tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-961276949718897472024-03-14T08:36:54.384-07:00JWTC BlogJWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.comBlogger168125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-63623146534226459672015-07-13T03:46:00.000-07:002015-07-13T03:46:19.895-07:00Ghassan Hage “On Viability: Urban Jouissance in the streets of Beirut” By Noah TamarkinBlog Post: Ghassan Hage “On Viability: Urban Jouissance in the streets of Beirut”
By Noah Tamarkin
By the time Tuesday morning’s session rolled around, we were increasingly well-versed in thinking through the manufacture of happiness in a range of affective, economic, political, and embodied registers. In his talk “On Viability: Urban Jouissance in the Streets of Beirut,” Ghassan Hage offered a JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-43141967878890635942015-07-12T06:42:00.001-07:002015-07-12T06:42:20.030-07:00Vinh-Kim Nguyen on Biomedicine, Unhappiness, and the Epistemology of Crisis by Michelle Pentecost'I study wars and epidemics...happiness isn't really my thing.' Like other speakers over the past 10 days, Vinh-Kim Nguyen addressed the packed WISER seminar room with a wry opening caveat - happiness would have to be approached via its other. The title of his offering had already alerted a return to crisis as an orientating theme for thinking happiness in this workshop. Nguyen proceeded to JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-87367410773582729692015-07-10T04:05:00.000-07:002015-07-10T04:05:24.757-07:00Ackbar Abbas Wonders, “What Do We Do Now?” by Rachel Greenspan
Riffing on Raymond Carver’s short story collection, Abbas’s synthesizing reflections on this year’s JWTC lectures poses the question, What do we talk about when we talk about happiness? His opening preoccupation is with the slipperiness of happiness as an object of analysis: like a black hole, he argues, it is only perceptible in the effects it produces. More than an affect or feeling, beyond JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-34158217830197587492015-07-09T03:26:00.000-07:002015-07-09T03:26:01.323-07:00Performing & Storytelling Theory: A Future Perfect Possibility by Rachel CeasarPerforming & Storytelling Theory: A Future Perfect Possibility
Lamenting his poverty and lack of a sleep pillow, a young boy approaches us. With his head cocked to one side, he begs in words we do not understand nor stop to listen to. We do not stop to listen and in our response, we give him coins and containers of curry. Back on the bus, my riding companion awes at the way the boy put his head,JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-90603123855235232192015-07-09T03:20:00.000-07:002015-07-10T04:12:03.753-07:00On Behrooz Ghamari's "Foucault, Spirituality, and the Perils of Universal History" by Jorge Daniel Vásquez and Megan Eardley
The beginning of Friday’s session was marked by a radical commitment to putting the analysis of religion within a framework that addresses "happiness" in its political and revolutionary dimensions. Behrooz Ghamari raised questions concerning limits and the moving boundaries between history and memory as he reflected on his experience as part of the organizational process of the Iranian JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-63683779271884702532015-07-09T03:08:00.001-07:002015-07-09T03:08:58.751-07:00Maut ka Kua – The Death Well : A Response to Anne Allison's Talk on "Greeting the Dead" by Suraj YengdeMaut ka Kua – The Death Well
When a talk finishes and the audience responds not only by clapping but also with cheers and whistles, in this way one can summarise the significance of the presentation they just witnessed. Cultural anthropologist, Anne Allison, was “Greeting the dead” and Managing the Solitary Existence in Japan. In a groundbreaking theory of death that derives from her book JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-88608112057631014022015-07-09T02:51:00.001-07:002015-07-12T06:33:29.533-07:00Consoling Objects/Disconsoling Worlds: A Response to Gabrielle Schwab's Talk on "Apocalyptic Endgames" by Timothy Wright
For a workshop themed around the 'manufacture of happiness', there has been a surprising (but in hindsight unsurprising) tarrying with the experience of unhappiness. Unhappiness is after all the ground against which happiness becomes both legible and desirable. On days three and four of the workshop, several speakers addressed the relationship between happiness and the confrontation with death:JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-48441238771084135542015-07-06T07:44:00.001-07:002015-07-06T07:44:11.624-07:00A Response To Françoise Vergès’ Lecture on Happiness and the Revolutionary by Mohamed Wajdi Ben HammedOn January 14, 2011 Tunisian protestors flooded the avenue Habib Bourguiba, the main street in the Tunisian capital, and gathered in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs chanting in one voice, “Al-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ al-niẓām” (“The people want the fall of the regime”), a slogan inspired from a monumental poem by the Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi (1909-1934) entitled The Will to Life. JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-87834673432474290582015-07-06T07:35:00.005-07:002015-07-06T07:35:55.276-07:00The Embodiment of Hope: Françoise Vergès' “Happiness & the Revolutionary,” by Rachel Rothendler
Vergès began with a discussion of the word bonheur (“happiness”) in French. She tied its etymological relation to luck and good fortune into her discussion of happiness of the revolutionary as inextricably related to hope; emancipation and freedom, she argued, are a promise of a different future. Happiness here, Vergès explained, is “deferred.” She gave a broad range of historical moments of JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-21007196994008170212015-07-04T04:55:00.003-07:002015-07-04T04:55:46.791-07:00A Response to Kaushik Sunder Rajan's talk on "Pharmocracy" by Kirk Fiereck It is an intimidating task to blog about Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s meditations on an emergent form of what he calls pharmocracy. These forms of pharmocratic sociality are taking shape in the context of the global emergence of biocapital as it elaborates itself in contemporary India. I worry that the brevity of this textual form cannot adequately or responsibly relate to the expanse of time—JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-87403499650560476762015-07-02T07:49:00.000-07:002015-07-02T07:49:14.932-07:00"Resiliency (Neoliberal Happiness), Mourning, and Restoration" by Jigna Desai and Rani NeutillResiliency (Neoliberal Happiness), Mourning, and Restoration
The physical, cognitive, psychic and affective dimensions of resiliency are used to identify and measure those factors that enable individualities and collectives to withstand and adjust to adversity. Resiliency points to how people manage harm and its impacts despite the suffering and death caused by various forms of violence and JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-13535473490154412702015-07-02T07:42:00.001-07:002015-07-02T07:42:32.638-07:00On the Rhythms of Longing and Connectedness Neo Muyanga's "Tebello: A Tentative Operetta on Longing" by Jessica S. Ruthven On the Rhythms of Longing and Connectedness:
“Tebello: A tentative Operetta on Longing” commenced 6:00 pm Wednesday when a group of 18 choral students from Wits University entered the Wits Theatre softly, slowly, and with intention. A hush descended on the gathered audience as we watched the black-clad students in a rainbow of richly colored scarves file toward their chairs onstage. Our hostJWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-39427682752662160562015-07-02T07:17:00.001-07:002015-07-02T07:17:32.969-07:00On Roberta Estrela D’Alva’s Performance at the Wits Medical School by Ananya Kabir
She [Roberta] wove in and out of us assembled there, in the shadow of the Health Sciences building of the Wits University Campus, and the deeper shadow of the Adler Medical Museum with its cabinets of quaint yet instantly recognisable bottles, philtres, jars, ancient stethoscopes, and other bric-a-brac of colonial medicine. Here, in the square outside, there were trees, sunlight, and the scent JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-49353014349738706372015-07-01T13:35:00.001-07:002015-07-01T13:35:27.360-07:00 On “Emoji-Con: Coding the Economy of Affect” by Jenna Ng and David Theo Goldberg by Amber Reed
The logic of desire may be parsed as the ideology of
power/knowledge. Top of Form Bottom of Form
I created this sentence using an algorithm from the University of Chicago’s
“Write Your Own Academic Sentence” (http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm).
While this exercise is obviously humorous, JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-26844325083533980142015-06-30T09:47:00.003-07:002015-06-30T09:49:16.405-07:00From Rain-making to Hydrology: Public Healing to Public Health by Charne Lavery
From rain-making to hydrology; public
healing to public health
On Julie Livingston’s talk “Rain-making and
other forgotten technologies”
Julie Livingstone
began the evening lecture at a productive, and increasingly familiar, point:
sheer shock and bafflement in the face of global ecological crisis. Given that
immensity, she chose to trace a careful path through a particular, local
JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-61112416430959063322015-06-30T09:34:00.000-07:002015-06-30T09:49:46.620-07:00Achille's Talk on "Happiness in the Age of Animism" by William Brinkman-Clark
As the opening act of the 2015 JWTC, Achille Mbembe’s lecture on his work – in progress – about happiness began with a metaphor: contemporary thinking of happiness – in the words of Achille – resembles an “architecture of corridors that never intersect”. So before taking on the question of “how” to be happy, an inquiry that modernity reduces to what appears as an easy decision on what corridor JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-73450745593202560842014-10-29T00:38:00.000-07:002014-10-29T00:38:09.813-07:00Brett Bailey Exhibit B - by Rodney Place<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
JA
X-NONE
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>
JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-21577026742578269962014-07-13T06:18:00.002-07:002014-07-13T06:18:15.835-07:00Revolting Music – A Brief Survey of South African Liberation Songs by Laura Efron
Neo Muyanga at the Rainbow Restaurant in Durban (c) Tana Nolethu Forrest
La primera vez que escuché a Neo Muyanga cantar fue en el colectivo. Un largo viaje camino a King Williams Town que empezaba a acumular sentimientos, ideas, imágenes; una serie de explosiones emocionales e intelectuales dentro de un grupo que sólo se conocía hacía menos de una semana. La primera vez que JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-24854090923987039462014-07-11T00:51:00.001-07:002014-07-11T01:01:48.590-07:00"My Political Life Has Been Informed by the Struggle in South Africa" --- Angela Davis | JWTC 2014 Interview American political thinker and activist, Angela Davis, traveled through South Africa with the JWTC mobile conference. During our stop at Ginsberg, I had a chance to chat with her at the Steve Biko Center. She reflects on how the South African anti-racist struggle informs her political work and comments on the place of women in political struggle.
Angela Davis addressing JWTC JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-55018107633668665132014-07-11T00:46:00.001-07:002014-07-11T00:47:38.290-07:00"Shit is Racial" --- The Archivist by Simon AbramowitschSimon Abramowitsch wrote this poem on the road and read it for the first time on the bus. We had just had lunch in a little town called Swellendam and were on our way to Cape Town. In the three hours that lay before us, some of the participants came up to the front of the bus to share their experience of the journey, seeing it was coming to an end. Most people reflected on our intellectual JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-23318797603125372522014-07-11T00:44:00.002-07:002014-07-11T00:44:35.661-07:00"The future Must Be Made in the Present" --- Notes on Biko by Jess AuerbachReflections on Kelly Gillespie’s Presentation ‘The Trouble with Non-racialism’ given at the Steve Biko Center in Ginsberg, South Africa, as part of the Johannesburg Workshop on Theory and Criticism.
JWTC participant walking in the fading light of dusk to Steve Biko's grave in Ginsberg (c) Ainehi Edoro
On Voice
It begins with voice, rolling out over a still image and a still room, JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-66585293408851046352014-07-09T14:03:00.000-07:002014-07-09T14:03:31.939-07:00Cities of Migration and Contradictions by Gcobani Qambela
Michael Keith's lecture in session at the BAT Center, Durban, South Africa
The past week travelling by the “Thought Bus” through Johannesburg, Swaziland, Durban and now the Eastern Cape has been incredibly enriching not only in terms of the scenic drives and views, but also the intellectual stimulation. Yet, it was hard to not notice the contradictions of these cities, starting with JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-17271013374428533392014-07-09T13:38:00.001-07:002014-07-09T13:38:09.371-07:00Race, Genomic Science, and the Meaning of Ancestry by Elliot James
If at one point it was clear that race is a social construction, this is no longer the case. As Dr. Ruha Benjamin explained in her presentation, “Can the Subaltern Genome Code?” genomics has brought back ethno-racial categories in a big way.
Benjamin clearly lays out the stakes in genomic scientific projects and shows how elites in India, Mexico, South Africa (once sites of colonization) JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-91020571291767679482014-07-07T04:35:00.004-07:002014-07-07T04:37:55.274-07:00The Secret Life of Bananas by Federico Navarrete
Banana is a commonplace fruit. It is ubiquitous, tasty, and quite easy to eat. But behind this facade of banality---safely hidden within thick peels---lies a perturbing history of global capitalism, racial oppression and gender
discrimination.
Françoise Verges's presentation at the 2014 Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism is a brilliant exposition of this unsettling historyJWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96127694971889747.post-56461195662549440592014-07-07T03:10:00.000-07:002014-07-07T03:10:59.883-07:00The Politics of Invisibility and the Pedagogy of the Archive by Alexandre White
I am conscious of a certain
pressure before me in attempting to archive our panel discussion on our final
night in Swaziland. It became quickly apparent that what we were witnessing, in
the testimonials and histories of the four Swazi representatives, an encounter
with the practice of archiving.
All the contestations, fragmentations, and
obfuscations of the archival project were laid JWTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12884174760768227981noreply@blogger.com0