PoMoCats

an interdisciplinary poststructuralist and only somewhat absurdist cat blog

[pomocats]

Happy world cat day!

As another millennium approaches, even scholarly discourse seems to echo the apocalypticism expressed in popular culture. Certainly, the proliferation of "posts" - industrialism, colonialism, modernism, feminism, Marxism, and even history, theory, and postmodernism itself - betokens a sense of change with regard to the once secure intellectual foundations of modernist scholarship. Among professional historians these fears have focused upon the implications of postmodernism for the writing of history agree upon its chief consequence. Postmodernist theory questions what history can be, both as a real past and a discourse about it. 

Robert Berkhofer (1997). "Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse." Chapter 1.

[Image credit to Joao Domingues and this beautiful album]

[pomocats]

Separatist cat memes keep spreading as Donetsk region, a separatist territory unrecognized by Ukraine, announces that it will not recognize the government in Kiev.

[pomocats]

Today a chaotic and apparently ill-administered vote took place in parts of eastern Ukraine in a referendum over self-rule, organised by pro-Russian separatists.

The poll, in the Donetsk and Luhansk (Lugansk) regions, has been condemned by the Ukrainian government and the West. The separatists have ignored calls from the side of Russia to delay the referendum.

Ballot papers in Ukrainian and Russian ask one question: "Do you support the Act of State Self-rule of the Donetsk People's Republic/Luhansk People's Republic?"

The Calvert Journal  has featured separatist pets which have flooded the internet in the last days. 

The orange-and-black St. George Ribbon stands for Russia's victory over Nazi Germany, and has become a symbol of Ukrainian pro-Russian separatism as well.

[gradschoolragecomics]

[pomocats]

Continuing on the peer review theme in this overview of academic tumblrs, courtesy of gradschoolragecomics 

[academiccoachtaylor-blog]

[pomocats]

Courtesy of academiccoachtaylor, a wonderfully inspiration blog about the perils of phd's, publications, books, advisers.

[pomocats]

When you submit an article to a Taylor and Francis peer-review academic journal, the online system for copyright and proof submissions is called CATS (Central Article Tracking System). Hardly a coincidence.

[researchinprogress]

Phd student supervises a master student

by Kim

[researchinprogress]

Writing a paper with a 1st year PhD student

by Jilles

[huggingthehorse-blog]

[pomocats]

stickyembraces: Alice in post-structuralist land

[heymichelfoucault-blog]

[pomocats]

Courtesy of heymichelfoucault

[pomocats]

[pomocats]

If found, ...

[pomocats]

Natalya Poklonskaya, Crimean attorney general appointed in the last months of chaos in Ukraine, has made it to websites like "Know your meme" and is now an internationally renowned internet character. Here's a collection of images.

[heymichelfoucault-blog]

[pomocats]

Courtesy of the ingenious heymichelfoucault blog. Uniting Ryan Gosling Hey Girl memes with Foucauldian theory - so much reproductive power at play. 

[pomocats]

The Russian government has redefined the term “new media” 

This week the Russian government accepted the draft of an amendment to a set of ANTITERRORISM laws which - pay attention now - rules that top bloggers are now legally regarded as journalists and their blog posts as “media.” Yesterday’s bloggers woke up as today’s potential journalists in the event that they have a minimum of 3000 viewers per day, are included in special government lists, or host ads on their pages. Importantly, this includes social media pages.  Bloggers who fall under this category have a whole set of nice new legal obligations, including the responsibility to confirm the accuracy of the information they post, to respect electoral law (rules governing electoral campaigns), to refrain from swearing. And if they use their pages to “hide or falsify information of general interest,” “harm the reputation” of Russian citizens or groups, or spread “extremist material” (you know, whatever that means), they are in trouble with the state.  Obviously, the Russian government is working very hard and very creatively to make all unregulated content very much regulated. And interestingly, our bloggers are now one of the objects of Russia’s antiterrorist campaign? In Soviet Russia, blog posts you.  Also, check out the cute cat theory of digital activism here.

[ircats]

[pomocats]

courtesy of ircats.

[ircats]

[pomocats]

Kenneth Waltz, one of the classics of international relations theory, died on May 13th, 2013 at age 88. He was the founder of neorealism and has published numerous seminal works in the field of IR and security studies.

*   *   *

If we are to have peace, we must learn loyalty to a larger group. And before we can learn loyalty, the thing to which we are to be loyal must be created. "Man, the State and War" (1954) Chapter III, Some Implications Of The First Image, p. 69

  Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake.

"Man, the State and War" (1954) Chapter I, Introduction, p. 1

  It is not true that were the Soviet Union to disappear the remaining states could easily live in peace.

"Man, the State and War" (1954) Chapter VIII, Conclusion, p. 230

  [thank you for the image, ircats]