Overdue Deux

Let's talk a little bit about play.  I feel like this term is fascinating and it's usually connected with stuff I'm interested in.  So to begin, the introduction of Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: a World of War Craft Reader, features John Huizinga's definition of play.  For him, play is "an activity that happens outside of 'ordinary' life."  Additionally, there are specific rules, spaces, and times of play that are separate from real-life rules, space, and time.  Known as the "magic circle," players are aware of the boundaries between playing and not playing.  I have to say this last bit reminded me so much of kids declaring that they weren't playing as soon as they start to lose...I'm not saying I was one of these poor sports, but I am familiar with that tactic.  If someone wasn't playing then there was nothing you could do to argue that point; they were exempt from the game.  According to Huizinga's understanding of play, there is no real-life material interest or profit for the player.  In light of the technologies available in our digital era and the different kinds of play available now through MMOGs, this limit seems a little shortsighted. 

Henry Jenkins views play in another light able to bring out the nuances achieved in convergence culture.  Widening the things that might constitute play, Jenkins defines play as “the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving.”  Digital media is an area ripe for the play Jenkins describes because things can be questioned and tested through the acts of reimagining, rewriting, and reperforming.  Participatory culture insists that everyone play the game in part.  In fact, more and more, it is harder to just watch or observe on the internet.  When commenting, posting, and even the act of clicking on specific links contributes to the popularity or most-used spider algorithms.  And yet with all of this openness and freedom to create, it is still within the framework of something bigger.

I keep thinking about Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”  I wonder how to create change within a digital space when so much of the web is already co-opted and compromised.   I am very interesting in using the system to get in a position to make changes, particularly within the academy or social organizations, but how do we successfully do this in a digital space?  The lessons taught in WoW still reinforce the notion that if you are a good worker, go on quests, build skills, gain experience, develop a stronger character that you will be superior in the game.  But, as Scott Rettburg points out, that is a “capitalist fairytale.”  Maybe the simulation of successful capitalism is enough to keep people engaged not only in the game, but the purposeful, profit-driven course of life within the system.  The same is true for the younger audiences through Webkinz; the online world you develop for your pet can only be achieved through working, playing games, and earning money.  Webkinz world’s activities mainly consist of earning, finding, or winning money.  You can go to school, receive food, or visit the doctor for free, but everything else is determined by how many Webkinz dollars you possess.  The lessons from WoW and Webkinz are strong because they are intrinsic to the natural order of the game world, which is based in our world.  And although there are opportunities for creativity and dissidents to exist, how much does that really happen.  

Here's an example of my concern.  Rob and Big is a MTV reality program that aired from 2006-2008.  Although the original is hard to find online, there are a number of homemade version that recreate moments from the show.  While I won't fault any individual's decision to make a video and post it, I find this level of mimicry the lowest common denominator of entertainment and I don't see elements of Jenkins's promised creativity and inventiveness.  Granted, I'm still not sure if my hang up hinges on authenticity or simpleness or redundancy, but how do we consider these digital productions?


The original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY0CpY43n8g


Just a sample of some remakes:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDuM-pwkd4g&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTUffk6S9Y&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SlVPwvYKjU&feature=related


I don't get it.

Overdue

Now that my brief presentation circuit is over, I can return to active blogging :)  That being said, I have to talk a little about how this class and the readings we've been doing has popped up over the past few weeks; I may have been participating in spirit only, but affect is popping up everywhere.  Granted, this may be because now that I'm working the buzz, I see it in many more places, but I also like to think this may be due to the circuitry system that unites individuals' brains into a loose collective of affected individuals.  In other words, we're all a little bit "touched" (as my Gramma would say) by affect.

Affect has been coming up repeatedly in my Feminist Theory class.  This is probably because several of my colleagues were in the Feminist Research Methods class last semester, but as we tried to discuss several other students expressed an interest in discussing affect.  The summation of the class was that affect seems to fit right in with feminist methodologies and practices.  So here are a few ideas along those lines.  Chandra Talpade Mohanty presents this great outline for feminism without borders and although she’s speaking directly to geography in addition to considering local and global feminisms. Mohanty argues that the first step to leveling the playing field and moving toward this goal is to “read up the ladder of privilege” (452).  Pulling from standpoint theory, she manages to avoid essentialism by acknowledging that knowledge from third world/south women is the most inclusive viewing of systemic power.  This does not mean that the locations or its inhabitants have exclusive and crucial knowledge of inequality, rather the vantage point provides perspectives of the interlocking and systemic oppressions.  I like the idea of opening this up across the body as well.  Feminism as a lived experience enhanced by the connections it creates physically, mentally, and spiritually. 

Making connections is one of the most important aspects of feminist theory and practice – acknowledging connections that exist is one of the major components of affect.  Toss this into the digital era we’re currently swimming in and it seems like we are in the swell of a new era both ripe with potential and threatening disaster.  What I mean is that the digital capabilities of our new media are, as Henry Jenkins argues, a platform for creativity and construction.  A large part of this boils down to deconstructing the past and standardized forms of communication: using the ashes from the old to build up and away into the new.  This could be a way of recycling, but it is also a point in space for new digital creators to use as the antithesis for their work.  The disaster is the ease in which this space can be co-opted for corporate means and the relative acceptance of the capitalistic presence in everyday life.  Additionally, the numbers of those creating versus those passively consuming seem staggeringly disparate.  But the need to connect is more on the surface than ever before.  More of this to come…and with more references to readings from this class coming soon.

Technology, Innovation, and Reasserting the Status Quo: Sponsorship on the Web

*sigh*

I may be beginning all of my posts like this from now on.   Part of the fun/frustration in reading Dan Schiller's Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System is its publication date.  So much has changed and I would love to know Schiller's take on advertising on personal blogs, personalized marketing based on previous clicks, and the scatter shot of local singles with images of scantily clad young ladies that pop up on the edges of downloading websites.  Watching an hour of straight television programming and tracking the kinds of commercials and brands sponsoring the show(s) can provide you with an idea of who the broadcasters and advertisers believe their demographic to be; the distinction is much fuzzier on the Web.  Since 1999, internet advertising has changed considerably.  I kept thinking back to the annoying pop-ups or the banner ads for mortgage rates, weight loss, and teeth whitening or the ads that tell you that you are a winner...seriously...click here or the interactive ads that encourage you to play their ridiculous game.  These methods still occur on a pretty regular basis, regardless of their annoying and universal NON-appeal, but it's the more personalized advertising that comes through websites like Amazon and Endless and the Facebook-flanking ads that I find interesting.

The new web ads are much narrower and personalized, but they also have a higher rate of completely failing.  Yes, these ads are determined by things I have clicked on in the past or feature seemingly related products to previous purchases.  As my new BFF Andrejevic points out, my participation on the internet has created a profile of who I am as a consumer.  When I am on the internet I get lost in rabbit holes of clicks leading me further and further away from anything I, personally, am interested in; I click on things to gawk.  I do research about a wide range of things that do not describe or apply to me personally.  BUT as much as these things leave a mark, they create a better outline of my willingness to look at ridiculous or gross things on the web.  I want to make clear, though, by no means do I disagree with any of Schiller's postulations about the impact of generalizing audience representation and the detrimental effect on recognizing the range of demographics.  If anything, I feel like the move away from reaching anyone beyond the middle has only increased since this book.  

This may be because the semester has blurred into one continuous day, but I can't help but find the technology without content or direction that Raymond Williams covers so well such an important element to our discussion and understanding of the digital shift.  The same can be seen in the film industry with the initial innovation to perfect the cameras (in order to boost phonograph sales, go figure) and the overlap of trying to better synchronize sound to screen; sometimes the push for capital ends up yielding an accidental art form.  And while I love the productive happenstance, to me this means the framework is already established for these art forms to reproduce the ideology and social norms.  Even in works that push against the norm, it seems like they are so easy to co-opt for increasingly neo-liberal conditions and transnational corporations.  The pressure sponsors like Chrysler feel that they can put on the content of their ad vehicles is completely infuriating.  I hate this customer is always right attitude that has infiltrated all levels of our society making everyone who gets challenged in the slightest outraged at the lack of deference.  It's disgusting and it's making us more provincial, less educated, and better minions for the capitalist machine.  

And in temporary conclusion *sigh*      

*sigh* we need a new education system *sigh*

Cloaked website - Check out a white supremacist website featuring information on Dr. Martin Luther King

Coming into my teaching assistantship at BGSU, there was a series of of talks meant to acquaint us with the millenial students.  Frequently, the potency of their digital literacy came to the fore of the discussion and people's experiences revealed that regardless of millenials' submersion in a more digitized environment, their skills at discerning quality sources from less qualified sources was low, their ability to do in-depth research on the internet was lacking, and despite their experience on the web, the scope of their digital geography was shallow.  This is Considering the prevalence of mimicry in the fast-paced, rapidly evolving cultural zeitgeist, it becomes more and more important to be aware of inauthentic wolves in sheep's clothing.  Given my interest in media literacy for the K-12 students here in America, I found myself drawn to Daniels's chapter "Searching for Civil Rights, Finding White Supremacy: Adolescents Making Sense of Cloaked Websites."  This also required dabbling in the previous chapter and then I was just so interested I kept reading.  That alone marks a well-done writing job! 

The interesting distinction Daniels makes regarding the damage beyond misinformation that cloaked websites bring is that they also threaten the cultural value of racial equality (140).  Considering the questionably free space of the internet and America's protection of free speech in website content, now more than ever we need a combination of digital literacy and critical race consciousness.  This thesis is backed up by the ethnography conducted on a small group of teenagers where they used whatever search engines to conduct a faux research project on MLK or civil rights.  Students were swayed by official sounding URLs, visual cues like professionally crafted websites versus homespun, the presence of images, and their discernment (correct or otherwise) of what they considered to be bias.  These things are easily mimicked and without a background of critical race theory, none of the digital literacy training (which is what taught them to be aware of those four things) will help them critique information sources.  Additionally, in a system that breaks things down to simple binaries, the spectrum of racism and its tenuous methods of disseminating white supremacist information.  You have to consider both form and content to fully explore this kind of communication.

What is key to this chapter and possibly the theme of the class is the notion of uncertainty.  Not so much the unexamined life or anything like that, but it's cloaked websites' "attempt at the discursive production of uncertainty about racial equality" that has to be shutdown.  How do we do that, though?  How can we dispel uncertainty while embracing that which we can't know (kind of how I've been considering affect)?  And I want it to be an answer that doesn't start at the elementary school level....so get on that world!

Conspiratology Archipelago

The 9/11 Truth Method

The ever problematic but quickly informative Wikipedia link

I chose to read Jack Bratich's "When Collective Intelligence Agencies Collide: Public vs. Popular Intelligence and Network Suspicions" from Post-Global Network and Everyday Life because it coincided with Andrejevic's iSpy, as well as my burgeoning interest in public memory.  Typically, I avoid 9-11 research because I am weak and it makes me sad and frustrated in a non-constructive, debilitating way.  I know that I should have a stronger constitution as an attempted scholar, but for some reason this affects my brain in the same way that math does: it should work but it doesn't.  Additionally, I hate being lied to and everything surrounding 9-11 reads like a pack of lies, but voicing this concern renders you to the level of raving conspiracy theorist and disqualifies all of your opinions.  And that is kind of what this chapter is about.

The term COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE (CI) is one that I think fits nicely with my understanding of affect.  In summation, CI is the technologically enhanced, decision-making and community formation that works with the new models of belonging and organization.  It works through digital interactivity in distributed knowledge and network forms like P2P sharing, feedback, interactive marketing, etc. (please refer to your Andrejevic for more examples, as well as a more cynical appreciation of these technologies).  Pierre Levy, the cat who initially worked with the notion of CI suggests that "Intelligence as networked knowledge production will be the foundation for the reconstruction of the social bond," and JB insists that it is a "SPECIES response to power inequalities and the ruinous division of intelligence" (12).  Not that we're keeping score and it's not like I am right, but I do feel a little vindicated with this last bit.  Affect, and apparently collective intelligence, seem to be re-connecting human beings on a P2P level.  Now JB talks a lot about intelligence in the chapter, but this usage seems a little bit different and I wonder if it might align with the national, ethnic, and religious divisions that Levy proposes.

Anyway, above I included the links for the major case study of the chapter and I definitely recommend giving them a gander.  Especially because they are to be considered alongside the 9-11 Commission.   Now I don't expect you to spend the weekend getting riled up over this info, but what you need to understand in terms of JB's chapter is that BOTH of these are networks of suspicion and attempting some level of collective intelligence.  One works outside officially sanctioned knowledge (9-11 TM) and one works to craft intelligence as a repressive state apparatus (the commission).  The former is "refuses to be recruited into a state identification" and the latter is a "project of constituting emergent norms and practices (e.g. investigation [like Andrejevic's lateral surveillance]) amidst the ruins of established institutions" (21).  Importantly, while these networks are separate, both are weighing in on that pop culture battleground Stuart Hall talked about; they are attempting to restore society's sense of sovereignty or subjectivity in the post-9-11 world.  

It's clear that I have fallen under Andrejevic's iSpy spell, but I really do feel like their are these threads running throughout our readings.  In particular, technology and the anonymity, connectivity, interactive qualities within these networks are working to reform or reconstruct connections.  I am still not sure if this process is wholly new or if it is a regurgitation of past plots to regulate subjectivities but with more bells and whistles. 

There is a lot here and I'm still unraveling it a bit.  This may require some later edits!

Cyberheteroglossia

I love it when class topics overlap completely by accident!  This week in Intro to Feminist Theory, the group presenting tied the readings to the news coverage of Egyptian protests, the internet kill-switch, and the visibility of women.  Given the overlap with Anna Everett's "Digital Women: The Case of the Million Woman March Online and on Television" I want to focus on this chapter within Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace.

Everett uses this chapter to explore the scant television coverage allotted for the 1997 Million Woman March on Philadelphia compared to the reports coming from the internet.  I think it's important to keep the historical and technological timing of this disparity at the forefront of our understanding; the internet was not nearly as commonplace in everyday life in 1997 as it is now or even over the course of the past ten years.  We had been debating interactive media and social networking's efficacy in motivating people.  We ended up differentiating between its ability to ignite versus maintain a movement and how to assess exactly what these ideas suggest about internet technologies in motivating a movement.  Frankly, at this point in time, I am very skeptical at the success rate of a predominantly technologized movement because for every amazing thing I see people getting out and doing on the internet (I'm thinking flash mob videos for whatever reason), I am met with a resounding vacuum of apathy expressed by students, colleagues, etc.  Enter A.E. with an example of how the internet could at one time do amazing things by connecting people and providing a genuine alternative to the mass media.

So during the Million Woman March, CNN gave it hardly any air time (between 1-3 minutes per half hour) and predominantly ran the same snippets of footage.  Not only did it cease to update, but it took a sensationalized angle regarding drugs in the black community instead of focusing on the major points expressed by the group.  Frequently, the news reported 300,000-500,000 participants while other sources suggested that it was more like 1.5 million.  Additionally, the reporters were all white and the information presented did not take into account the Afrikan perspective.  Participants were shocked by the lackluster and limited presentation of the television news media, especially contrasted to the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement and the Million Man March coverage in previous years.  Granted, the representations put forth on TV in those examples still struggled to convey full disclosure of the groups' motivations, but the presence was there.  A.E. also mentions that the public and domestic spheres in representations of women have never justly demonstrated a women's roles.  She argues that this invisibility to white eyes is what allowed so many black women to seize such dramatic, active roles in the civil rights movement (54). 

To compete with this willful blindness toward black women gathering and fighting for their rights, the Million Woman March actively sought video footage, photographs, and personal stories in order to self-construct the memories of this event.  Women who were in support of the event but unable to participate physically searched the news networks for coverage, but could only see the stilted and minor footage already discussed.  Instead, people started to run their own commentary about the news media's crappy coverage of this important event.  It is in this way that the internet really becomes a site for "black women's dissenting voices and cultural image" in order to disrupt mainstream media's occlusions of black women's difficult realities (73). 

Cut to the monumental presence of women protesting in Egypt and the coverage of this event.  Granted, given the global representations, this topic is even more troublesome than the Million Woman March because the levels of mistranslated information, misunderstandings regarding historical, social, and cultural aspects to these events, and misuse of the imagery coming from the streets.  There is a lot to consider when attempting to empathize or access an affective connection to the struggles and outrage of the Egyptian people.  Can we expect any semblance of truthful reporting to come out of the notoriously biased news media?  Can we expect anything better from a highly corporatized internet?  Andrejevic has made me incredibly dubious of Facebook's ability to connect beyond the superficial or supersocial levels and the amount of data collecting to me suggests that our political actions on the web will one day be used against us.  Hells bells, didn't that teacher get fired for calling her students a bunch of germ bags in a blog; that is a far stretch from saying that the president is doing a bad job and should be deposed.  And the "temporary" aspect to temporary autonomous zone is disconcerting - it seems that we assumed the autonomy of the internet is permanent and that is part of why it is so easy for corporations and bigger thought entities to move in and take over these spaces.  Creativity was such a huge part of the feeling of belonging, I worry that the combustive energy inherent to a revolution will be rerouted for some capitalistic goal.  I know this is a negative way to approach the internet's potential, but I just feel like there are some serious issues with the people using the technology and until some systemic analysis and self-awareness or reflexivity occurs in a major way, the power of the medium and the message are both squandered.

Selling Out, Buying In, and Synthetic Creativity

What becomes clear right away in Mark Andrejevic's iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era is the ridiculous pittance we will accept for sacrificing our stakes in privacy, creativity, and the right/ability to make choices.  Now, I was already feeling this way after last week and might be reading too far in one direction, but I think iSpy also hits on the desperate need we have to feel connected to something.  I wrote about this last week in terms of affect as the corporeal, emotional ties we experience as bodies; this base connection underlies the divisions of intersectionality and between varying standpoints, possibly uniting us as sentient beings.  So what stands out to me (especially in "Three Dimensions of iCulture") is the push to plug into relationships.  This push is as much self-motivated as it is corporate.  The networking and cybernetic booms are in response to user participation.  In other words, the resonating surge in interactive campaigns would not have occurred without an expressed interest in the buying public.  Granted, the paths between individuals and technology will always be cyclical, but it really feels like without our active submission to these services and products that we would not be as bound by the technology.

It seems that in the atomization of American society we are craving bonds that let us feel like part of something.  Usually when I think about this, I envision the satisfaction of connecting with someone on an individual level or the security you feel when you are with a close group of family or friends; there is a human component that is very direct.  Based on Andrejevic's examples, it seems that we are willing to accept a range of conduits to have this feeling, even if the humans on the receiving end are just implied.  Facebook provides one of the more direct connections with individuals you have either met or are connected to through other friends.  On the other hand, Nike's interactive shoe designing campaign and PostSecret highlight the willingness to bond with a faceless entity that loosely represents a collection of individuals.  Direct connection isn't made, but the semblance is enough to fulfill something on some level.  In this way, capitalism can creep even further into our everyday lives.

As some of you know, I am fascinated with the power of nostalgia.  Tapping into people's emotional memories of the past, even pasts they have never experienced personally but are familiar through popular culture, can be an extremely powerful motivator.  We see it with political and advertising campaigns, as well as with tourism, in film, etc.  It's all over the place and it is essential for the interactive pull to hit at our motivators and heart strings.  Andrejevic asserts that the nostalgia for interactive culture pulls at our understanding of a pre-industrial past.  We long to be more than consumers (M.A. uses the term "prosumers") and the act of helping to create, even when creation is simply choosing from pre-selected options (like the Qdoba menu or Nike's iD shoe customizer).  In this way, we are allowed to be producers without doing much of the real production.  We can sample a few options, point or click at what we want, and then someone else (or a program) will do the physical work.  Although we are doing a kind of work, the work is merely for the corporations involved (ie. David Bowie + Audi mash up project) Like the relationships, it doesn't have to be real as long as it gives of the feeling of realness. 

Another element of iCulture is an increase in peer-to-peer surveillance and the surge of biometric technologies to help with this.  We are "looking for physical evidence that can't be staged" (38).  Again, I think on some level we must be aware that by plugging in and signing on we agree to the farce of connection, but we are still starving for proof of anything.  Biometrics speak directly to the physical evidence we are craving, whether it's a lie-detector in a Judge Judy courtroom or monitoring somebody's heart when they're on a reality show date, we want to know the "truth" - it is written in your guts and in your circulatory system.  In general, this also points to the suspicions we have about everyone even when we're striving to make these connections.  Background check websites, credit check, bad date check - all of this can be done before you even meet someone face-to-face.  Combining these two anxieties are the Forget-Me-Not Panties Andrejevic mentions that were meant as social commentary, but mistakenly were take serious by some less ironic parties who were actually interested in investing.  But unlike the panties, this Dramatel commercial is a legitimate service.  I'll save the discussions of race and gender for another time, but the push for surveillance of a mate is intense.

Tasting the Affect

The reason I chose Ben Highmore's "Bitter After Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics" alongside our other readings is simply because I love to eat and I thought perhaps placing this first exploration of affect in the context of something I enjoyed would somehow magically make me understand.  I'd just be relishing a bowl of sweet potato stew and suddenly draw links between my satisfaction through comfort food and a general bettering of mood from the sustenance and this huge nebulous topic of affect.  Let's just say that I'm not sure if I understand affect any better, but I completely gorged myself on all sorts of gastronomic delights trying to figure it out.  Here is what I am thinking at this point:

AFFECT = MESSINESS

It is overlapping, moving laterally and backward, connecting bodies and surfaces, potentially uniting others against some others, and sticks and slides.  While it is not contained within objects or bodies (not just human - could be land, thought, etc.), they can be inspired by or infused with affect (Ahmed).  Emotion seems too familiar in our everyday language to fully grasp what it means in terms of affect; "emotion" is a contained idea and seems like a closed definition whereas affect reopens this notion of connectivity and psychic fusions that are lost in the colloquial renderings of emotion.  Rai's phrasing "ontological reworking of ecologies of sensation" honors this reconsideration of emotion's power in making changes to our reality. 

Returning to Highmore's article, when we talk about affect we are talking about the guttural pulls that undermine all the ego and super ego socialization and ideological influences.  Although affect is not separate from or uninfluenced by these things, it marks a return to the physical body - blood, guts, wet, smelly, warm, REAL body.  When we experience anything it is not through a singular sense; everything is connected.  So let's say you sit down with me and my stew and I graciously offer you a bowl, you accept, and here is what follows:

• You grasp a warm bowl in both your hands and hold it because it is too hot to eat.
• Steam will rise from the stew both allowing you to smell the peanutty undertones and kissing your face with another kind of heat.
• You will look into the bowl and see a thick, rich orange with chunks of sweet potato, speckles of green celery, and a smattering of red bell pepper.
• When you finally take a bite, the secondary texture of chopped fresh peanuts will interrupt the initial smoothness of the stew.  Finally, a zing of lime that is only apparent after you swallow will overtake your exhale.
• The mouthful of stew will warmly travel down your esophagus and into your tummy, eventually warming up your whole body.

Now that's just me breaking down the physical sensations, perceptions, and registers that  you might feel.  Highmore considers this arena of sensorial perception and sensual expression beneath an umbrella term "social aesthetics" that highlights all the entanglements between bodies (121).  Now sharing a bowl of stew would be something that brought us together, but that isn't necessarily an interesting affect conversation (just the sign of an amazing afternoon).  Highmore mores the discussion to DIStaste.  Distaste is "revolt, physical nausea, vomiting, and retching...it's signaled through a register of affects sliding from condescension to disdain to scorn, and contempt" (124).  This pertains to schismogenesis, or the intensification of cultural differences or rivalries upon a period of closer contact between two distinct cultural groups or cultural factions (127).  As Gregory Bateson wanted to know, why don't cultures actually melt into this metaphoric melting pot when they are alongside one another?  In fact, oftentimes, the rivalries between two cultures will escalate.  The reason boils down to....

ETHOS - "the expression of a culturally standardised system of organization of the instincts and emotions of the individuals" - like so much that we talk about in cultural studies, or at least when we're lackadaisically throwing around "social construction," it needs to be recognized that just because something is abstract or on the surface or imaginary does not mean that it does not have real life, concrete elements and effects.  This is true of gender, ethnicity, so on and so forth, up to and including ethos, which can be linked to class.  Ethos includes the ways we do things, our forms of perception, affective intensities, and more.  Highmore refers to it as the "distribution of the sensible" (128).  It's due to the particular ethos of a culture that groups will rub one another the wrong way at an almost instinctual level; the differences between these core, everyday emotions and practices are too much to handle - blending or melting is not happening.

Ethos can be changed, but it requires sensual, affective pedagogy.  I highly recommend checking out the story about a lad eating the spiciest vindaloos when he was out "going for an Indian" (133).  After sending back the dish because it wasn't spicy enough, Javed, the restaurant owner, added the chilis that the English man insisted upon regardless of the fact that it ceased to be an Indian dish anymore - the meal was something else both in ingredients, taste, and experience.  The young Brit returned later to discuss what happened to his back end after consuming all the explosive chilis and this is a scene of sensual pedagogy.  I'm not doing it justice because it's straight up so good without my stamp on it.