Emerson Dameron

"First off, I want to thank you for having me," says University of Berkeley professor and rhetorician Marianne Constable, her British accent finely tempered by decades on campus. "Were it not for the second person, all of you here today, there would be no first person, me."

"The third person raises questions of truth," says Constable. A straggler enters Ida Noyes Hall's West Lounge. "The second person raises questions of authority." The straggler fidgets with an MP3 player, which blasts the far treble end of some cheese-ball dance rock through bud headphones. "The first person raises questions of wisdom." The straggler unwraps a candy bar, filling the room with crackle. Without losing her place, Constable rotates her head as a siren wafts through the open windows. Saturday afternoon sunshine blasts at her back.

The University of Chicago's conference "From Me to You: The Significance of the Second Person" has dwindled to the academic faithful. The two-day event has featured open discussions and poetry readings. The entertainers have now done their thing and stepped aside. Constable speaks on language and law, slicing the word "user" up, down and across until only a scholar could assign it an effective definition. Students and teachers don the decorum of true believers at a religious service. Men with feral Einstein hair and grad students with fashionable specs scribble pages and pages of longhand notes. Absorbing this sort of theory requires pacing the brain, and the straggler's intrusions hardly break the reverie.

Constable cracks a couple of highbrow jokes. She invokes U of C's sheltered egghead stereotype and tenders backhanded apologies for her lecture's abstract nature. No one laughs out loud, as this is not laugh-out-loud humor. The only chuckles come at the expense of a British health organization that abolished the word "patient" and juggled various potential replacements. "Consumer"? Too close to "incorrigible pillhead." "Client?" Too closely linked to lawsuits. The org decided on "user," which, as Constable explains, reflects the nature of the second person's relation to an "alphabet soup of administrative organizations" circa now. "If you're not into the law reviews," she cautions, "some of this may go... beyond you." Her voice glides up at the end, as though this is a question.

Constable finishes. The intermission lasts all of thirty seconds. As the emcee introduces University of Chicago philosophy prof Robert Pippin, the attendees hit the humble buffet, grabbing miniature bagels and drinks. Pippin begins his talk, "Mine and Thine? The Kantian State." Cans of diet soda and sparkling water snap and fizz. "This might be pretty abstract for you," Pippin cautions. "But it's all right for me. I'm interested in this stuff." After what seems like careful consideration, the audience laughs.

(2005-04-19)

Also by Emerson Dameron

Soul Vegetarian
This South Side cult favorite evokes a dingy dive bar, in that you can watch a wall-mounted TV while you wait for seating, and, well... that's it
(2005-03-15)

Moto
Homaro Cantu, the executive chef at the minimalist Asian eatery Moto, dishes food with the cerebral abandon of James Joyce and the creepy technological obsession of William Burroughs
(2005-03-01)

Chick unlit
What went wrong with the plan to top off "Jesus Saves" with inflated mockups of Jack T. Chick tracts
(2003-12-16)

Subterranean sport
Megan is one such "urban explorer," who enjoys researching and visiting Chicago's deserted structures. She isn't a tagger, a vandal, a voyeur or a terrorist.
(2003-04-15)

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