Foureyedsoul

Critical information literacy ∴ Cultural & media studies ∴ Sous les pavés, la plage ∴ We are, as always, stubborn, stoked, and petrified - GY!BE ∴ @foureyedsoul ∴ Info Fluxus

[kellymce-blog]

zines about mental health

As promised, I’m trying to write something every day for LIS Mental Health Week. I have been *completely overwhelmed* by the degree of thoughtful, caring, personal stories that folks have been sharing, as well as the very practical guides to things like Employee Assistance Programs. Props to everyone who is participating, as well as folks lurking who don’t want to talk about MH on the internet.

The rad folks on the Zine Librarians listserv put together a list of excellent zines about mental health. Definitely check out the full list, but I wanted to highlight a couple MH zines that have meant a lot to me.

Functionally Ill: Adventures With Mental Health by Laura-Marie is a zine documenting Laura-Marie’s experiences with mental health and illness. The first issue, “Becoming Bipolar” is a very thorough, clear explanation of what mania feels like for Laura-Marie, what the voices sound like, and what it was like to get treatment, including an evaluation and intake at a mental health clinic, plus a loooot of paperwork. I love this zine (and the rest of this series) because it gives me a window into one person’s experience with a condition that is usually discussed in murky, myth-y ways. Buy it from Laura-Marie.

Filling the Void: Interviews about quitting drinking and using edited by Caty and Cindy Crabb is, as it says, a collection of interviews. I’d seen this zine around, but I actually bought it because I met a dude at a party who told me that reading this zine helped him deal with his own drinking. Given that a lot of punx and alternative people have ambivalent feelings about AA, this zine provides another window into discussing substance use/abuse and sobriety. Lately at library conferences, I’ve been thinking about how much of the fun after hours stuff happens at bars, and what that might mean for people in recovery. Buy it from Doris Distro.

Shit’s Fucked: a positivity guide, by Gina Sarti isn’t explicitly about mental health, it’s more of a self-care zine. But, a friend sent it to me, and it has helped me through more than one low point with its simple, loving suggestions. Buy it from Quimby’s.

[kellymce-blog]

The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice community. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.

Sick Woman Theory, Johanna Hedva (h/t @niaking and @foureyedsoul)

Please go read this whole thing, it is so good and important.

(via kellymce)

[forgottenawesome]

Do You Love Someone With Depression?

If you have a partner or are close to someone who struggles with depression, you may not always know how to show them you love them. One day they may seem fine, and the next they are sad, distant and may push you away. It is important that you know that as a person who is close to them and trusted by them, you can help your friend or partner have shorter, less severe bouts of depression. Mental illness is as real as physical illness (it is physical actually, read more about that here) and your partner needs you as much as they would need to be cared for if they had the flu.

Your relationship may seem one-sided during these times, but by helping your partner through a very difficult and painful affliction, you are strengthening your relationship and their mental health in the long term.

1. Help them keep clutter at bay.

When a person begins spiraling into depression, they may feel like they are slowing down while the world around them speeds up. The mail may end up in stacks, dishes can pile up in the sink, laundry may go undone as the depressed person begins to feel more and more overwhelmed by their daily routine and unable to keep up. By giving your partner some extra help sorting mail, washing dishes or using paper plates and keeping chaos in check in general, you’ll be giving them (and yourself) the gift of a calm  environment. (I’m a fan of the minimalist movement because of this, you can read more about that here.)

2. Fix them a healthy meal.

Your partner may do one of two things when they are in a depressed state. They may eat very little, or they may overeat. In either case, they may find that driving through a fast food restaurant or ordering a pizza online is just easier than fixing a meal. Eating like this, or neglecting to eat will only degrade your partner’s health, causing them to go deeper into their depression. Help your loved one keep their body healthy, and their mind will follow. This is a great article that talks about the “Brain Diet” which can help the symptoms of depression, and this article talks about how our modern diet could contribute to the recent rise in depression. Here is a recipe for a trail mix that is quick to make and has mood-boosting properties.

3.Get them outside.

 The benefits of getting outside for a depressed person are huge. And it is possibly the last thing on earth your partner will want to do. Take them to be somewhere in nature. Pack a picnic and lie in the sun, take a leisurely hike or plant a garden. Being barefoot in the dirt, or “earthing” helps ground the body and reverse the effects of living in a world of emf’s, and digging in soil can actually act as an antidepressant, as a strain of bacterium in soil, Mycobacterium vaccae, triggers the release of seratonin, which in turn elevates mood and decreases anxiety. Sunshine increases Vitamin D production which can help alleviate depression. My friend Elizabeth wrote an excellent post about Vitamin D and its link to depression here.  For more information about other sources of Vitamin D, this is a great post as well as this.

4. Ask them to help you understand what they’re feeling.

If your partner is able to articulate what they are going through, it will help them and you better understand what you are dealing with, and may give insight into a plan of action for helping your partner. Also, feeling alone is common for a depressed person and anything that combats that feeling will help alleviate the severity and length of the depression.

5. Encourage them to focus on self-care.

Depressed people often stop taking care of themselves. Showering, getting haircuts, going to the doctor or dentist, it’s all just too hard, and they don’t deserve to be well taken care of anyway in their minds. This can snowball quickly into greater feelings of worthlessness since “Now I’m such a mess, no one could ever love me”. Help your loved one by being proactive. Tell them “I’m going to do the dishes, why don’t you go enjoy a bubble bath?” can give them the permission they won’t give themselves to do something normal, healthy and self-loving.

6. Hug them.

Studies show that a sincere hug that lasts longer than 20 seconds can release feel-good chemicals in the brain and elevate the mood of the giver and receiver. Depressed people often don’t want to be touched, but a sincere hug with no expectation of anything further can give your partner a lift.

7. Laugh with them.

Telling a silly joke, watching a comedy or seeing a stand up comedian will encourage your partner to laugh in spite of themselves. Laughing releases endorphins and studies show can actually counteract symptoms of depression and anxiety.

8. Reassure them that you can handle their feelings.

Your partner may be feeling worthless, angry and even guilty while they are depressed. They may be afraid that they will end up alone because no one will put up with their episodes forever. Reassure them that you are in the relationship for the long haul and they won’t scare you away because they have an illness.

9. Challenge their destructive thoughts.

A depressed person’s mind can be a never-ending loop of painful, destructive thoughts. “I’m unlovable, I’m a failure, I’m ugly, I’m stupid”. Challenge these untruths with the truth. “You’re not unlovable, I love you. You aren’t a failure, here are all the things you’ve accomplished.”

10.Remind them why you love them.

Look at pictures of happy times you’ve had together. Tell them your favorite things about them. Reminisce about your relationship and all the positive things that have happened, and remind your partner that you love them and they will get through this.

(via The Darling Bakers)

[unrecognizedpotential]

More people need to know this.

[spicymayonegg]

This is so incredibly important. I’ve seen people with depression ostracized so many times, and I cannot stress how much it means to each and every person I’ve tried to reach out to after whatever “falling-outs” they’ve had due to depression. Remember to always be compassionate and kind to all friends like this, because you never know what they’re going through.

[foureyedsoul]

Theory is a resource […for…] intervention in the world

Here’s a great question & answer from Chapter 9 of Henry Giroux’s On Critical Pedagogy, an interview between Giroux and Manuela Guilherme. I’m adding emphasis to the bestest bits.

M.G.: [Manuela Guilherme] You also propose a close link between theory and practice, which have been made separate in our academic systems and in our societies. Can you please expand on the advantages of linking them for the purposes of citizenship education?

H.G.: [Henry Giroux] Citizenship education must take seriously the connections between theory and practice, reflection and action. All too often, theory in academia slides into a form of theoreticism in which it either becomes an end in itself, relegated to the heights of an arcane, excessive, and utterly ethereal existence, or degenerates into a form of careerism, offering the fastest track to academic prominence. But theory is hardly a luxury connected to the fantasy of intellectual power. On the contrary, theory is a resource that enables us to both define and respond to problems as they emerge in particular contexts. Its transformative power resides in the possibility of enabling forms of agency, not in its ability to solve problems. Its politics is linked to the ability to imagine the world differently and then to act differently, and this is its offering to any viable notion of citizenship education. At stake here is not the question of whether theory matters, which should be as obvious as asking whether critical thought matters, but the issue of what the political and public responsibilities of theory might be, particularly in theorizing a global politics for the twenty-first century. Theory is not just about contemplation or paving a way to academic stardom; it is foremost about intervention in the world, raising ideas to the worldly space of public life, social responsibility, and collective intervention. If learning is a fundamental part of social change, then theory is a crucial resource for studying the full range of everyday practices that circulate throughout diverse social formations and for finding better forms of knowledge and modes of intervention in the face of the challenge of either a growing authoritarianism or a manufactured cynicism. (p. 171-172)

[bostoncollegeracism]

In case you haven’t seen it yet, O'Neill Library has recently brought the ‪#‎CharlestonSyllabus‬ initiative to ‪Boston College‬.

According to the website, this is “a list of readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina on the evening of June 17, 2015.”

We applaud BC’s efforts to confront racism and bring marginalized voices into our curriculum and encourage everyone to check it out, as well as continue to encourage BC to give voice to people of color and shift away from our Eurocentric curriculum!

Learn more here: http://aaihs.org/resources/charlestonsyllabus/

[foureyedsoul]

Here's hoping more libraries make display sections with these works! If you do, please circulate photos.

[foureyedsoul]

Wolin also has turned considerable attention to an understanding of theory (political and democratic) and its role, doing so initially in response to the movement to make the study of politics a “science.” He contended that reducing politics and democracy to a behavioral science is “deflationary,” tending toward a reductivism that, as noted, evacuates the concept of “citizen” and reduces it to the hollow, ritualistic and vicarious enactment of “democracy” by the “voter.” Political “science” redefines the “excessive demands o[f] the ‘real world’ ... to suggest a more realistic version of democratic theory” (1968, p. 51). The critique by political science of theory was that it is merely normative and metaphysical, “transempirical,” and incapable of progressive (scientific) movement toward a better, verifiable truth. Wolin pointed out that far from transcending or obviating democratic theory, political science simply describes a flattened reality which it can then more easily measure, and contra the claim to theory being superseded, “a society which is operating fairly normally has its theory in the form of the dominant paradigm” (1969, p. 1082). It is the job of the democratic theorist to unsettle this: Wolin (1980) posited that theory is not a >text to which the ‘problems’ of existing politics can be referred, but a form of criticism in which the ‘text’ itself [prevailing practices and understandings] becomes a problem . ... The underlying purpose is not to ... take sides in a debate over policies, but to expose hidden and troubling interconnections that call into question the authority of the ‘text.’ (p. 200)

— Buschman, "Democratic Theory in Library Information Science: Toward an Emendation", p. 1489 of the version published in Journal Of The American Society For Information Science And Technology, 58(10):1483–1496, 2007 or 14th page of the preprint version if you start counting at the page with the abstract.

Looks like I might be reading more Sheldon Wolin before long!

The "[a stable structure] has its theory in the form of the dominant paradigm" bit is great. It's good to remember that practice is theory put into action, whether or not that theory has been made explicit.

Again, this is why praxis (reflecting on practice & intentionally critiquing it through theory) is so important for librarianship and pretty much everything else worth doing.

[librarymoments]

The Microfiche/Microfilm room…

(No one ever uses it)

[conservethis]

I just repaired some microfiche the other day that had been crunched somehow, like someone sat on it. Every time I have to deal with microfilm and microfiche I’m like: 

I don’t know what the rest of y’all learned in library school, but at mine (from 2006-2009) it was basically, “Microfilm exists and we used to microfilm things a lot as a preservation measure so you may encounter it BUT OH HEY DIGITIZATION NOW THAT’S SEXY LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT A LOT INSTEAD”. 

However I don’t hate on microfilm so much because at least you can still access the information with just your eyeballs and a magnifying implement. 

[foureyedsoul]

I'm a grad student working in the Government, Maps, and Microform Services floor of a big state university, and we constantly have our own patrons use microfilm and do scans of it for ILL. I did one today! It was of an article from a little daily newspaper from 1952 that will almost never be worth anyone's money to digitize.

It's a pretty cool technology! It's just unfortunate that it's increasingly hard to get companies to make computer drivers for scanners to talk to older microfilm viewing machines. We've had waayyyy more trouble with that than with finding patrons who want to access what's on there and nowhere else.

[foureyedsoul]

The terms “librarianship” and “library and information science (LIS)” are used interchangeably. They are inclusive of the people and institutions of the three traditional areas of public, academic, and school libraries, as well as those who research and theorize about them. This is an inherent argument against common artificial divisions among practice, theory, and research.

— John Buschman's "The Integrity and Obstinacy of Intellectual Creations": Jurgen Habermas and Librarianship's Theoretical Literature, p. 270-271, footnote №2.

The way to the reader's heart is through a mic-drop while establishing terms.

[foureyedsoul]

According to Deleuze, the subject given in human nature, though, does not need to be the base unit of analysis. We should not assume that the subject comes to society or social institutions ready-made. Subjects emerge from experiences in their surroundings, which include the library. We should think of institutions as creative entities. According to Deleuze’s theory of institutions, the library is not best understood as an institution that represses natural base instincts; it is not merely a tool of repression. Instead, the library is best understood as a productive space where subjects are produced. As the State is increasingly used as a means to ensure capital appropriation, the library can also be used to play that role. This theory explains how the library is one space amongst many in which subjects can be produced for capital but there are also other possibilities.

—Natasha Gerolami's "The library assemblage: creative institutions in an information society." p. 168.

So far this is a really insightful article on rethinking library & information science—but particularly libraries—through Deleuze's attempt to conceive of the productive agency of other units than just individual humans. There's very little jargon & instead a focus on showing how concepts can be useful.

[foureyedsoul]

Information studies theory has remained a positivist enterprise, squarely within the metaphysical tradition of Western Philosophy, in so far as it reifies meaning and understanding in language acts, replacing variable pragmatics with idealistic models. The philosophical dream of correspondence has a strong hold over information studies and its practice-based students, teachers, and even researchers. Terms such as “structuralism,” “structural linguistics,” and not the least “poststructuralism” are, remarkably, relatively unknown in much of the practicing and teaching of information studies. Lacking such terms and analysis, the conduit metaphor and organic or “auto-affective”notions of identity and value-in regard to language and in other domains-remain the guiding light. This tends to force all other types of research to return to these central concepts and models (or really, metaphors) in the name of a “science” whose ontological and epistemological claims have, arguably, been long since abandoned or demystified throughout the physical sciences and the social sciences. The irony of library and information science’s (LIS) historical tendency toward scientism is that the conduit metaphor, as a model of representation, is the model of philosophical and rhetorical representation that held such power over the humanities until the advent of “theory” in the American universities of the 1970s.

—Ronald E. Day, "Poststructuralism and Information Studies", p. 579-580.

Six pages in and I just want to quote this whole article so far.

It's particularly succinct in explaining how Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze can meaningfully be considered "empirical," as they regard language use as a historical and material structure rather than reify the concepts in a conduit communication model.

Highly recommended reading! Fair warning, though: he's writing at such a broad level that it might be frustrating rather than illuminating if you don't already have at least passing familiarity with structuralism or poststructuralism. He's discussing sweeping tendencies, not introducing the concepts as I hoped from the title.

Okay, back to reading the rest of it. I'm just enjoying it so much I wanted to find some part to share.

[everysinglewordspoken]

These Movies Are Shockingly Short When Reduced To "Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color"

A new Tumblr reveals the disproportionate presence of caucasian actors in movies like Moonrise Kingdom, and Her.

We got a great write-up in fastcompany! And we were compared to the Bechdel Test so I’m starstruck by association.

[everysinglewordspoken]

Run time: 10 seconds

[bushdog]

Hear Seven Hours of Women Making Electronic Music (1938- 2014)

Two years ago, in a post on the pioneering composer of the original Doctor Who theme, we wrote that “the early era of experimental electronic music belonged to Delia Derbyshire.” Derbyshire—who almost gave Paul McCartney a version of “Yesterday” with an electronic backing in place of strings—helped invent the early electronic music of the sixties through her work with the Radiophonic Workshop, the sound effects laboratory of the BBC.

[foureyedsoul]

What I would like to hear more audibly in our field—what I want all of us to work to make more prominent and more possible—is scholarship that explicitly confronts, and broadcasts, the underlying whiteness of the field, and of the generic terms that provide so much currency in it: terms like “the listener,” “the body,” “the ear,” and so on. This work does exist. I believe it should be aggressively encouraged and pursued by the most influential figures in sound studies, regardless of their disciplinary background.

This is from Gustavus Stadler's essay "On Whiteness and Sound Studies", an insightful piece pointing out how what is being codified into "Sound Studies" only partially attests to the more American Studies-influenced work on sound and racialized practices that precede it. (Here's a quick commentary one of my old professors Tweeted out about it as well, reiterating that scholarship has long investigated how music/sound and race/ethnicity infuse each other with meaning.)

From my vantage point, the same happens in library & information science: what power relations are we encoding when we pretend that only "unbiased" points of view can aspire to coherent accounts of library practice, of "information," or of whatever we catalog?

[constellations-soc]

Recent research (Horvath and Hegarty, 2012) found that members of the public could not differentiate between the language used by ‘lads’ magazines and that of convicted sex offenders. However, another key characteristic of laddism is the inbuilt defence of ‘irony’, which attempts to deflect criticism of these excesses with disclaimers of humour. As Benwell (2004, 2007) argues, this is often strategically deployed, functioning to give voice to reactionary, antifeminist and homophobic sentiments while remaining ambiguous and evasive.

Phipps, A. & Young, I. (2015) ‘Neoliberalism and “Lad Culture” in Higher Education’, Sociology, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 307

(via socio-logic)

[foureyedsoul]

Quotaramalamallama

Heads up: I'm likely to start using this more as a reading quotes space, possibly even start writing reading responses like acoloneloftruth did for a hot minute/semester.

[foureyedsoul]

Where lesbian and gay studies takes gender and sexual identities as its object of study, queer theory is interested in how those identities come discursively and socially into being and the kind of work they do in the world. Lesbian and gay studies is concerned with what homosexuality is. Queer theory is concerned with what homosexuality does.

Succinct, useful distinction on page 96 of Emily Drabinski's "Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction." The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, Vol. 83, No. 2 (April 2013), pp. 94-111.