Deep Play in an Anarchist's Repertoire: The Fallout

Freight Trains and Formidable Theses Ch 1: Graduate School I refused to focus on a part of the puzzle. I didn’t mean to refuse, I just didn’t know how to let go of a strong conviction that there was something about the general puzzle that needed to be problematized on a level I couldn’t have imagined at the time. In researching not to problematize something about train-riders on a realistically doable level but rather as an excuse to poke around with intrigue in a world whose boundaries were nowhere in sight. My passion was in exploration, and I went from one object to another amazed by each but never stopping to settle for any of them. I thought it was worth introducing my general feeling about freight trains in an application to graduate school. I only applied to one school, and I figured I would not get into academia with a proposal about the trains that I loved so much in my personal life and that plan B , whatever that might be, would most likely come into play. Nova Scotia so...

Falling for Anthropology It was my freshmen year of 1998, when I took anthropology 101. I took on my academic life at that point with a shrug. Clueless as to what my expectations were regarding the college experience, I did it simply because it was the thing to do. Amidst what I experienced to be a hodgepodge of unassociated classes, I was blessed with a few gems. The rest I eked through with yawns and dreams of the world outside. Anthropology was one of these gems, because anthropology, I thought, was “cool”. My professor, Alan Aycock, spoke of studying the behavior and activities of humans in so many seemingly disparate places; “rituals” in male-dressing rooms at the YMCA and tribal currency systems in Africa. It was the one lecture to which I arrived anxious and early, and the only one in which my nervousness at asking questions in front of so many students disappeared. By the end of the semester, I still didn’t understand what it was that anthropologists did for careers, ...

Forward The Adventures of Natty Gann or; How Disney Corrupted Me It all started with the trains. It was 1985 and I was five when I first saw The Journey of Natti Gann. At ten years old the apparent Disney flavor of the movie left less of an impression on me than did images of The Great Depression; Men doing unimaginable things to make money so that they could support themselves and their families, often unable to do so. What most captured my imagination in Natty Gann were the freight trains. For years after seeing that film I listened to the trains crossing over Good Hope Road on the north side of Milwaukee while lying awake at night, dreaming of such adventures, hoping one day to hop a freight train of my own. The trains were vehicles of deliverance, calling me out of my bedroom and out of my youth. In 1986 it was Stand By Me. The journey is made not by riding the trains but by walking the tracks. The first appearance of the train is a fearful one in which the boy...

INGRID’s Outlines BELOW 1.1 Macro-context of the study follows in broad strokes the history of the trains as it has been viewed as a history of America as a frontier nation and capitalist expanding system. You draw from historical materials (x,y,z) …. Be clear about what you consider to be evidence: government documents? Popular novels, stories, magazines, etc? Textbooks? Railroad journals or hobbyist journals? Zines? Life-Time generalized historical accounts? Museums? Here you are establishing the main trope of trains as an American enterprise. Even the “robber barons” figure in this broad narrative of the story of capitalist America. You may want to include film as well—especially early black and white. 1.2. From these materials you construct a time narrative with basic era characteristics that you will use as part of your theoretical interpretive backdrop and ending with 9/11 which you seem to want to show marks a new moment in this historical imaginary and life of the underbelly...

EXPERIENCE --> Definition per Turner You have to risk via DP to confront problem of knowing and gain perspective on your world. Get outside of it with time to think. But you have to stay in your native world. You cannot go camping into “nature” for that nature has been pointedly criticized. We try to locate our roots thru blood, by genealogy. To have a sense of identity. This is about countries, locations, often distant in time and place. This reflects the same habit of knowing. It’s turned into something more concrete and logical, it seems, when we talk of our immediate family. Our parents are the most important thing, whether they are on good terms with us or fucked us up by being either present or absent. The Nurture aspect seems so obvious; psychologically it’s evident that people are carrying around the shit their parents did or didn’t do. I don’t deny this or that it plays a role. But truly, unless you want to go chasing back your parents to their parents and who and what an...

Liminality To some extent my understanding of liminality is based on Turner's popularization and elaboration of Van Gepp's original definition. Much like I do with Deep Play in this book, I will be taking these concepts into some new territory as well, modifying and inflecting them in new ways. In terms of what is brought to the table in the original definitions, there is certainly relevance to me in the departure from and return to a defined state of being, but my real fixation is on the "betwixt and between". As this in-between state is only understood to be possible by the states it departs from and moves into, I am more interested in an understanding of liminality as a potentially semi-permanent or permanent state of being. This means the relationality between an individual and society takes on greater significance, as the passage from one state to another is actually understood as a passage from being part of society to becoming a fringe memeber, as opposed to...