse of emotions and a type of embodied “knowing” that serves to legitimate actions – or rationalize them afterward – is frequently apparent in more serious, ‘political’, even life-and-death conditions. Thus the statement by Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, in July 2007, that despite a lack of actual evidence, he had a “gut feeling” that another terrorist attack was imminent, and the threat of death-by-terrorist was “very alive” (ironic, I know).

The Decadence of Neo-Liberalism. By Michael Friedman

The idea was absolutely irresistible when it came to mind: The decadence of neo-liberalism.  I thought the concept was clear and easily articulated: The nomination of such candidates as Rand Paul, Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell is proof that the neo-liberal consensus that has dominated American politics since the 1980s is breaking down and will eventually result in the left offering a viable alternative to neo-liberal ideology.  Making the argument, however, was much more difficult than I originally thought as it based on a combination of my hope and an intuitive feeling about American politics.

So, instead, I will go back to what I know, sports stadiums, to work through the peculiarities of this decadent moment.