City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works The Advocate Archives and Special Collections 2-1994 Advocate, February 1994, Vol. 6, No. 1 How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_advocate/51 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The City University of New York Graduate Student Volume 6, number 1 February, 1994 life, grounded in both history and and privacy. "During Tiananmen theory. Cultural The Whole Square, students were getting the Every year the Center for news out and were fundraising Studies Cultural Studies puts out a call for World is through Internet," adds Tom Graduate Fellows. Each year's Mandel, a futurist with SRI Inter­ group of fellows (who have in past national, a Silicon Valley-based • 1 1 at CUNY years been drawn from English, Talking consulting firm. "There were a By Barbara~artinsons Psychology, Art History, Comp. bunch of us hungrily reading Lit., Anthropology, Political By Kevin Cooke and Dan Lehrer newsgroups, stuff we weren't Cultural Studies is not, as Science, Sociology and Philoso­ getting from reporters." recently suggested in the Times phy) helps to determine the focus Halfway around the world, (Newsgroups are open discussion Magazine Section, the move that of the Center's activities for the Warn Kat files daily reports on life gro~ps where people can post their in Zagreb, Croatia. "I just stood views.) followed deconstruction in the following academic year. Over the literary - or any other - academic past few years the Center has . about half an hour in the supermar- But the Net is changing more fashion game ( 1/23/94, p. 25, attrib­ considered a variety ·of topics from ket downstairs watching a firmly than just the flow of information; uted to Roger Kimball). But the fact the identity of the postmodern self built man .... He was shouting at it's changing the way we relate to that this characterization appeared in to The New Immigration. This everybody in the shop," he wrote one another. The advent of global the Times is (once again) proof that year the emphasis is on . on May 24. "From what I could networking is fragmenting and re- its often easier to be glib and shallow technoscience. Each area on which understand, he said that when sorting society into what one . than to try to understand what's the Center works is connected to a Croatia was under the Serbs (i'n author calls "virtual communities." happening. Cultural Studies springs project, a conference, or both. former Yugoslavia), the price of Instead of being bound by location, bread was at least half of what it is groups of people can now meet in from intellectual roots that developed The CAMEO Project, for now. Just a few days ago I heard cyberspace, the noncorporea1 as modernism [the Enlightenment, example, which tries to practice a Matthew Arnold, the Bauhaus, reformulated ethnography, ex­ somebody say that under the world existing between two linked communists we had our problems, computers. There they can look Impressionism, Realism - or make plored the intersection of identit~, your own llstJ seemed to lose its community memory and culture m but now under the capitalists we for colleagues, friends, romance or po]itical and intellectual P,OWe[; three Latino neighborhoods in New have our problems too. What is sex. John Hoag, communica~~o~~,.. ork Cit Th 1-0 ·ect considered- Yle 9iff~r.~'}$ ~f :z:~.~ ~~ ,.~r ,~b.t?. _..,,.coOl.·d\n=~T-Eo~~-1: _ ~ . Raym~nd Williams ant\ 'lti.~hard waj n1 W · · ·-···-: both personal and politic~ idenut!'. 6 · a:n · r e wof g 1t1 · Hoggart, Bakhtin and Demda, "Zagreb Diary," don't appe~ _in One of the outcomes, earned out m 1986, says, "I met more peopl~ on­ Heidegger and Dilthey, Gilles Yugoslav papers or on telev1s1on. collaboration with The New Mu­ line inside a month than I met m Deleuze and Michel Foucault, They exist in cyberspace. Kat . seum of Contemporary Art and the past ten years." Gayatri Spivak, Fredric Jameson and types them on his own computer m several neighborhood groups, is an Have modem, will travel. Donna Haraway. Zagreb and sends them by mo~em installation called Testimonio, The Internet is the most Cultural Studies in an interdisci­ to an electronic bulletin board m which ran for four months at The powerful computer network on the plinary practice that is currently Germany. From there, his stories New Museum at 583 Broadway. It planet simply because it'-s the . developing in various forms on are relayed to computers around is now in the process of being biggest. It encompasses 1.3 mil­ campuses around the country and the the world via the global mega­ moved to each of the neighbor­ lion computers with Internet world. At the Graduate School, The infoimation stream called the hoods where the ethnographers addresses that are used by up to 30 Center for 'cultural Studies addresses Internet. first met and the members of the million people in more than forty the complex concept of culture: . "Electronic mail is the only communities they would study. countries. The number of comput­ including the boundaries and d1stn­ link between me and the outside Through the Inter American ers linked to the In tern et has bution of power both within and world," says Kat, writing by e­ Cultural Studies Network, the doubled every year between 1988 beyond the university. Among the mail. The Croatian government Center continues to create an and 1992; this year the rate of areas of inquiry are cultural commu­ owns all the major media in the international bridge with 0ther increase slowed slightly to 80 ,< nities, marginalized discourses, new country and is prosecuting a group l cultural studies group, firSt in percent. To reach it, one needs forms of knowledge and new of journalists for treason. Canada, the US and Latin America, only a computer, modem, and knowledges, and emerging cultural Kat is only one of the mllhons ... at a conference in Mexico City last password. Dan Van Belleghem, practices. The developin~ Cultural of people participating in this . spring, and later this-spring at a . who helps connect organizations to Studies curriculum examines the community without walls. Dunng conference in Bellagio, Italy. It is the Internet for the National Sci­ ethnographic, epistemologi~al, . other recent cataclysms, the important to the Center to d~ ~ork ence Foundation, says, "Nobody technological and textual d1mens1ons Internet provided an instant, in Cultural Studies as a participat- .. has ever dropped off the network. of intellectual work and of everyday . unfiltered link to the world. Continued on page 6 "In Russia, during the coup Continued on page 6 attempt, people were providing live _ ·, _ COLUMNS AND.FEATURES·. ___ _.·:_._ reports on Russian Internet about .. : PORTFOLIO. ·· ... _ Editorials & Letters...................................... 2-3 what was really going on. They were widely circulated on the Net," ' Ask Aph rodite •····································· ............... 3 The Artist's Vision of Valkyrie in Valhalla....................•...................... 4 says Mitchell Ka12or, founder_of CURTIS JAMES The Free World. ...... Stefan Smagula............... 5 Lotus Development Corporation In Celebration of Movies...................... Elizabeth Powers............. k 98 and now chairman of the Elec­ Black History Month tronic Frontier'Foundation, a group Artb eat. ............ Jeannette Radredense •·······n page7 C1ty. s·t1 es ................. Charles Naylor.............. advocating "electronic civil liber­ ties," primarily freedom of speech ..... Page2 Advocate February 1994 I 1! l Editor's Note Letters to the Editor Welcome back to a new Dear Editor, poor food service? As for objec­ semester, and a new incarnation of Finally, we feel lucky to tivity, this position presupposes the CUNY Graduate Advocate. feature the work of novelist In one of the editorials in the that some are purer than others, Our February issue introduces Charles Naylor for our City Sites December, 1993, •issue of The especially impure DSC members, several features, to help offset the column. A native New Yorker who Advocate you referred to me and and that readers are unable to blues this nasty, short, cold and has studied English literature at G. Ganter, albeit anonymously, as differentiate and interpret the brutfah month. In time for CUNY Grad Center,"Charles "pompous twits". The editorial politics behind a given article. Valentine's Day, we celebrate Naylor inaugurates what will be an went on to imply that we attempted I agree that The Advocate whatever erotic heat we can gener­ open forum for reflection and to censor the newspaper, and called needs overhaul, or more specifi­ ate with the help of our epistolary thoughts about the City which is­ for a paper that is independent of cally a redefined purpose. This goddess of love, Ask Aphrodite. for better or worse-our campus the DSC. newspaper is the only vehicle Send your tempests to ~er teapot and our home. What distinguishes To respond first to the name­ GSUC students, and their govern­ for March, care of the Advocate, our graduate experience from that calling, you certainly damage,your ment, the DSC, have to force this and see what she can brew for you. or our peers at more sheltering, credibility by using the student institution, and CUNY in general, Another innovation we kick off insular institutions is the challenge newspaper to insult fellow students to treat everybody fairly and this month is a series of regular of taking the City on its own terms, who might even be "pompous according to due proc;;ess, and to columns, featuring first-person with all that it entails for our daily twits", whatever this means.