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When handling archaeological human remains gets weird

We’re all professionals, but sometimes you catch yourself realizing how weird things are looking when handling human remains

Trying to shake out clumped together dirt from someone skull

Brushing someone’s teeth with an actual toothbrush, something they have never done in their lives

Comparing someone’s bones to yours

Judging their dental hygiene

When the earworm of the day is Johnny Cash’ s “Ain’t No Grave”.

Scooping someone’s eye sockets clean with a spoon (or just their whole brain)

When some bones are just … off … you judge hard

Talking in your head to them as if they can hear you

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Research information from 'The 4th Annual Five-College Queer Gender & Sexuality Conference,' hosted at Hampshire College, U.S.A..

"Queerness & the Brown Commons: The Sense of Wildness," (Keynote Address, 2013).

Brownness describes an expansive sense of the world, a feeling and being in common that surpasses the limits of the individual and the subject. Brownness is a conceptual framing that launches us into a vaster consideration of the ways in which people and things suffer and experience harm under the duress of local and global forces that attempt to diminish their vitality and degrade their value.

The idea of Brownness also offers us an account of the ways in which brown commons, in all their harmony and turbulence, offer resources for thinking and doing otherwise.

This paper presents an example of brown commons that it is both diverse and uniform, in the form of a collectivity that included working-class transgendered Latina immigrants and queer of color punks and artists.

Wu Tsang’s film Wildness (2012) tells the tale of an art project that attempted to imagine and catalyze a cross-generational queer and brown commons. Wildness resists many of the protocols of realist documentary. It narrates a the story of Los Angeles’s Silver Platter, a longstanding Latino Gay bar that caters to a local gay community and featured old school transvestite performers.

Tsang and a group of other younger queer artists took over the bar’s less populated Tuesday-night slot and hosted a party that featured edgy queer performance. The documentary tells the story of The Silver Platter through interviews with the bar’s proprietors, regular patrons and those who would become Tuesday night’s denizens.

The film includes talking heads and performance documentation but also attends to the larger urban ecology that surrounds the space by including adjacent histories of anti-immigrant and homophobic violence.

Wildness also features the bar itself as a speaking persona who narrates the ebbs and flows of brown life that traverse its walls.

My analysis of the film is a launching pad for a more expansive consideration of a mode of brownness that is articulated not as a realist or empirical rendering of Latina or immigrant experience, but, instead, a theory of brownness as a simultaneously singular/plural sense of the world.

This paper makes the case that Wildness is a cinema of specularity that offers spectators an expanded materialist lens for a new consideration of the striving, conflicts and flourishing of people, spaces, objects and feelings that are vitally brown and queer.

-- José Esteban Muñoz (keynote speaker), author of 'Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics and Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.'

José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.

These notes are salvaged and extracted from the program to the 2013 Fourth Annual Five-College Queer, Gender & Sexuality Conference.

queerstudies #genderstudies #sexualitystudies #academicqueers #academicfeminism #conference #conferencenotes #conferences #academia #markqet

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❤️🖤

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Swan and Cygnet  ❀

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They turn reverently toward museums, schools, and libraries, and renew their ideals through contact with others who are equally in the thrall of great things. Are they not also immigrants to the cities, and is it not thanks to them that the chariot of civilization continues to move forward through the ages?

When cities grow, humanity progresses, and when they shrink, the social body is threatened with regression into barbarism.

Without having studied the question, one might easily imagine that cities are distributed randomly. And in fact, a number of accounts depict the founders of cities leaving to fate the choice of a site on which to settle and build protective walls. The course of the flight of birds, the spot on which a stag was hunted down and taken, or the point at which a ship ran aground determined where a city was to be constructed. Thus the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik, is supposed to have been founded according to the will of the gods. (5)

In 874, the fugitive Ingolfur came in sight of Iceland and cast into the water the wooden images that served as his household idols. He sought vainly to follow their course, but they eluded him, and he had to establish a temporary camp on the shore. Three years later, he rediscovered the sacred pieces of wood, and moved his settlement to a nearby site, which turned out to be as favorably situated as possible in this formidable “Land of Ice.” (6)

(5): Labonne, Annuaire du Club alpin, 1886. [Reclus’ note] (6): Ingolfur Arnarsson was the first settler of Iceland. After being banished from Norway he set sail for Iceland. He brought along the posts from the high seat, or throne, of his home in Norway. On sighting land, he threw the pillars into the sea and asked the gods to wash them ashore at the appropriate spot for a settlement. He lost sight of the pillars and built a farm on the southeast coast. The posts were finally located along the coast to the west, and the settlement was moved to a spot that was given the Norse name “Reykjavik,” or “Bay of Smoke,” after the geothermal steam that rose there.

Elisee Reclus - "The History of Cities," available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/.

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I performed all this music! I also made the album art for each release! Check it out!! -markqet

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One missed call... two missed calls... time for a walk!!

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"PHILOSOPHY: ARRANGE THE QUESTION." A formalistic approach presented by MarkqetDesign.

CONSIDER Alain BADIOU,

he who leaves the reader with a hierarchy of which question will be addressed (below, in the chapter, or essay, or article). The first thing to acquire is interest in some problem, then the second thing to work is overview with exegesis, then there is critique of the presented text(s).

Then, analysis; then original work is presented. The questions to be addressed and the reasons or historical predecessors informing their inquisition thusly arise. From there, the work continues with logical soundness and the elaboration of creative work to create a complete text.

The references can be left aside for a poetical approach to text, or included for an academique (academic approach) to addressing and even possibly, in certain contexts, "answering" questions of a variety of types.

Political, sociological, and social questions are considered, along with anthropology with a considered ontological turn, such being that the anthropological questions are addressed with a post-turn ontological grounding and openness to interdisciplinary readings.

See references:

cf. Peter Skafish, Starhawk, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Alain Badiou;

cf. keywords, "anthropology after ontology," "China/Mao Cultural Revolution," "May 1968 France Revolution/Revolt," "academic philosophy," "logical soundness," "exegetical writing," "article structure."

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clay figures from Bab edh-Dhra, near the Dead Sea

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goth, goth // core

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-

we find a

place-

suddenly outside a breath, there:

once more before we were

us

towards one another

no one

voiced

I-speak-to-you

the other

void

a first word...

it homecomes between

(n)ever

threshold of foreknown

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Barbarus hic ego sum, qui non intelligor illis. -- Ovid. 1.

' " Answer me, I say, you from whom we receive all this sublime information, whether we should have been less numerous, worse governed, less formidable, less flourishing, or more perverse, supposing you had taught us none of all these fine things.

Reconsider therefore the importance of your productions; and, since the labours of the most enlightened of our learned men and the best of our citizens are of so little utility, tell us what we ought to think of that numerous herd of obscure writers and useless littérateurs, who devour without any return the substance of the State.

Useless, do I say? Would God they were! Society would be more peaceful, and morals less corrupt. But these vain and futile declaimers go forth on all sides, armed with their fatal paradoxes, to sap the foundations of our faith, and nullify virtue. They smile contemptuously at such old names as patriotism and religion, and consecrate their talents and philosophy to the destruction and defamation of all that men hold sacred.

Not that they bear any real hatred to virtue or dogma; they are the enemies of public opinion alone; to bring them to the foot of the altar, it would be enough to banish them to a land of atheists. What extravagancies will not the rage of singularity induce men to commit!

The waste of time is certainly a great evil; but still greater evils attend upon literature and the arts. One is luxury, produced like them by indolence and vanity. Luxury is seldom unattended by the arts and sciences; and they are always attended by luxury.

I know that our philosophy, fertile in paradoxes, pretends, in contradiction to the experience of all ages, that luxury contributes to the splendour of States. But, without insisting on the necessity of sumptuary laws, can it be denied that rectitude of morals is essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is diametrically opposed to such rectitude?

Let it be admitted that luxury is a certain indication of wealth; that it even serves, if you will, to increase such wealth: what conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox, so worthy of the times? And what will become of virtue if riches are to be acquired at any cost?

The politicians of the ancient world were always talking of morals and virtue; ours speak of nothing but commerce and money.

The monarchy of Cyrus was conquered by thirty thousand men, led by a prince poorer than the meanest of Persian Satraps: in like manner the Scythians, the poorest of all nations, were able to resist the most powerful monarchs of the universe.

When two famous republics contended for the empire of the world, the one rich and the other poor, the former was subdued by the latter. The Roman empire in its turn, after having engulfed all the riches of the universe, fell a prey to peoples who knew not even what riches were.

… [A]ll the power and wisdom of the heir of Charles the Fifth, backed by all the treasures of the Indies, broke before a few herring-fishers. Let our politicians condescend to lay aside their calculations for a moment, to reflect on these examples; let them learn for once that money, though it buys everything else, cannot buy morals and citizens. What then is the precise point in dispute about luxury?

It is to know which is most advantageous to empires, that their existence should be brilliant and momentary, or virtuous and lasting? I say brilliant, but with what lustre! A taste for ostentation never prevails in the same minds as a taste for honesty. No, it is impossible that understandings, degraded by a multitude of futile cares, should ever rise to what is truly great and noble; even if they had the strength, they would want the courage.

Every artist loves applause. The praise of his contemporaries is the most valuable part of his recompense.

What then will he do to obtain it, if he have the misfortune to be born among a people, and at a time, when learning is in vogue, and the superficiality of youth is in a position to lead the fashion; when men have sacrificed their taste to those who tyrannise over their liberty, and one sex dare not approve anything but what is proportionate to the pusillanimity of the other when the greatest masterpieces of dramatic poetry are condemned, and the noblest of musical productions neglected?

This is what he will do. He will lower his genius to the level of the age, and will rather submit to compose mediocre works, that will be admired during his life-time, than labour at sublime achievements which will not be admired till long after he is dead. Let the famous Voltaire tell us how many nervous and masculine beauties he has sacrificed to our false delicacy, and how much that is great and noble, that spirit of gallantry, which delights in what is frivolous and petty, has cost him. " '

-- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences: A Discourse Which Won the Prize at the Academy of Dijon in 1750 on this Question Proposed by the Academy:

'Has the Restoration of the Arts and Sciences had a Purifying Effect upon Morals?,'

trans. G. D. H. Cole, p. 10. 1750: ISN ETH Zurich, Ch

(International Relations and Security Network: Primary Resources in Internal Affairs (PRIA); retrieved from Online Library of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/), 3 January 2008. Web, Accessed 2024.

#academic philosophy #philosophy #rousseau

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Rest

Sketchbook Entry 23/95

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Beyond political philosophy, a number of philosophers have taken up questions about the relationship of Latinxs to the discipline of philosophy. One preoccupation concerns the relatively low numbers of Latinx philosophers in the US academy (Gracia 2000, 2008; R. Sanchez 2013). Others have written about whether Latinxs are subject to bias of some or another sort (Madva 2016). Several philosophers have argued that the particular cultural practices of the discipline of philosophy create special barriers for Latinxs (Gracia 2000: 159–188; C. Sánchez 2016, 135–140; see also essays in Yancy 2012).

A different family of broadly metaphilosophical endeavors has focused on the identification of conceptual continuities and historical ties between Latinxs, Latinx philosophy, and other philosophical movements. For example, Gregory Pappas (2011), Carlos Sánchez (2016: 93–112), and José-Antonio Orosco (2016a) have taken up the question of whether philosophical pragmatism is continuous with, useful for, or particularly representative of Latinx thought and culture.

Another notable interest for some philosophers working within Latinx philosophy has been the expansion of what figures are canonical for philosophy, and in particular, for Latinx philosophy, or more specifically, a Mexican American philosophy. Orosco (2016b) has argued that important figures in the Chicano Civil Rights movement—Cesar Chavez and Armando Rendon, among others—ought to count as philosophers. In a different direction, Carlos Sánchez’s work in the history of Mexican philosophy—including translations and discussions of Mexican existentialism (2012, 2016)—has been animated by the goal of expanding the philosophical canon in ways that might helpfully speak to contemporary Mexican American people and their circumstances (see the introduction and conclusion of Sanchez 2016).

Surveying the state of contemporary work in Latinx philosophy suggests an initial taxonomy of the field. First, there is a distinct set of questions about who is Latinx, the nature of the category, and whether it makes sense to speak of there being any interesting unity to the category. We can characterize this first set of issues as categorical or identitarian.

Second, as we have seen, there is a set of relatively “first order” or substantive philosophical questions within Latinx philosophy. These include questions about racialization of citizenship; the ethics of immigration; matters in political and social philosophy that impinge upon and that are structured by Latinxs; the peculiar features of transnational identities for some Latinx groups; the nature of intersectionality in the Latinx case; epistemic injustice concerning Latinxs; social, moral, and political questions about, for example, the role of Latinxs within the academic discipline of philosophy.

Third, there are questions about whether a Latinx philosophy essentially involves—or ought to involve—aspirations for liberation, whether Latinx philosophy is ultimately a form of identity politics, whether it makes sense to talk of ethnic philosophies at all, and even questions about what sort of work regarding Latinxs (scholarly or otherwise) properly counts as philosophy. Call these metaphilosophical questions about Latinx philosophy.

Roughly, categorical questions (the first cluster) concern how we ought to understand the Latinx part of Latinx philosophy. Metaphilosophical questions (the third cluster) concern how we ought to under the philosophy part of Latinx philosophy.[3] Together, the presumptions one has about these questions structure a good deal of the shape of what constitutes substantive Latinx philosophy.

-- Stanford Ecyclopedia of Philosophy, cf. keywords, "Latinx Philosophy," https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/latinx/, accessed 29 Jul 2025 (web/internet).

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One more song in the bank