Fingering the finger
Like David, Steve and others, I'm an early purchaser of Faithful Interpretation, AKMA's latest book, which I hope will see some lively online conversation. I'm also intrigued by a remark by AKMA vis a vis something Doc said about gestures as expressions of intent, about unintentional gestures - in part because these seem to keep coming up in texts I never seem unpreoccupied by (Dante and Baudelaire, to name just two).
As much as the hermeneutic and theoretic aspects of the matter matter, there may also be practical and consequential situations in which the gesture and its intentionality are complicated beyond simple transparency of gesturer->gesture->interpretation.
For one:
Pointing then can be a kind of act - not quite a speech act, but an act nonetheless: a gesture causes something new to occur.
Now factor in Florida's election law. The name (intentional object) on the ballot is and will be "Mark Foley." And no voter who points to Foley will be pointing to Foley. We don't yet know who will be the designated receiver of that gesture.
We are summoned, we make a gesture, the gesture is an act, yet within all that, the play of substitution makes any simple construction of gesture as intention somewhat less simple.
As much as the hermeneutic and theoretic aspects of the matter matter, there may also be practical and consequential situations in which the gesture and its intentionality are complicated beyond simple transparency of gesturer->gesture->interpretation.
For one:
"He's a lost soul," she said. "I hope he gets the help that he needs." [That would be Mark Foley, REP FL, disgraziato].Voting, like gambling, is a gesture - a motion of the hand culiminating in a giant voxpop finger pointing to and thereby legitimating one electoral contest-winning political animal.
Beyond the scandal, the resignation suddenly puts a safe Republican seat in jeopardy. Democrats need just 15 U.S. House seats nationally to take control of the House.
President Bush won Foley's district with 55 percent of the vote in 2004, but Florida's election laws for replacing a candidate will make keeping the seat a challenge for the GOP.
The state Republican Party is likely to name a replacement for Foley next week, but the state Division of Elections said Friday it's too late to take Foley's name off the ballot. Under Florida law, any vote for Foley will go to the candidate named to replace him by the state GOP.
"A vote for Foley is a vote for the new guy, which is really going to provide another interesting twist to the election," said Division of Elections spokesman Sterling Ivey. St. Pete Fecklessness*.
Pointing then can be a kind of act - not quite a speech act, but an act nonetheless: a gesture causes something new to occur.
Now factor in Florida's election law. The name (intentional object) on the ballot is and will be "Mark Foley." And no voter who points to Foley will be pointing to Foley. We don't yet know who will be the designated receiver of that gesture.
We are summoned, we make a gesture, the gesture is an act, yet within all that, the play of substitution makes any simple construction of gesture as intention somewhat less simple.
* "St. Petersburg Times reporters obtained the original e-mails last fall and interviewed two former pages, but didn't write a story."
posted by Tom Matrullo at Saturday, September 30, 2006
7 Comments:
Haiku Mark Foley -
'Turning Pages'
Mark Foley, oh !
'turns' the Republican 'page'
of whip portfolio ...
"We're going to get to the 'bottom' of this..."
Mark Foley is to the politics of child protection what FEMA under Bush is to the poor washed away by Katrina is to what the story of Iraq is to the US Govt. is to what the St. Pete Times is to USian preppy media culture is to...
keep yr eye on the ball Mon Sieur.
I agree that voting is like gambling in many aspects. It is a gesture that thereby legitimatizes one electoral contest-winning political animal to office. Kudos to Gabe, and to everybody else working on credit improvements to advertising."
You see more when you look away
somebody needs to explain to me how Klaus quoted this dude Craig Horizon before he even said anything.
and who's Doc Searls, historically speaking?
and does Foley's revelation, or accusation, of being violated as a teenager put him in the victim camp? or is there another camp in between victims and villains; or is there just the two camps and he's too old now to be a victim?
Juke, one thing I suspect is that Mr. Horizon is another bot, but one that has figured out how to get past the comment screening system. In the previous blogpost, there's another bit of spambot commentation.
I believe Mr. Horizon's comment picked up on klaus's comment (#3 in the thread) using some spider. Perhaps k. is making some spare coin seeding comment threads with verbal strings that attract spambotcommentation. just speculation.
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