cops/academia

Working on an essay for inclusion in a book. A real, tangible, hold-in-yr-hands book. Details forthcoming, more than likely. For now, though, some thoughts on conversations had recently at last weekend's "Knowledge, Violence, Discipline" conference, firstly: holding a conference which really attempts to engage the relation between policies of exclusion re: the university, the privitization of the university, the necessity of destruction of the myths surrounding the university as a 'last bastion' of 'free speech' in one of the most heavily surveilled university buildings I've seen seems, in retrospect, a bit counter-intuitive. Now, some factoids:

1) York University, in Toronto, has instituted a policy banning all 'voice-amplification' devices in order to quell campus anti-war protest. Notwithstanding thoughts as to the effectivity of campus protest in general (which strikes me, oftentimes, as a closed-circuit broadcast, wherein the only possible effect is a) irritating the administration (not an undesirable effect, certainly) and b) pissing off campus Republicans), this little bit of information is possibly more than enough to convince even the most starry-eyed, politically hopeful undergrad of increasing sanction and roll-back of -- what to call it -- 'freedom of speech'? As if that phrase meant anything, anyhow.

2) The U.S. Military is hiring social scientists, particularly anthropologists, for inclusion in the deployment of what's been termed 'Human Terrain Systems' -- a presenter this weekend drew links between this and Margaret Mead's Cold War research on the USSR. Disturbing, yes, but what's more -- particularly for someone who's interested in more surface/intensity-focused understandings of the body (to move away from the depth-oriented models which force organs and genes to speak an instrumentalist, determined subject -- see Grosz's Volatile Bodies) is the notion of the subject as 'human terrain,' the employment of a spatial metaphor I typically find more engaging, deployed in such a way as to fuel a notion of transparent mapping with reference to irreducible and opaque 'Others.'

All for now.