A student asked me today what I would do or change, if I knew this was the very last class session I would ever teach.
I think those kinds of projections are problematic, since real situations are more complex and more exigent than imaginary scenarios, but it was still an interesting question. I said that I try to approach every class session as if it were the last class I would ever teach, and then said that wasn't fully true, but was around 86% true.
That's not out of self-satisfaction. I'm almost never satisfied with a class session. I also rarely have regrets or feel like an opportunity has gone by.
But I think he was really asking something else: what violations of protocol or ethical standards would I commit, or what final thought would I express? I'm a little hazier on this. I think I know some things I definitely would not do:
I would not get naked.
I would not give everyone an A.
I would not give anyone drugs.
I would not try to start an orgy.
I would not confess to any inappropriate thoughts or feelings, much.
I would not try to hurt anyone.
I would not cause tremendous amounts of physical damage to the classroom.
Given my career plans, my very last class will likely involve me keeling over. I'd probably play music I think people should hear.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
writing inauthentic letters
I have not only taken steps away from the bloggy business, I have also stepped away from a lot of contact, with a lot of people. I don't feel like I have much to say, not because there is little to say, but because I can't say anything that isn't overwhelmed by what I won't say. Right now, I won't say a tremendous amount. [<- double="" entendre="" p="">
My friends, and you random weirdos who are reading this for probably slightly perverse reasons (and good for you! I really do mean that!), I don't believe I am abandoning you. I can tell you I think of you often, and I want to talk to you, and to write to you, but at the moment, there is nothing I can tell you -- nothing honest, nothing authentic.
I keep scheduling time in my week to sit down and write you all a letter. I second guess that impulse because writing is a step removed. Not writing might be less removed than writing. In any case, I continue not to write to any of you.
It was very warm today on my ride home, which was around 9 minutes, cranking the big chainring, but paying attention, for once, to street signs.
My friends, and you random weirdos who are reading this for probably slightly perverse reasons (and good for you! I really do mean that!), I don't believe I am abandoning you. I can tell you I think of you often, and I want to talk to you, and to write to you, but at the moment, there is nothing I can tell you -- nothing honest, nothing authentic.
I keep scheduling time in my week to sit down and write you all a letter. I second guess that impulse because writing is a step removed. Not writing might be less removed than writing. In any case, I continue not to write to any of you.
It was very warm today on my ride home, which was around 9 minutes, cranking the big chainring, but paying attention, for once, to street signs.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
personal questions
It has been a long time since a student has asked me whether I believe in God (here capitalized because that's what she meant). I'm sure many faculty reject every personal question, and maintain strict boundary lines between their work and their personal lives, their own thoughts, histories, identities -- and also, of course, politics, faith, and sex.
This may be a bias due to teaching in humanities, but I think those faculty are doing it wrong. But that means I have to second-guess myself continuously about whether I'm crossing a line I shouldn't, when I am not sure where the line is, and I'm not fully convinced I believe in the line. Plus, if I don't behave as if there is a clear and obvious line, it's difficult -- maybe I should say embarrassing -- to have to come up with an ad hoc reason for drawing it.
Religious ideas come up in philosophy class. It may be fairly natural, in the minds of many undergraduates, to extend that philosophical discussion into a specific and direct question about my own beliefs. Political ideas come up too. So does identity. And sex. If we pretend they don't, we're disserving one another. If we pretend they aren't hypercharged and exciting, we're fooling ourselves.
Sometimes I want to interrupt class and bring all these questions to the forefront, have at them, deal with them in something like a genuine way, regardless of how obnoxious or terrifying any of my students might find the questions, their own beliefs, the beliefs of others, and regardless of the institutional demand to keep the private private.
I don't know to what extent I hold back because I could lose my job so quickly for having offended or harassed a student. I don't know if tenure would make a difference.
I recognize the danger of this kind of openness or confrontation or whatever-it-is. That's what's so thrilling. Am I in the right business, with the wrong approach? Or the wrong business, with the right approach? Or the right business, with the right approach, with the wrong status? Or the right status, but the wrong business? Or the right wrongness, with the wrong status, in the wrong approach to the right business with the status rightness wrong business approachness? Or yogurt?
(Can't be yogurt. I hate yogurt.)
This may be a bias due to teaching in humanities, but I think those faculty are doing it wrong. But that means I have to second-guess myself continuously about whether I'm crossing a line I shouldn't, when I am not sure where the line is, and I'm not fully convinced I believe in the line. Plus, if I don't behave as if there is a clear and obvious line, it's difficult -- maybe I should say embarrassing -- to have to come up with an ad hoc reason for drawing it.
Religious ideas come up in philosophy class. It may be fairly natural, in the minds of many undergraduates, to extend that philosophical discussion into a specific and direct question about my own beliefs. Political ideas come up too. So does identity. And sex. If we pretend they don't, we're disserving one another. If we pretend they aren't hypercharged and exciting, we're fooling ourselves.
Sometimes I want to interrupt class and bring all these questions to the forefront, have at them, deal with them in something like a genuine way, regardless of how obnoxious or terrifying any of my students might find the questions, their own beliefs, the beliefs of others, and regardless of the institutional demand to keep the private private.
I don't know to what extent I hold back because I could lose my job so quickly for having offended or harassed a student. I don't know if tenure would make a difference.
I recognize the danger of this kind of openness or confrontation or whatever-it-is. That's what's so thrilling. Am I in the right business, with the wrong approach? Or the wrong business, with the right approach? Or the right business, with the right approach, with the wrong status? Or the right status, but the wrong business? Or the right wrongness, with the wrong status, in the wrong approach to the right business with the status rightness wrong business approachness? Or yogurt?
(Can't be yogurt. I hate yogurt.)
Monday, March 11, 2013
how can anyone take philosophy seriously?
For the last fifty years, those who have been paying attention have witnessed the death and burial of the dream of the Enlightenment, the final destruction of claims to originary points of certainty, of any universal claims, and of any pretender to a philosophical method. Only the most naïve of naïve realists has any hope to resuscitate positivism of any kind. Tough days for philosophy.
Those who have been paying a different kind of attention may have witnessed the implosion of meaning and the social (to use Baudrillard's words), and the unhinging of signs from signification. The form of advertising has liquidated the possibility of a discourse in which any of the problems of philosophy could be discussed, or could matter. Without a discursive home, well, that seems to about wrap it up for this whole philosophy business.
This would be the case if Baudrillard is right about the impact of "absolute advertising" -- a steering medium masquerading as a communications medium. If I'm reading Baudrillard right, he says that advertising has overtaken language and driven meaning to extinction. To give a simple example, a term in a language has a particular meaning by its differentiation from other terms and its denotative function. Tree can mean "tree" because tree isn't potato or Duane and because the arbitrary marker tree can designate the image/idea of "tree." Advertising language takes those same signs, and decouples them from those images/ideas, puts the denotative function out of play, and applies the unhinged sign anywhere, onto anything. Each term in advertising's sign system is still differentiated from the others, but none of them denotes anything in particular, so the differentiation doesn't make any difference.
Ads rarely use tree, of course. But they use freedom, love, natural, good, and any other word of the lexicon that seems handy. When the ad uses those terms, they do not mean anything in particular. All-natural is precisely meaningless, for instance.
Now, it's important to note that for Baudrillard it is not advertisements that have liquidated meaning and the social, it's the form of advertising, which he further elaborates as a vaguely consensual, vaguely seductive form of language in which signs serve as enticements and lures, bits of exposed skin, moods, etc. The form of advertising is a medium of fascination, ultimately, and that point of fascination is the abyss of meaning and the social.
What matters post-meaning is connection, exchange, feedback loops -- the merest nodal/modular transferral of signs. This form of the exchange of signs is too rapid, too thin, too ephemeral, and too brutal for meaning to be conveyed or understood. I think this characterizes very well the digital media environment of siliconized societies: Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, instant public opinion polling based on market research and demographic targeting, news media, and the constant, continuous, ubiquitous bombardment of data in all forms, everywhere.
The problem is not that any of us are duped by ads, the media, political parties, or any of the rest of it. That doesn't matter. What matters is that these media, taken as a system, operate as steering media to coordinate need and desire geared to production (again, as a system -- not the obviously stupid idea that an ad makes me want to go buy some product, which no one really believes happens), yet they appear to be doing the job of communications media.
In this social situation, I ask myself, more than I ask anyone else, how can anyone take philosophy seriously?
So I wrote a blog post about it. And I posted a link to that on Facebook.
(And yes, I have a response to my own question, but you'll just have to wait.)
Those who have been paying a different kind of attention may have witnessed the implosion of meaning and the social (to use Baudrillard's words), and the unhinging of signs from signification. The form of advertising has liquidated the possibility of a discourse in which any of the problems of philosophy could be discussed, or could matter. Without a discursive home, well, that seems to about wrap it up for this whole philosophy business.
This would be the case if Baudrillard is right about the impact of "absolute advertising" -- a steering medium masquerading as a communications medium. If I'm reading Baudrillard right, he says that advertising has overtaken language and driven meaning to extinction. To give a simple example, a term in a language has a particular meaning by its differentiation from other terms and its denotative function. Tree can mean "tree" because tree isn't potato or Duane and because the arbitrary marker tree can designate the image/idea of "tree." Advertising language takes those same signs, and decouples them from those images/ideas, puts the denotative function out of play, and applies the unhinged sign anywhere, onto anything. Each term in advertising's sign system is still differentiated from the others, but none of them denotes anything in particular, so the differentiation doesn't make any difference.
Ads rarely use tree, of course. But they use freedom, love, natural, good, and any other word of the lexicon that seems handy. When the ad uses those terms, they do not mean anything in particular. All-natural is precisely meaningless, for instance.
Now, it's important to note that for Baudrillard it is not advertisements that have liquidated meaning and the social, it's the form of advertising, which he further elaborates as a vaguely consensual, vaguely seductive form of language in which signs serve as enticements and lures, bits of exposed skin, moods, etc. The form of advertising is a medium of fascination, ultimately, and that point of fascination is the abyss of meaning and the social.
What matters post-meaning is connection, exchange, feedback loops -- the merest nodal/modular transferral of signs. This form of the exchange of signs is too rapid, too thin, too ephemeral, and too brutal for meaning to be conveyed or understood. I think this characterizes very well the digital media environment of siliconized societies: Twitter, Facebook, Instragram, instant public opinion polling based on market research and demographic targeting, news media, and the constant, continuous, ubiquitous bombardment of data in all forms, everywhere.
The problem is not that any of us are duped by ads, the media, political parties, or any of the rest of it. That doesn't matter. What matters is that these media, taken as a system, operate as steering media to coordinate need and desire geared to production (again, as a system -- not the obviously stupid idea that an ad makes me want to go buy some product, which no one really believes happens), yet they appear to be doing the job of communications media.
In this social situation, I ask myself, more than I ask anyone else, how can anyone take philosophy seriously?
So I wrote a blog post about it. And I posted a link to that on Facebook.
(And yes, I have a response to my own question, but you'll just have to wait.)
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
seduction
Unrelatedly to finishing Baudrillard's book Seduction, I happened to re-read some stuff I wrote about the account of seduction in Jean-Luc Marion's The Erotic Phenomenon. Between one thing and another, I ended up imagining a rather charged conversation I could have (read that as subjunctive, please). I suppose that's my way of confessing that I found Baudrillard's account of seduction a little bit seductive.
Seduction is a game, following its own rules, that removes us from the real, law-bound dramatic situation of sexuality and desire. The aim of seduction is the seduction itself, not sexual pleasure (or conquest, or...); the relation between seducer and seduced is a conflict, a kind of agonistic struggle determined by the rules.
There is no real payoff, but for the game to be a game, there must be "stakes." I suppose that to mean that one can win or lose the game of seduction, but that nothing real is achieved. In a way, the point is to continue the game, because when something real happens, that is, sex or death, the game ends, and so too does its delight.
A main delectation of seduction is that the means of seducing, the chief tactic of the seducer, is to be seduced. Nothing is more seductive than one's own seductiveness, reflected in the counter-strategy of the seducer.
It's easy to imagine this game played to the Trois Gymnópedies and the Six Gnossiennes.
Seduction is a game, following its own rules, that removes us from the real, law-bound dramatic situation of sexuality and desire. The aim of seduction is the seduction itself, not sexual pleasure (or conquest, or...); the relation between seducer and seduced is a conflict, a kind of agonistic struggle determined by the rules.
There is no real payoff, but for the game to be a game, there must be "stakes." I suppose that to mean that one can win or lose the game of seduction, but that nothing real is achieved. In a way, the point is to continue the game, because when something real happens, that is, sex or death, the game ends, and so too does its delight.
A main delectation of seduction is that the means of seducing, the chief tactic of the seducer, is to be seduced. Nothing is more seductive than one's own seductiveness, reflected in the counter-strategy of the seducer.
It's easy to imagine this game played to the Trois Gymnópedies and the Six Gnossiennes.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
perfectly normal
Without meaning to, I've ended up thinking through some of my questions about normal and abnormal lately. Because I read Beauvoir's The Second Sex on a bit of a whim, and then plunged into Baudrillard's Seduction, the question has been refracted by the concept of "the feminine." Strangely, Beauvoir and Baudrillard use it similarly.
I say "strangely," because Seduction is the Baudrillard book a lot of feminist philosophers love to hate. He seems to adhere to as essentialist notion of the feminine, and that involves feminine guile and weakness, both of which are characteristics Beauvoir criticizes in the patriarchal concept of the feminine. For what it's worth, I think Baudrillard's position is not an unreconstructed patriarchal concept at all, since the feminine is for him the origin of seduction, and seduction is a game outside of the regulatory law of desire and sex. Baudrillard's feminine isn't Freud's, and in that regard isn't the "second sex" (after all, it's outside of any relation that can be reduced to sex).
That aside, for Baudrillard as for Beauvoir, the feminine is not the normal, because normal is defined in terms of the masculine from which the feminine is said to depart, in discourses pertaining to sexuality. Whether the feminine is a socially constructed abnormal that appears as part of the situation of woman, or is outside of the normal because it is beyond the economy of sexuality and desire, there is still a presumed normal against which the feminine is being contrasted.
Which leads me to the terrific old essay by Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl." Notable in Young's critical phenomenology of motility and transcendence (and of [male] phenomenologists' accounts of motility and transcendence) is the repeated negations. For Young, girlish motility is not fully transcendent, does not achieve a complete unity with the world, is not fully melodic, does not exhibit full range of motion, etc. Again, this is in relation to the presumptive/masculine (here boyish) norm. That's her point, of course, and the essay ends with a call for phenomenological accounts starting from the standpoint of female embodiment, presumably without so many "nots."
This has me wondering about an essay titled "____-ing Like a Boy." What would fill in the blank, such that, as in Young's title, it indicated an objectifying or objectified embodiment, especially a privatively transcendent embodiment? What do boys do in ways that mark them as boys in the way that "____-ing like a girl" marks certain people as girls?
I say "strangely," because Seduction is the Baudrillard book a lot of feminist philosophers love to hate. He seems to adhere to as essentialist notion of the feminine, and that involves feminine guile and weakness, both of which are characteristics Beauvoir criticizes in the patriarchal concept of the feminine. For what it's worth, I think Baudrillard's position is not an unreconstructed patriarchal concept at all, since the feminine is for him the origin of seduction, and seduction is a game outside of the regulatory law of desire and sex. Baudrillard's feminine isn't Freud's, and in that regard isn't the "second sex" (after all, it's outside of any relation that can be reduced to sex).
That aside, for Baudrillard as for Beauvoir, the feminine is not the normal, because normal is defined in terms of the masculine from which the feminine is said to depart, in discourses pertaining to sexuality. Whether the feminine is a socially constructed abnormal that appears as part of the situation of woman, or is outside of the normal because it is beyond the economy of sexuality and desire, there is still a presumed normal against which the feminine is being contrasted.
Which leads me to the terrific old essay by Iris Marion Young, "Throwing Like a Girl." Notable in Young's critical phenomenology of motility and transcendence (and of [male] phenomenologists' accounts of motility and transcendence) is the repeated negations. For Young, girlish motility is not fully transcendent, does not achieve a complete unity with the world, is not fully melodic, does not exhibit full range of motion, etc. Again, this is in relation to the presumptive/masculine (here boyish) norm. That's her point, of course, and the essay ends with a call for phenomenological accounts starting from the standpoint of female embodiment, presumably without so many "nots."
This has me wondering about an essay titled "____-ing Like a Boy." What would fill in the blank, such that, as in Young's title, it indicated an objectifying or objectified embodiment, especially a privatively transcendent embodiment? What do boys do in ways that mark them as boys in the way that "____-ing like a girl" marks certain people as girls?
Sunday, February 17, 2013
why I'm not running for Pope
I have decided that I will not give my name in consideration, and if elected will not serve, as the next Pope. (If you're wondering, I had settled on Extremely Guilty I as my pappellation. It just sounded right.) I am at peace with this decision, and in order to extend this gift of peace to others, thought I would explain briefly my reasons.
1. By long-standing tradition, no one officially runs for Pope. Popes are elected, but the events prior to the vote of the conclave of cardinals do not permit any electioneering. No cardinal may officially put his mitre in the ring or boost another cardinal's candidacy.
Well, there goes my primary advantage! Other candidates may be more knowledgeable of the policy issues or the inner workings of the Vatican, but my status, running as an outsider, could have given be tremendous leverage. I figured, it works so well in US Presidential elections, why not? I had already booked negative campaign ads.
2. Despite the fact that no one officially runs for Pope, the fact is that by the time the cardinals begin to convene to chat about the future of the Church, there are already known candidates. I was a bit behind on getting my name mentioned in those chats, so I have a huge name-recognition deficit. Frankly, I wasn't expecting Benny to step down. I blame my operatives on the ground in Rome. They're fired.
3. Despite the history of the Papacy, apparently nowadays the business about celibacy and bachelorhood is taken somewhat seriously.
4. Oh, and that whole faith thing, too. Damn these newfangled modern ideas creeping into orthodoxy! I ask these so-called cardinals, whither the Church?
1. By long-standing tradition, no one officially runs for Pope. Popes are elected, but the events prior to the vote of the conclave of cardinals do not permit any electioneering. No cardinal may officially put his mitre in the ring or boost another cardinal's candidacy.
Well, there goes my primary advantage! Other candidates may be more knowledgeable of the policy issues or the inner workings of the Vatican, but my status, running as an outsider, could have given be tremendous leverage. I figured, it works so well in US Presidential elections, why not? I had already booked negative campaign ads.
2. Despite the fact that no one officially runs for Pope, the fact is that by the time the cardinals begin to convene to chat about the future of the Church, there are already known candidates. I was a bit behind on getting my name mentioned in those chats, so I have a huge name-recognition deficit. Frankly, I wasn't expecting Benny to step down. I blame my operatives on the ground in Rome. They're fired.
3. Despite the history of the Papacy, apparently nowadays the business about celibacy and bachelorhood is taken somewhat seriously.
4. Oh, and that whole faith thing, too. Damn these newfangled modern ideas creeping into orthodoxy! I ask these so-called cardinals, whither the Church?
Thursday, February 07, 2013
something is rotten
For [Adorno], the question of how to live a good life in a bad life, how to persist subjectively in a good life when the world is poorly organized, is but a different way of claiming that moral worth cannot be considered apart from its conditions and consequences. In his words, "anything that we can call morality today merges into the question of the organization of the world. We might even say that the quest for the good life is the quest for the right form of politics, if indeed such a right form of politics lay within the realm of what can be achieved today." -- Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, p. 133Butler states the fairly obvious connection between Adorno and Foucault to what she calls "the critical tradition," meaning the tradition skeptical of Enlightenment conceptions of Reason as ultimate principle and savior of subjective agency, responsibility, universal morality, and political ends. I like very much the phrase "how to live a good life in a bad life," because of its simplistic expression of a basic urge of "the critical tradition," namely, that ethical reflection begins with the intuition that something is wrong.
I spend a lot of time and energy focused on what is wrong. From my standpoint, there appears to be a lot that is wrong: social inequity and discrimination, exploitation, hypocrisy, domination of individuals, the public, and the polity by extremely wealthy people, etc. This is not a pretty world.
One could chalk this tendency up to a reactive habit of anxiety instilled prior to any memory. This would be dismissive and reductive. I would not deny that a pre-reflective and pre-rational outlook on the world subtends every observation and interpretation we each make. There are, on the other hand, objectivities to observe. Ultimately, I think it's futile to try to separate and correct completely for the pre-thetic sensibilities through which we observe the world.
Besides, such a reductive view would miss a fundamental point. To the extent that my habitual self is pre-thetically oriented toward the world as "poorly organized," that orientation is the condition of my habitus (the condition that subjected me to the "bad life"), and thus of my having any moral outlook whatsoever. The world I find myself always to have inhabited is "poorly organized."
The ethical question is not about assigning blame for this "bad life;" neither is it about my responsibility for fixing it (which would seem to be both an impossible task and a performative contradiction, if you dig that). By "right form of politics," Adorno can't mean that those in this situation know precisely what is wrong and how to fix it, because that isn't politics at all, but the dissolution of politics. Politics would be, instead, the ethical discourse concerning how worlds can and ought to be organized, and how subjects in those worlds could act ethically and responsibly in them.
The critical approach thus asserts that the world and ourselves are out of joint, that ethics and ethical responsibility for an individual do not gear into the world as presently constructed. The task of ethics is not to make the world conform to my subjective conception of what is right, nor to make my subjective conception conform to the world as I find it. The task is to respond to that condition of being out-of-joint.
Monday, January 28, 2013
a portrait of the artist as a young would-be professor
In the texts collected as Ethics, Foucault discusses the significance of writing as a kind of ascetic practice of self-conduct. He draws from Seneca's letters the notion that writing for oneself and to others establishes a discourse that closely monitors and observes oneself, the ultimate aim of which is "bringing into congruence the gaze of the other and that gaze which one aims at oneself when one measures one's everyday actions according to the rules of a technique of living" (Ethics, 221). This is turning out to be significant for understanding the subjection/subjectivization of college faculty.
I did not keep a record of my subjection as a future professor. It didn't occur to me to do so. What I want to do is try to reconstruct from memory what took place, what I did, and what I observed, that led to me becoming that future professor that I was from some point during graduate school through around 2002. Some of the factors are obvious, some are subtle. To give this some focus, I'll limit my scope to a handful of kinds of events, experiences, and actions: what happened in classes, what happened in scholarly confines (libraries, offices, writing labs, etc.), what happened at academic conferences, and what happened on the "job market."
In strongly invite comment from anyone who has gone through similar academic or other forms of subjection/subjectivization (training and apprenticeship, you might say, to eliminate Foucault's jargon).
What happened in classes
Many of our classes were seminars, or involved giving seminar presentations. Obviously, this puts the student in a quasi-teaching role, and many of us took it upon ourselves to do a lot of work, including research, in order to put together creditable presentations. We usually took the lectern to present them. It was rather like teaching a class, and rather like presenting at a conference. The discipline of the seminar presentation is a self-directing, prompt, and to-the-point kind of reading, research, and writing.
All of our classes involved evaluation and judgment by professors. In my own experience, and based on what I recall hearing from others, those judgments sometimes had more than a little to do with the particular biases of the professors themselves. It was not good form to write contrary to a professor's known proclivities, and you had to be extremely good to get away with it. Not so subtly, this is a discipline of adherence to an established mode of thought and writing. One could test the limits of this establishment, and by doing so learn where they were and the consequences for exceeding them.
This is good preparation for the conference circuit and publication biz.
What happened in scholarly confines
I haunted the phenomenology center at Duquesne, and sometimes the big library at University of Pittsburgh. In the phenomenology center it was common to run into another grad student, although it was probably more common to run into me, and the theme of conversation was always what we were researching. Areas of expertise and interest, and particular ways of proceeding and lines of argument, came to define individuals in the program (that and the nicknames we assigned to one another). Having an angle or a pet philosophical approach was a safe way to distinguish oneself, and, it wasn't hard to notice, a way to have something to say, no matter what topic came up in class. At times, this was incredibly annoying, as when an obsessed fellow student brought up Spinoza in every class, in ways that were generally contorted almost beyond recognition, because he was a true believer in Spinoza's philosophy. The primary lessons we learned from each other in these contexts were to be productive and assertive. The more aggressive of us seemed to establish a standard of behavior against which the rest of us measured ourselves.
What happened at conferences
It's hard to know where to begin with this one, there were so many things to learn from going to conferences. A quick list: there is a pecking order and a celebrity system in academic philosophy, and the big shots are to be revered; conference presentations are always potential fights, and not only should you prepare armor against a possible attack (that is, have the research and textual support for your claims at your fingertips, put up ego defenses, and close off possible lines of objection), you should when possible be the aggressor; established truths about philosophers or philosophical ideas can only be safely questioned after you've made your own name; expect no quarter.
The second conference presentation I ever made was at 8:30 in the morning. About one-third of the conference participants showed up. My paper made a firm suggestion regarding a separation between philosophy and political action that the few who attended disagreed with, with every gesture they could muster. (It's an amazing thing to see someone disagree with you by posture.) In questions afterwards, I was lambasted. No one said my paper was badly written, poorly argued, or based on falsehood or inaccurate interpretations. They could not accept my conclusion.
I presented a paper a few years later, to the same society. I was taken to task again, this time for my interpretation, my argument, my textual support, my research, and my conclusion. By then I had learned to parry and counter, and I concluded the session by telling the audience that I understood what they were all arguing contrary to my point, but that they were all wrong.
What happened on the "job market"
Tenure-track jobs are advertised mainly in the fall semester for appointments to begin the following fall, because hiring tenure-track faculty takes forever. The American Philosophical Association holds their big meeting, during which a lot of interviews take place, from December 27-30 every year, in a large hotel in a large Eastern city. This maximizes the inconvenience and expense for everyone involved, and this disproportionately affects the job candidates, most of whom are very poor and can't really afford the trip. It is the main avenue to get access to tenure-track jobs, and job candidates attend the APA meeting whether or not they have a pre-arranged interview, because there is a slim chance of getting one on-site.
When I was attending, there were routinely 1000 job candidates in attendance, for roughly 200 jobs. (Note that this does not take into account how many applicants for those 200 jobs didn't come to the APA meeting.) Every candidate is provided a folder through which to communicate with potential employers. You fill out forms requesting on-site interviews for the handful of new openings that appear at the meeting, or requesting interviews from institutions that haven't yet sent you a rejection letter, and wait for responses. Candidates gather around the rooms containing the folders and discuss prospects, interviews, and so forth. There is a gloom of desperation enveloping the place and covering everyone's cheap suits.
This is a necessary rite of passage -- everyone tells you so. It is miserable, of course, but the constant message is that it is temporary. The brutality of some interviewers, the dehumanization of the application and candidacy process, the boredom waiting for an almost inevitable rejection, and the increasing poverty, are all necessary.
There is, meanwhile, a series of conferences taking place. It is very difficult to concentrate on anything happening at those conferences if you are a job candidate, but it can be distracting.
I did not keep a record of my subjection as a future professor. It didn't occur to me to do so. What I want to do is try to reconstruct from memory what took place, what I did, and what I observed, that led to me becoming that future professor that I was from some point during graduate school through around 2002. Some of the factors are obvious, some are subtle. To give this some focus, I'll limit my scope to a handful of kinds of events, experiences, and actions: what happened in classes, what happened in scholarly confines (libraries, offices, writing labs, etc.), what happened at academic conferences, and what happened on the "job market."
In strongly invite comment from anyone who has gone through similar academic or other forms of subjection/subjectivization (training and apprenticeship, you might say, to eliminate Foucault's jargon).
What happened in classes
Many of our classes were seminars, or involved giving seminar presentations. Obviously, this puts the student in a quasi-teaching role, and many of us took it upon ourselves to do a lot of work, including research, in order to put together creditable presentations. We usually took the lectern to present them. It was rather like teaching a class, and rather like presenting at a conference. The discipline of the seminar presentation is a self-directing, prompt, and to-the-point kind of reading, research, and writing.
All of our classes involved evaluation and judgment by professors. In my own experience, and based on what I recall hearing from others, those judgments sometimes had more than a little to do with the particular biases of the professors themselves. It was not good form to write contrary to a professor's known proclivities, and you had to be extremely good to get away with it. Not so subtly, this is a discipline of adherence to an established mode of thought and writing. One could test the limits of this establishment, and by doing so learn where they were and the consequences for exceeding them.
This is good preparation for the conference circuit and publication biz.
What happened in scholarly confines
I haunted the phenomenology center at Duquesne, and sometimes the big library at University of Pittsburgh. In the phenomenology center it was common to run into another grad student, although it was probably more common to run into me, and the theme of conversation was always what we were researching. Areas of expertise and interest, and particular ways of proceeding and lines of argument, came to define individuals in the program (that and the nicknames we assigned to one another). Having an angle or a pet philosophical approach was a safe way to distinguish oneself, and, it wasn't hard to notice, a way to have something to say, no matter what topic came up in class. At times, this was incredibly annoying, as when an obsessed fellow student brought up Spinoza in every class, in ways that were generally contorted almost beyond recognition, because he was a true believer in Spinoza's philosophy. The primary lessons we learned from each other in these contexts were to be productive and assertive. The more aggressive of us seemed to establish a standard of behavior against which the rest of us measured ourselves.
What happened at conferences
It's hard to know where to begin with this one, there were so many things to learn from going to conferences. A quick list: there is a pecking order and a celebrity system in academic philosophy, and the big shots are to be revered; conference presentations are always potential fights, and not only should you prepare armor against a possible attack (that is, have the research and textual support for your claims at your fingertips, put up ego defenses, and close off possible lines of objection), you should when possible be the aggressor; established truths about philosophers or philosophical ideas can only be safely questioned after you've made your own name; expect no quarter.
The second conference presentation I ever made was at 8:30 in the morning. About one-third of the conference participants showed up. My paper made a firm suggestion regarding a separation between philosophy and political action that the few who attended disagreed with, with every gesture they could muster. (It's an amazing thing to see someone disagree with you by posture.) In questions afterwards, I was lambasted. No one said my paper was badly written, poorly argued, or based on falsehood or inaccurate interpretations. They could not accept my conclusion.
I presented a paper a few years later, to the same society. I was taken to task again, this time for my interpretation, my argument, my textual support, my research, and my conclusion. By then I had learned to parry and counter, and I concluded the session by telling the audience that I understood what they were all arguing contrary to my point, but that they were all wrong.
What happened on the "job market"
Tenure-track jobs are advertised mainly in the fall semester for appointments to begin the following fall, because hiring tenure-track faculty takes forever. The American Philosophical Association holds their big meeting, during which a lot of interviews take place, from December 27-30 every year, in a large hotel in a large Eastern city. This maximizes the inconvenience and expense for everyone involved, and this disproportionately affects the job candidates, most of whom are very poor and can't really afford the trip. It is the main avenue to get access to tenure-track jobs, and job candidates attend the APA meeting whether or not they have a pre-arranged interview, because there is a slim chance of getting one on-site.
When I was attending, there were routinely 1000 job candidates in attendance, for roughly 200 jobs. (Note that this does not take into account how many applicants for those 200 jobs didn't come to the APA meeting.) Every candidate is provided a folder through which to communicate with potential employers. You fill out forms requesting on-site interviews for the handful of new openings that appear at the meeting, or requesting interviews from institutions that haven't yet sent you a rejection letter, and wait for responses. Candidates gather around the rooms containing the folders and discuss prospects, interviews, and so forth. There is a gloom of desperation enveloping the place and covering everyone's cheap suits.
This is a necessary rite of passage -- everyone tells you so. It is miserable, of course, but the constant message is that it is temporary. The brutality of some interviewers, the dehumanization of the application and candidacy process, the boredom waiting for an almost inevitable rejection, and the increasing poverty, are all necessary.
There is, meanwhile, a series of conferences taking place. It is very difficult to concentrate on anything happening at those conferences if you are a job candidate, but it can be distracting.
Friday, January 25, 2013
ethics and ethical subjects
In short, for an action to be “moral,” it must not be reducible to an act or a series of acts conforming to a rule, a law, or a value. Of course all moral action involves a relationship with the reality in which it is carried out, and a relationship with the self. The latter is not simply “self-awareness” but self-formation as an “ethical subject,” a process in which the individual delimits that part of himself that will form the object of his moral practice, defines his position relative to the precept he will follow, and decides on a certain mode of being that will serve as his moral goal. And this requires him to act upon himself, to monitor, test, improve, and transform himself. (Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, p. 28)
These lines crystallized the paper on faculty ethical responsibilities in the era of precariousness. I took the 4700 words I had yesterday, cut about 600, rearranged everything in the last 7 pages after inserting this quotation and some discussion of Foucault's ethics, wrote an additional 800 words, then cut 400 more. So, after 5 hours of work on this thing today, I've now got 4400 words. Sometimes it feels like I'm writing backwards.
Here's a weird thought: if Foucault were at all committed to Enlightenment notions of Reason, one could take this "ethical subject" stuff to mean something closely approximating Kohlberg's rational stage of moral development -- the one he found so little evidence anybody ever actually achieved. After all, Foucault is suggesting that ethics is a matter of deliberately, and in everyday practice, forming oneself as a certain kind of moral subject, and not rule-following.
(By the way, music cue: Queen, "I Want to Break Free.")
In the paper I argue that tenuous-track faculty can do, and do, exactly this, through the very active groups that form the nucleus of the contingent faculty movement in North America: COCAL and New Faculty Majority being two of the most prominent. I do not argue, but I think I could, that many or most tenure-track faculty typically do not engage in the work of ethics. This makes sense to me, because if your identity is in line with the prevailing regime of power, your identity is not problematic. By this, I think I mean something very insulting like white male professors aren't good candidates to be ethical faculty. And I'm okay with that, especially since I'm not a professor.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
ethics and tenuous-track faculty
One problem I have with writing about the experience of contingent academic labor is that I seem unable to avoid writing about my own experience, and I am concerned that what I write may seem to be special pleading, or worse, a call for pity. From my own experience, I can attest to the general degraded working conditions and forms of humiliation that tenuous faculty face on a daily basis (as compared with most tenure-track faculty, that is). What I need is some way to make a claim to knowledge about this experience, that is not merely subjective.
I also have a problem writing about Foucault's ethics as a way of understanding the situation of tenuous-track faculty. I have what I think is a very strong argument to demonstrate that official statements of faculty ethics like AAUP's Statement on Professional Ethics can't apply to most faculty (it addresses "professors," after all, and not anybody with any other title). That opens the issue of what ethics could mean for tenuous faculty, and that's what leads me to Foucault's notion of ethics as freedom, the conduct of oneself, and one's own subjectivization: tenuous-track faculty have to make shift for themselves, both practically and ethically, because of their bizarre institutional status.
Foucault can't provide any prescription for how tenuous-track faculty (or anybody else, for that matter) ought to conduct oneself, because that would close the door to the very freedom of self-conduct. So, what can I say, in an affirmative voice, about tenuous faculty ethics?
It seems to me a basic step in Foucauldian ethics is to acknowledge that freedom, to acknowledge our subjection and our subjectivization -- to acknowledge that regimes of power make determinations of shapes of life and ways of acting morally, but that we can and do resist these regimes. The prevailing regime of academic work links ethical responsibility to the ideology of the professoriate so eloquently stated by the AAUP, and is very differentially deployed by administration through compliance apparatus. These apparatus affect tenure-track and tenuous-track faculty, as I said, very differently. (I once attended a brief meeting regarding a complaint by a student of sexual harassment against a lecturer. He was offered the choice to resign, and the university would not tell prospective employers why he resigned unless they asked; or fight the charge, and the university would fire him and offer the information to all prospective employers whether they asked or not. During that same semester, a tenured faculty member was similarly accused of sexual harassment, and was required to complete an online sexual harassment training.)
It occurred to me that the first problem is addressed by dealing with the second problem. What I can say about the ethical conduct of self by tenuous-track faculty is that the contingent faculty movement in North America has developed a large counter-discourse about our experience, expertise, roles in our institutions, and the missions of the institutions themselves. This counter-discourse is both the basis upon which I can make not-merely-subjective claims to know the situation of tenuous faculty, and also an initial step of conduct of self. In a way, it is the kind of ascetic writing Foucault calls for, as well.
My new problem is finding a way to write this in less than about 5000 words (right now I'm at 4000, and haven't quite put the argument together like I have here), for a conference presentation that should be around 3000 words.
Warning to Foucauldian friends of mine: I'm going to be bugging you with this.
Oh, and the other thing that came up today is that I could write this entire thing a different way by interrogating the concept of academic freedom.
I also have a problem writing about Foucault's ethics as a way of understanding the situation of tenuous-track faculty. I have what I think is a very strong argument to demonstrate that official statements of faculty ethics like AAUP's Statement on Professional Ethics can't apply to most faculty (it addresses "professors," after all, and not anybody with any other title). That opens the issue of what ethics could mean for tenuous faculty, and that's what leads me to Foucault's notion of ethics as freedom, the conduct of oneself, and one's own subjectivization: tenuous-track faculty have to make shift for themselves, both practically and ethically, because of their bizarre institutional status.
Foucault can't provide any prescription for how tenuous-track faculty (or anybody else, for that matter) ought to conduct oneself, because that would close the door to the very freedom of self-conduct. So, what can I say, in an affirmative voice, about tenuous faculty ethics?
It seems to me a basic step in Foucauldian ethics is to acknowledge that freedom, to acknowledge our subjection and our subjectivization -- to acknowledge that regimes of power make determinations of shapes of life and ways of acting morally, but that we can and do resist these regimes. The prevailing regime of academic work links ethical responsibility to the ideology of the professoriate so eloquently stated by the AAUP, and is very differentially deployed by administration through compliance apparatus. These apparatus affect tenure-track and tenuous-track faculty, as I said, very differently. (I once attended a brief meeting regarding a complaint by a student of sexual harassment against a lecturer. He was offered the choice to resign, and the university would not tell prospective employers why he resigned unless they asked; or fight the charge, and the university would fire him and offer the information to all prospective employers whether they asked or not. During that same semester, a tenured faculty member was similarly accused of sexual harassment, and was required to complete an online sexual harassment training.)
It occurred to me that the first problem is addressed by dealing with the second problem. What I can say about the ethical conduct of self by tenuous-track faculty is that the contingent faculty movement in North America has developed a large counter-discourse about our experience, expertise, roles in our institutions, and the missions of the institutions themselves. This counter-discourse is both the basis upon which I can make not-merely-subjective claims to know the situation of tenuous faculty, and also an initial step of conduct of self. In a way, it is the kind of ascetic writing Foucault calls for, as well.
My new problem is finding a way to write this in less than about 5000 words (right now I'm at 4000, and haven't quite put the argument together like I have here), for a conference presentation that should be around 3000 words.
Warning to Foucauldian friends of mine: I'm going to be bugging you with this.
Oh, and the other thing that came up today is that I could write this entire thing a different way by interrogating the concept of academic freedom.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
where the hell have I been?
I might explain where I've been, one day.
I'm working on a paper on the constitution of faculty subjectivities and faculty ethical responsibilities. It's based on two aspects of the philosophy of Michel Foucault.
From the earlier work on regimes of power and panopticism, particularly from Discipline and Punish, I'm writing about the formation of faculty subjectivities, focusing on how faculty work defines what one is and what one can do. Like a prison, a school, or the military, the institution in which one works deploys technologies of power to constitute members as "docile bodies" that are ultimately predictable, controllable, and interchangeable.
I'm sketching out the different kinds of subjectivities, the different kinds of docile bodies, that higher ed institutions form as "professors" and as that larger group of faculty who have no proper name ("adjuncts," "lecturers," "contingents," etc.), whom I prefer to call tenuous-track faculty. Some of the differences are obvious, but what I'm hoping to get at beyond the obvious is the way that professors, who are presumed to have great privilege, are also docile. (As I've argued in this space before, I often think professors are less free than tenuous-track faculty.)
That's all setting up a brief version of the argument that the official statements of the ethics of faculty, notably the AAUP Statement on Professional Ethics, do not meaningfully apply to the majority of faculty -- an argument I've made before. If I'm right (and I am), then what does ethics mean for tenuous faculty?
To respond, I turn to Foucault's work on ethics, which begins from the premise that ethics is about determining who one is, and engaging in continuous self-invention. Ultimately, I'm going to argue that resistance, self-invention, and critique are the key ethical tasks for tenuous faculty, and the only way tenuous faculty can take responsibility for their academic work -- especially given that the institutions where we work systematically deny us other ways of taking responsibility.
More broadly, this addresses a very interesting argument made by ethics bigshot Michael Davis in the last chapter of Engineering Ethics, that overly bureaucratized professional work denies engineers the possibility of taking responsibility for their work. Intriguing claim, and, in as much as ethical responsibility could be defined strictly in terms of the ideology of the profession, precisely correct. But Davis begs the question, and, if I'm right (and I am), Foucault's work on ethics answers it. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mikey.
I'm working on a paper on the constitution of faculty subjectivities and faculty ethical responsibilities. It's based on two aspects of the philosophy of Michel Foucault.
From the earlier work on regimes of power and panopticism, particularly from Discipline and Punish, I'm writing about the formation of faculty subjectivities, focusing on how faculty work defines what one is and what one can do. Like a prison, a school, or the military, the institution in which one works deploys technologies of power to constitute members as "docile bodies" that are ultimately predictable, controllable, and interchangeable.
I'm sketching out the different kinds of subjectivities, the different kinds of docile bodies, that higher ed institutions form as "professors" and as that larger group of faculty who have no proper name ("adjuncts," "lecturers," "contingents," etc.), whom I prefer to call tenuous-track faculty. Some of the differences are obvious, but what I'm hoping to get at beyond the obvious is the way that professors, who are presumed to have great privilege, are also docile. (As I've argued in this space before, I often think professors are less free than tenuous-track faculty.)
That's all setting up a brief version of the argument that the official statements of the ethics of faculty, notably the AAUP Statement on Professional Ethics, do not meaningfully apply to the majority of faculty -- an argument I've made before. If I'm right (and I am), then what does ethics mean for tenuous faculty?
To respond, I turn to Foucault's work on ethics, which begins from the premise that ethics is about determining who one is, and engaging in continuous self-invention. Ultimately, I'm going to argue that resistance, self-invention, and critique are the key ethical tasks for tenuous faculty, and the only way tenuous faculty can take responsibility for their academic work -- especially given that the institutions where we work systematically deny us other ways of taking responsibility.
More broadly, this addresses a very interesting argument made by ethics bigshot Michael Davis in the last chapter of Engineering Ethics, that overly bureaucratized professional work denies engineers the possibility of taking responsibility for their work. Intriguing claim, and, in as much as ethical responsibility could be defined strictly in terms of the ideology of the profession, precisely correct. But Davis begs the question, and, if I'm right (and I am), Foucault's work on ethics answers it. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mikey.
Monday, December 31, 2012
resolutions in the form of a resolution
RESOLVED: That New Year's resolutions are basically worthless.
RESOLVED: That forming new resolutions does nothing but perpetuate the absurd cultural trope that we can, in fact, change who we are overnight, as though having thrown a switch.
RESOLVED: That the tradition of New Year's resolutions does no one any good.
RESOLVED: That I should be more patient and kinder in the New Year.
RESOLVED: Oh, and floss more diligently.
RESOLVED: And stop punting puppies.
RESOLVED: And quit doing that other thing.
RATIONALE: It's the friggin' New Year. Evidently, this requires us to make resolutions we either won't keep or have no intention of keeping, and also to drink fizzy liquids, preferably with alcohol in them. Who am I to judge?
RESOLVED: That forming new resolutions does nothing but perpetuate the absurd cultural trope that we can, in fact, change who we are overnight, as though having thrown a switch.
RESOLVED: That the tradition of New Year's resolutions does no one any good.
RESOLVED: That I should be more patient and kinder in the New Year.
RESOLVED: Oh, and floss more diligently.
RESOLVED: And stop punting puppies.
RESOLVED: And quit doing that other thing.
RATIONALE: It's the friggin' New Year. Evidently, this requires us to make resolutions we either won't keep or have no intention of keeping, and also to drink fizzy liquids, preferably with alcohol in them. Who am I to judge?
Sunday, December 30, 2012
2012: year in review in review
I've stumbled onto a handful of year-in-review stories published by major nooz media, as probably most of those stumbling here have done.
The LA Times published top ten lists (how extremely creative and unique!) of what we'll miss and what we won't miss from 2012. Genius!
National Public Radio spent listener contributions on reviews of the year in politics, music, and Twitter--in order to prove NPR has cultural cachet.
The New York Times presented 2012 in pictures, without a hint of irony.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. What these all have in common is that they mean reporters don't have to report news during the end of December. This year, they are also benefitted from the actual events, in that right now a nooz story can be generated by an old BASIC program randomizing the words shooting, fiscal cliff, and drone attack. In other words, not much has happened this year.
Tuesday morning we start the whole damn thing all over again. Stupid Mayans!
The LA Times published top ten lists (how extremely creative and unique!) of what we'll miss and what we won't miss from 2012. Genius!
National Public Radio spent listener contributions on reviews of the year in politics, music, and Twitter--in order to prove NPR has cultural cachet.
The New York Times presented 2012 in pictures, without a hint of irony.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. What these all have in common is that they mean reporters don't have to report news during the end of December. This year, they are also benefitted from the actual events, in that right now a nooz story can be generated by an old BASIC program randomizing the words shooting, fiscal cliff, and drone attack. In other words, not much has happened this year.
Tuesday morning we start the whole damn thing all over again. Stupid Mayans!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
2012: the year in food
Sometimes, I cook. I cooked a few things this year.
I planned, and cooked a portion of, the big birthday bash/debacle/party, including beef Wellington, yet another sorbet, and the main course that roused an ovation--halved cornish hens roasted atop potatoes, carrots, and all kindsa other stuff. That was a weird event, because I had a panic attack halfway through preparation on the day, and felt sick through much of the night. My Loveliest got me through it, as she has most of this year, and our diners did their best to muddle through all of the obstacles. Really, who serves beef Wellington as a mere entrée?
I made an old stand-by for the first time in a while: prosciutto-stuffed chicken breasts. This time, with sides of Swiss chard and potatoes with additional prosciutto, cuz why not?
Butternut squash ravioli with sage butter sauce? Check. With local squash and sage from the back yard. (We don't churn our own butter. Yet.)
How about fusilli buco with shrimp and vodka sauce? Yip. This whole vodka sauce thing is a figment of American "Italian" food, but what the hell, it's tasty. (It wasn't really vodka sauce, but I faked it with lemon juice. We don't make our own vodka. Yet.) It's especially satisfying to make it from homemade tomato sauce. Fusilli buco is my favorite pasta.
Another thing to make with homemade tomato sauce is a meatloaf sandwich, in particular, if yer meatloaf, like mine, is made from ground pork, lamb, and beef, and spiked with cumin. Slice o' that, tomato sauce, mozzarella, melted in the oven, perfect. I recommend this heartily to people who eat animal flesh.
Iffen you don't, then, how about the notorious gorgonzola sauce pizza? Made about a dozen of them this year, typically with diced tomatoes, chopped kalamata olives, and a little chopped scallion (chopped artichoke hearts are strongly recommended). If you happen to be Xina or Che, and you happen to be reading this, and you happen to be wondering about New Year's Eve, you would be well advised to prepare for this pizza.
I already have plans for an Epiphany supper early this January. It'll be mind-expanding.
I planned, and cooked a portion of, the big birthday bash/debacle/party, including beef Wellington, yet another sorbet, and the main course that roused an ovation--halved cornish hens roasted atop potatoes, carrots, and all kindsa other stuff. That was a weird event, because I had a panic attack halfway through preparation on the day, and felt sick through much of the night. My Loveliest got me through it, as she has most of this year, and our diners did their best to muddle through all of the obstacles. Really, who serves beef Wellington as a mere entrée?
I made an old stand-by for the first time in a while: prosciutto-stuffed chicken breasts. This time, with sides of Swiss chard and potatoes with additional prosciutto, cuz why not?
Butternut squash ravioli with sage butter sauce? Check. With local squash and sage from the back yard. (We don't churn our own butter. Yet.)
How about fusilli buco with shrimp and vodka sauce? Yip. This whole vodka sauce thing is a figment of American "Italian" food, but what the hell, it's tasty. (It wasn't really vodka sauce, but I faked it with lemon juice. We don't make our own vodka. Yet.) It's especially satisfying to make it from homemade tomato sauce. Fusilli buco is my favorite pasta.
Another thing to make with homemade tomato sauce is a meatloaf sandwich, in particular, if yer meatloaf, like mine, is made from ground pork, lamb, and beef, and spiked with cumin. Slice o' that, tomato sauce, mozzarella, melted in the oven, perfect. I recommend this heartily to people who eat animal flesh.
Iffen you don't, then, how about the notorious gorgonzola sauce pizza? Made about a dozen of them this year, typically with diced tomatoes, chopped kalamata olives, and a little chopped scallion (chopped artichoke hearts are strongly recommended). If you happen to be Xina or Che, and you happen to be reading this, and you happen to be wondering about New Year's Eve, you would be well advised to prepare for this pizza.
I already have plans for an Epiphany supper early this January. It'll be mind-expanding.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
2012: three differing views
Like any good parents, we would invade our children's privacy by reading their email, Facebook pages, and of course their diaries. Since we don't have human children, we practice our good parenting on the cats, with the help of cross-species linguists from Stanford whom we pay exorbitant sums. (It's worth it, and you'd know that if you were good enough cat parents to be suspicious enough to need to know what terrible things your cats did or were planning to do, so that you could steer them onto the path of righteousness. I digress.)
Like most Year in Review nonsense, this will focus on major events in 2012. For cats, these "events" break down into two fundamentally paradoxical categories: (1) immediate, urgent, random events of [a] noise, [b] lack of food, [c] lack of humans, [d] appearances of UFOs (unidentified feathered objects), or [e] things that need to be stalked and potentially started at; and (2) home invasions. We shall focus only on (1)[c] and (2).
Since we have invaded all three kitties' privacies, we'll be able to review the year's events from each document.
EVENT: A WEEK-LONG TRIP BACK EAST.
We intended to go to a conference in Canada in June, but my passport had run out. Nonetheless, we took a trip back East, visited friends and family, so the plane ticket didn't go to waste.
From Valentine's diary, Les passions de Valentin
They've left - Earlobe and Food. It's been -- it's been some time. I'm left with no choice now but to climb to the highest heights in search of something -- anything -- to eat! My great friends and I have already consumed every bit of food, and every gram of catnip, we could find. We are all out of our minds now, we the beautiful, we for whom there are no rules, no laws, no commandments! Now, what care have we for Food, or for Earlobe?! We are free! Come, brothers! There's catnip in the cupboard for us all!! Or maybe in the laundry!! It could be in the stuff in the triangle room!!!
My mind is reeling, my soul is afire!
From Arthur's Diary, Letter to his Father
I'm sure you believe this is some discipline to improve the condition of my soul. My soul! As though you cared for my soul at all, and not for your beloved discipline. And this is what the whole affair comes down to, does it not? With the cruelty only the devout can conjure, to treat their own, their flesh and blood, as sacrifices to an Order, a Matter, an Eternal, you abandon me to live among these wretches, and will refuse even the merest request for an allowance to find more suitable accommodations. HSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
From Alexander's diary, Scientifical Works
Those we call "the humans" have been away now for -- a time. (If only we had more reliable chronological instruments!) Valentine and Arthur have taken two distinct approaches in their response to these new stimuli. In my observation, while both of them seem to achieve equivalent results, their behavior diverges markedly. I took samples from each of the subjects after -- a time, and another time, and sometime after that. My results have been inconclusive. More trials are necessary, no doubt, but I believe there must be some connection between the absence of the tall, awkward, bald cats and the rest of us. In particular, Arthur's behavior has been altered, and aside from the sample I've taken, he has refused my repeated requests for a simple physical examination.
Oh, no, where's my daddy? where's mommy? where's mommy? (my other mommy?)
I have to keep myself together, maintain my objectivity.
Are they home yet? Brreoowww?? (I've trained them to respond to this for the desired result.)
EVENT: HOME INVASION
Just before Thanksgiving, a shih-tzu showed up in the neighborhood, in the rather chilly November night. It was just before we planned to leave, and we had no option but to bring the dog in for a night, and another night on the other end of the trip.
From Arthur's diary, Letter to his Father
Of course, you would bring in a stranger, treat him like royalty, appease him and give in to his every whim, before considering my own comfort, or even my future. This beast -- "animal" is too good for him -- you place above me in your moral hierarchy. I see what you mean, I must be a lowly and terrible thing, as you confirm for me every -- in every interval of time that I recognize. The stench of the thing! The horrible noise it makes! This is not even a beast, it is a creature of the lowest bowels of the earth, and you, yes, you, father, you bring this terrible thing before me, to what end? To prove to me again my inferiority, my unworthiness? Do I need yet another proof? It stinks. Is that the point? HSSSSSSS!!!!!!
From Alexander's diary, Scientifical Works
Those we call "the humans" have today apparently captured some poor creature and trapped it here in our manse. It seems to amuse them.
It is a pitiful thing, incapable of any form of intelligent behavior, and makes a repeated chirping sound, as if trying to mimic a bird and thus get my attention as a gentleman and hunter, rather than a scientist. It scurries without direction or purpose, and is obviously one of the lowliest and most worthless things in the world. Still, I approach with caution, for the sake of my own safety, but moreover, so that I do not interfere in this sad relic's progenitive destiny -- no doubt, to succumb to a superior species.
The whole incident gives one pause. Though clearly the entirety of creation exists for the sake of the advancement of our command of all in nature, the wastage of such as this debilitated unfortunate seems a heavy price to pay for our knowledge, our culture, and the rightful place of felinity.
Plus, daddy loves me. Mommy too. And mommy.
From Valentine's diary, Les passions de Valentin
He's there! I can smell his foul presence! Vile, despicable, hideous presence!
I would challenge this -- thing -- to a duel, but it is unworthy of my challenge, unworthy to exist, unworthy to breathe!
For no reason but to affirm the right of we who know how to breathe, who know how to eat, who know how to climb, and leap, and live -- for we, we few who are truly alive! For we, I smite thee! I smite thee!!
He's still there! I smell him! Horrid, repulsive, repugnant detritus and stain upon the world of brilliance and life!!
No, he's still there! Don't tell me he's not! EARLOBE! FOOD! Get him out!! Oust the blackguard!
Still here! I must have catnip. I will never make it through the night without --
HE'S STILL HERE!! HE'S BEHIND THE DOOR!!
Like most Year in Review nonsense, this will focus on major events in 2012. For cats, these "events" break down into two fundamentally paradoxical categories: (1) immediate, urgent, random events of [a] noise, [b] lack of food, [c] lack of humans, [d] appearances of UFOs (unidentified feathered objects), or [e] things that need to be stalked and potentially started at; and (2) home invasions. We shall focus only on (1)[c] and (2).
Since we have invaded all three kitties' privacies, we'll be able to review the year's events from each document.
EVENT: A WEEK-LONG TRIP BACK EAST.
We intended to go to a conference in Canada in June, but my passport had run out. Nonetheless, we took a trip back East, visited friends and family, so the plane ticket didn't go to waste.
From Valentine's diary, Les passions de Valentin
They've left - Earlobe and Food. It's been -- it's been some time. I'm left with no choice now but to climb to the highest heights in search of something -- anything -- to eat! My great friends and I have already consumed every bit of food, and every gram of catnip, we could find. We are all out of our minds now, we the beautiful, we for whom there are no rules, no laws, no commandments! Now, what care have we for Food, or for Earlobe?! We are free! Come, brothers! There's catnip in the cupboard for us all!! Or maybe in the laundry!! It could be in the stuff in the triangle room!!!
My mind is reeling, my soul is afire!
From Arthur's Diary, Letter to his Father
I'm sure you believe this is some discipline to improve the condition of my soul. My soul! As though you cared for my soul at all, and not for your beloved discipline. And this is what the whole affair comes down to, does it not? With the cruelty only the devout can conjure, to treat their own, their flesh and blood, as sacrifices to an Order, a Matter, an Eternal, you abandon me to live among these wretches, and will refuse even the merest request for an allowance to find more suitable accommodations. HSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
From Alexander's diary, Scientifical Works
Those we call "the humans" have been away now for -- a time. (If only we had more reliable chronological instruments!) Valentine and Arthur have taken two distinct approaches in their response to these new stimuli. In my observation, while both of them seem to achieve equivalent results, their behavior diverges markedly. I took samples from each of the subjects after -- a time, and another time, and sometime after that. My results have been inconclusive. More trials are necessary, no doubt, but I believe there must be some connection between the absence of the tall, awkward, bald cats and the rest of us. In particular, Arthur's behavior has been altered, and aside from the sample I've taken, he has refused my repeated requests for a simple physical examination.
Oh, no, where's my daddy? where's mommy? where's mommy? (my other mommy?)
I have to keep myself together, maintain my objectivity.
Are they home yet? Brreoowww?? (I've trained them to respond to this for the desired result.)
EVENT: HOME INVASION
Just before Thanksgiving, a shih-tzu showed up in the neighborhood, in the rather chilly November night. It was just before we planned to leave, and we had no option but to bring the dog in for a night, and another night on the other end of the trip.
From Arthur's diary, Letter to his Father
Of course, you would bring in a stranger, treat him like royalty, appease him and give in to his every whim, before considering my own comfort, or even my future. This beast -- "animal" is too good for him -- you place above me in your moral hierarchy. I see what you mean, I must be a lowly and terrible thing, as you confirm for me every -- in every interval of time that I recognize. The stench of the thing! The horrible noise it makes! This is not even a beast, it is a creature of the lowest bowels of the earth, and you, yes, you, father, you bring this terrible thing before me, to what end? To prove to me again my inferiority, my unworthiness? Do I need yet another proof? It stinks. Is that the point? HSSSSSSS!!!!!!
From Alexander's diary, Scientifical Works
Those we call "the humans" have today apparently captured some poor creature and trapped it here in our manse. It seems to amuse them.
It is a pitiful thing, incapable of any form of intelligent behavior, and makes a repeated chirping sound, as if trying to mimic a bird and thus get my attention as a gentleman and hunter, rather than a scientist. It scurries without direction or purpose, and is obviously one of the lowliest and most worthless things in the world. Still, I approach with caution, for the sake of my own safety, but moreover, so that I do not interfere in this sad relic's progenitive destiny -- no doubt, to succumb to a superior species.
The whole incident gives one pause. Though clearly the entirety of creation exists for the sake of the advancement of our command of all in nature, the wastage of such as this debilitated unfortunate seems a heavy price to pay for our knowledge, our culture, and the rightful place of felinity.
Plus, daddy loves me. Mommy too. And mommy.
From Valentine's diary, Les passions de Valentin
He's there! I can smell his foul presence! Vile, despicable, hideous presence!
I would challenge this -- thing -- to a duel, but it is unworthy of my challenge, unworthy to exist, unworthy to breathe!
For no reason but to affirm the right of we who know how to breathe, who know how to eat, who know how to climb, and leap, and live -- for we, we few who are truly alive! For we, I smite thee! I smite thee!!
He's still there! I smell him! Horrid, repulsive, repugnant detritus and stain upon the world of brilliance and life!!
No, he's still there! Don't tell me he's not! EARLOBE! FOOD! Get him out!! Oust the blackguard!
Still here! I must have catnip. I will never make it through the night without --
HE'S STILL HERE!! HE'S BEHIND THE DOOR!!
Saturday, December 22, 2012
2012 in review: the 10 most
Another cheap trick of lazy media hucksters is the top 10 lists for a year: 10 Most Influential Bunnies of the Year, 10 Most Underreported News Stories of the Year, 10 Most Exciting Youtube Videos of People Flossing, 10 Best Looking Pasta Dishes, 10 Indispensable Teabag Tag Wise Sayings, whateverthehell. A main problem with such lists (aside from the minor ethical problem that, instead of doing their jobs, said media hucksters are yanking our chains), is that they get tedious, because each list is so exclusive and limited.
The great advantage of my 10 Most of 2012 is, thus, that it does not specify of what it is a list of the 10 Most. My list will also direct our attention to the capriciousness of similar lists. Like the media whores, I will begin with #10 (that's number 10, not hashtag 10, whippersnappers).
10. Most Drug Interactions. I got back on Wellbutrin in January, and as a result I've just about given up The Demon Bean. Caffeine and Wellbutrin do weird things to my brain chemistry. Caffeine, alcohol, and Wellbutrin do even weirder things to my brain chemistry. We're pretty sure brain chemistry contributed to the series of panic attacks I've had this year, but things are settling. Could been way, way worse.
9. Most Rain. It has been about the rainiest early winter I've seen out here, which bodes well for our having water next summer. The rain washes all the chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides that major agribiz dumps all over the Central Valley, into the aquifers that are tapped for our increasingly allegedly potable water. The Turlock Irrigation District's annual water quality report detailed high, but legal, quantities of arsenic and various pathogens. Coulda been way, way worse.
8. Most The Tour de Turlock. I've never been so popular on Facebook. I have kept up a log of all the streets I've ridden my bicycle the length of. It's over 800, and I still have about 20% of the city to go, including some very unpleasant industrial tracts and some very undesirable residential tracts. Fully half of Turlock's streets are barely passable on bike. And the last time I was out on tour I thought I might get mugged. Coulda been way, way worse.
7. Most Flying Kittois Brothers and Valentine. Alexander the Great and Arthur, King of the Kittons, might be adjusting to Valentine's presence. I think they're suspicious of him because he hasn't a last name. Arthur continues to freak out and hiss at everything in the world from time to time--which he never did before Valentino's arrival. Then they all lie on top of us on the sofa at night in a pile. Coulda been way, way worse.
6. Most New Collective Bargaining Agreement. After a massive organizing effort, an overwhelming strike authorization vote, the usual failed negotiations, the CSU administration and the CFA agreed to a new contract. This contract is a win for faculty, even though it provides no raises for faculty for yet another two years (by my count, that'll make six years, the last four of which also included no cost-of-living adjustments, because alone among California state agencies, the CSU charges these as a real cost, despite repeated failures to pass the laugh test on this point with fact-finders). Coulda been way, way worse.
5. Most Not Going to Canada, After All. Packing the day before flying out to Detroit for the annual Canadian Smarties Confab, I realized my passport was expired. We decided that the risk of my not being able to return to the US was worth not going to Canada. We visited our pals Sharon and Dave, then my parents, and I was able to present a commentary on a paper about intrusive technology via Skype. Coulda been way, way worse.
4. Most Alleged Election. I don't do electoral politics stuff as a rule, and I never do the door-to-door stuff. Partly that's a social anxiety thing, but I also don't know how convincing a long-haired bearded atheist intellectual would be. We did our part calling folks to get them to vote for Proposition 30, against Prop. 32. We won on both counts. Coulda been way, way worse.
3. Most Strange Publication. I had put together a long, bizarre essay on phenomenology, fetishism, and embodiment, in a fit of pique against somewhat eminent French philosopher Michel Henry, in August of 2011. I found a random opportunity to submit that, in expurgated form, as an article for a peer-reviewed academic journal, something I hadn't done in about 10 years, for reasons many people should know. They accepted it, to my great surprise, since the article is an absolute scandal. Coulda been way, way worse.
2. Most Gigs. We actually played actual music in front of actual people in actual public, twice. We're incredibly stage-frightful. I lost it completely on a song I know at the start of the second gig, abandoned the song, but basically recovered--although we haven't been invited back. Coulda been way, way worse.
1. Most Classes. It's all a blur. I've never taught ten classes in a calendar year before. It made me feel like I couldn't and didn't give any class the amount of energy I wanted to. Somehow, I made it. I still haven't been fired. I never said "fuck" in class, excessively. Only a scant few of my students are receiving treatment. Coulda been way, way worse.
The great advantage of my 10 Most of 2012 is, thus, that it does not specify of what it is a list of the 10 Most. My list will also direct our attention to the capriciousness of similar lists. Like the media whores, I will begin with #10 (that's number 10, not hashtag 10, whippersnappers).
10. Most Drug Interactions. I got back on Wellbutrin in January, and as a result I've just about given up The Demon Bean. Caffeine and Wellbutrin do weird things to my brain chemistry. Caffeine, alcohol, and Wellbutrin do even weirder things to my brain chemistry. We're pretty sure brain chemistry contributed to the series of panic attacks I've had this year, but things are settling. Could been way, way worse.
9. Most Rain. It has been about the rainiest early winter I've seen out here, which bodes well for our having water next summer. The rain washes all the chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides that major agribiz dumps all over the Central Valley, into the aquifers that are tapped for our increasingly allegedly potable water. The Turlock Irrigation District's annual water quality report detailed high, but legal, quantities of arsenic and various pathogens. Coulda been way, way worse.
8. Most The Tour de Turlock. I've never been so popular on Facebook. I have kept up a log of all the streets I've ridden my bicycle the length of. It's over 800, and I still have about 20% of the city to go, including some very unpleasant industrial tracts and some very undesirable residential tracts. Fully half of Turlock's streets are barely passable on bike. And the last time I was out on tour I thought I might get mugged. Coulda been way, way worse.
7. Most Flying Kittois Brothers and Valentine. Alexander the Great and Arthur, King of the Kittons, might be adjusting to Valentine's presence. I think they're suspicious of him because he hasn't a last name. Arthur continues to freak out and hiss at everything in the world from time to time--which he never did before Valentino's arrival. Then they all lie on top of us on the sofa at night in a pile. Coulda been way, way worse.
6. Most New Collective Bargaining Agreement. After a massive organizing effort, an overwhelming strike authorization vote, the usual failed negotiations, the CSU administration and the CFA agreed to a new contract. This contract is a win for faculty, even though it provides no raises for faculty for yet another two years (by my count, that'll make six years, the last four of which also included no cost-of-living adjustments, because alone among California state agencies, the CSU charges these as a real cost, despite repeated failures to pass the laugh test on this point with fact-finders). Coulda been way, way worse.
5. Most Not Going to Canada, After All. Packing the day before flying out to Detroit for the annual Canadian Smarties Confab, I realized my passport was expired. We decided that the risk of my not being able to return to the US was worth not going to Canada. We visited our pals Sharon and Dave, then my parents, and I was able to present a commentary on a paper about intrusive technology via Skype. Coulda been way, way worse.
4. Most Alleged Election. I don't do electoral politics stuff as a rule, and I never do the door-to-door stuff. Partly that's a social anxiety thing, but I also don't know how convincing a long-haired bearded atheist intellectual would be. We did our part calling folks to get them to vote for Proposition 30, against Prop. 32. We won on both counts. Coulda been way, way worse.
3. Most Strange Publication. I had put together a long, bizarre essay on phenomenology, fetishism, and embodiment, in a fit of pique against somewhat eminent French philosopher Michel Henry, in August of 2011. I found a random opportunity to submit that, in expurgated form, as an article for a peer-reviewed academic journal, something I hadn't done in about 10 years, for reasons many people should know. They accepted it, to my great surprise, since the article is an absolute scandal. Coulda been way, way worse.
2. Most Gigs. We actually played actual music in front of actual people in actual public, twice. We're incredibly stage-frightful. I lost it completely on a song I know at the start of the second gig, abandoned the song, but basically recovered--although we haven't been invited back. Coulda been way, way worse.
1. Most Classes. It's all a blur. I've never taught ten classes in a calendar year before. It made me feel like I couldn't and didn't give any class the amount of energy I wanted to. Somehow, I made it. I still haven't been fired. I never said "fuck" in class, excessively. Only a scant few of my students are receiving treatment. Coulda been way, way worse.
Friday, December 21, 2012
2012: end of the end of the world in review
No matter what happens to the world today, I think all would agree that it's been a rough year for predictors of doom. One could explain all the technical errors that led to mistaken pronouncements of imminent doom, like that preacher dude from early this year I can't be bothered to look up just now. Like him, one could parse and subdivide and render each grave error innocent.
I would suggest a simpler approach, having more to do with observable astronomical and physical phenomena than with speculative numerology.* For instance, it's possible that the sun will start to become a red dwarf, and eventually suck up the earth, in around 7.6 billion years. To borrow the latest world-not-ending-after-all joke, I think that means it's safe to do your Christmas shopping.
What's really bizarre about all this is that, when I was growing up, it felt like there was a real possibility of the world ending--the human world, at least. I'm not certain, but I believe I am among the last generation in the US who had nuclear bomb drills in grade school. In retrospect, I imagine they were mandated by some profoundly ill-conceived law. From what little I know about nuclear combat, our hiding our seven-year-old heads under our desks, according to the class seating chart, would have the total effect of any survivors being better able to identify bodies. Words just cannot express how soothing that experience was for my seven-year-old sense of doom. Ronald Reagan was like that, too.
I presume there must be money in the end-of-the-world racket, although I never made any. People write and say all kinds of things for cash, and only 28% of them are pundits on TV.
Could it be, that what the Mayans and Nostradamus were really warning us about was the rise of the pundits? Is Glenn Beck the Beast mentioned in Revelation? And if only 28% of the people writing and saying all kinds of things for cash are pundits, then that has to mean 72% work in other bullshit industries. Maybe "lake of fire" was a metaphor!
Book it. The world will end today, the result of drowning in punditry, damn punditry, and statistics.
--
* I was so tempted to impute to Luce Irigaray having written a book called The Speculative Numerology of the Other Woman, but cooler heads prevailed. That's one of those deeply multilayered jokes that either precedes a spit take or does nothing whatsoever, and at this late date, I can't afford to risk it. Though I certainly agree with Steve Martin that comedy isn't pretty, sometimes the key is to know when to say no, or perhaps listen to other people who are telling you no.
I would suggest a simpler approach, having more to do with observable astronomical and physical phenomena than with speculative numerology.* For instance, it's possible that the sun will start to become a red dwarf, and eventually suck up the earth, in around 7.6 billion years. To borrow the latest world-not-ending-after-all joke, I think that means it's safe to do your Christmas shopping.
What's really bizarre about all this is that, when I was growing up, it felt like there was a real possibility of the world ending--the human world, at least. I'm not certain, but I believe I am among the last generation in the US who had nuclear bomb drills in grade school. In retrospect, I imagine they were mandated by some profoundly ill-conceived law. From what little I know about nuclear combat, our hiding our seven-year-old heads under our desks, according to the class seating chart, would have the total effect of any survivors being better able to identify bodies. Words just cannot express how soothing that experience was for my seven-year-old sense of doom. Ronald Reagan was like that, too.
I presume there must be money in the end-of-the-world racket, although I never made any. People write and say all kinds of things for cash, and only 28% of them are pundits on TV.
Could it be, that what the Mayans and Nostradamus were really warning us about was the rise of the pundits? Is Glenn Beck the Beast mentioned in Revelation? And if only 28% of the people writing and saying all kinds of things for cash are pundits, then that has to mean 72% work in other bullshit industries. Maybe "lake of fire" was a metaphor!
Book it. The world will end today, the result of drowning in punditry, damn punditry, and statistics.
--
* I was so tempted to impute to Luce Irigaray having written a book called The Speculative Numerology of the Other Woman, but cooler heads prevailed. That's one of those deeply multilayered jokes that either precedes a spit take or does nothing whatsoever, and at this late date, I can't afford to risk it. Though I certainly agree with Steve Martin that comedy isn't pretty, sometimes the key is to know when to say no, or perhaps listen to other people who are telling you no.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
2012 -- the year I forgot how to sleep
We went to bed at a perfectly normal time. I was extremely sleepy. I fell asleep. I then woke up at four AM, feeling a little sick, and somewhat anxious. I must have woken up my Loveliest as well, and we talked a bit about my condition lately.
I had seen my psychiatrist earlier in the afternoon, and that, I believe, got me thinking further about how I'm doing. I came to the conclusion I had fabricated answers on the little depression/anxiety inventory they give me every visit. What I said was that I had lied on the item about having normal interest in enjoyable activities. We talked about what we could do to help me with that. Lauren suggested that I email my psychiatrist to tell her that I retrospectively wanted to change my answer. I felt guilty about it, and not being diligent with my homework. But I also believe that the stress of the semester (including events like the election) has broken me down. I felt guilty about that, then noted that it's ridiculous, because everyone gets broken down by the semester.
I proceeded not to sleep for another hour and a half. First, because I resent having to do homework, I started thinking about my general resentment of (and resistance to) medical and psychiatric surveillance. Thus, of course, I ran through an interpretation of Foucault's work on power/knowledge as a way of having us pay attention to the cost of this form of social order and civilization. Then I imagined a conversation with someone who rejects what he considers postmodern thought without clear understanding of it.
I got out of bed, walked around, sat down to read a couple pages of The Art of Happiness, and came back to bed, with my brain suddenly running through causes and instigating events of the Civil War. South Carolina's secession weighed on my mind.
I lay in bed, now trying consciously to bring about sleep, by doing what Merleau-Ponty suggested in Phenomenology of Perception: people fall asleep by imitating the behavior and situation of sleeping people. The problem then was that I couldn't figure out what people who are going to sleep think about other than causes of the Civil War.
At 5:30 I gave up and got up again. I read more of The Art of Happiness -- a book I think is an excellent choice for that trick some people do of getting up and reading for fifteen minutes when they can't sleep (ironic, isn't it?) --, glanced at a couple news items, worked a relatively unchallenging sudoku, and have been working on my sneezing.
A week ago or so, someone asked me what my plans were for the break between semesters. I think I'm going to try to learn how to sleep.
I had seen my psychiatrist earlier in the afternoon, and that, I believe, got me thinking further about how I'm doing. I came to the conclusion I had fabricated answers on the little depression/anxiety inventory they give me every visit. What I said was that I had lied on the item about having normal interest in enjoyable activities. We talked about what we could do to help me with that. Lauren suggested that I email my psychiatrist to tell her that I retrospectively wanted to change my answer. I felt guilty about it, and not being diligent with my homework. But I also believe that the stress of the semester (including events like the election) has broken me down. I felt guilty about that, then noted that it's ridiculous, because everyone gets broken down by the semester.
I proceeded not to sleep for another hour and a half. First, because I resent having to do homework, I started thinking about my general resentment of (and resistance to) medical and psychiatric surveillance. Thus, of course, I ran through an interpretation of Foucault's work on power/knowledge as a way of having us pay attention to the cost of this form of social order and civilization. Then I imagined a conversation with someone who rejects what he considers postmodern thought without clear understanding of it.
I got out of bed, walked around, sat down to read a couple pages of The Art of Happiness, and came back to bed, with my brain suddenly running through causes and instigating events of the Civil War. South Carolina's secession weighed on my mind.
I lay in bed, now trying consciously to bring about sleep, by doing what Merleau-Ponty suggested in Phenomenology of Perception: people fall asleep by imitating the behavior and situation of sleeping people. The problem then was that I couldn't figure out what people who are going to sleep think about other than causes of the Civil War.
At 5:30 I gave up and got up again. I read more of The Art of Happiness -- a book I think is an excellent choice for that trick some people do of getting up and reading for fifteen minutes when they can't sleep (ironic, isn't it?) --, glanced at a couple news items, worked a relatively unchallenging sudoku, and have been working on my sneezing.
A week ago or so, someone asked me what my plans were for the break between semesters. I think I'm going to try to learn how to sleep.
Monday, December 10, 2012
2012 -- a year in eighteen words or less
Let's see (that's two four six already!)
Not too comfy. Lacking thematic coherence, yet stressful. Didn't like it.
Not too comfy. Lacking thematic coherence, yet stressful. Didn't like it.
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