“Many… still think that self-interest will continue to ensure for us the enjoyment of our civil liberties. We have seen other nations, to be sure, in which self-interest has made itself felt as an invincible motive for the giving up of what we call such freedoms.”
- H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Anachronism of Jonathan Edwards”
No, you’re right, guys, libertarianism is a great idea and would work out really well
Somebody write a semiotic analysis of wearing a school t-shirt when you attend a community college; a state college; Yale. I suspect the reasons/motivations vary in each setting, even though each of the three people is simply wearing their school’s shirt.
In most of my classes we sit around a big table. Today I came in late and had to sit elbow-to-elbow with the professor. Good parts: I was forced to pay attention the whole time instead of switching to Google Reader; he has a beautiful beard, truly one of the world’s great examples of beards, and I appreciated the opportunity to study it up close.
She brought her own lamp to the library
During class the person sitting next to me suddenly leaned over and put her face very close to my computer so that she could see the last line I wrote—she had misheard something in class and wanted to find out what was said. I do not know this person, so I thought the action was a strange sort of boundary-crossing. What if, instead of taking lecture notes, I had been writing my erotic historical fiction?
When the word “bisexual” is footnoted, I expect it to lead to some complicated or luxurious detail. I thought there might at least be a funny anecdote.
No dice.
On a good week, school will serve liquor twice. They don’t buy the cheap stuff, either—there were no kangaroos or footprints on this bottle.
Sometimes I feel bogged down by minutiae, but then other times I take such delight in writing a sentence like this one:
We can have the voluntary without an act, as when one wills not to act or when one does not will to act.
It is a simple idea, something you can hang your hat on, clearly stated with a little jargon to liven it.
This is them! I found them! The Hongs! Howard and Edna Hong!
The book they’re holding is a Danish translation of the Kama Sutra. WINK.
You can read more about their adorable lives here.
Next year a bitchin’ Kierkegaard conference is happening in England—and it’s on Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, my favorite. I am not qualified to deliver a paper there, but I have until March 1, 2010 to submit an abstract anyway. Let’s think about it.
During a paperwriting break I picked up a book of short stories. The author has divided his stories into seven sections, and each section has a two-paragraph introduction. My instinct upon seeing the introductory paragraphs was, “Did this count toward his page requirement? Did he write extra?”
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Holed up in the library on the second day of writing this paper, the thought persists that I might should find someone I don’t know well and go to Spain or Portugal: a companion and a flexible arrangement, so that we can have breathing room and no awkwardness. Such a trip would be unlike me, which ordinarily is intimidating but right now sounds necessary.
One teacher graduated with his Ph.D. last year.
He has assigned a long reading from a colleague of his who finished her Ph.D. at the same time.
Her writing is halting, cumbersome, and repetitious. Her ideas do not seem especially novel, though it is hard to tell underneath all the verbiage.
Monday she will be a guest lecturer in class.
My question, then: Is she hot? Are they doin’ it? Is he trying to do it?
I found a huge abandoned, unlocked building at school. SQUATTER’S RIGHTS.
Conan last night
In the shower just now I was thinking about this Mark Greif piece in n+1 and the conversation that erupted on the Awl, and it wasn’t until my head hurt from a brutal anger-lathering that I realized I had been absentmindedly shampooing for five minutes.
I occasionally enjoy n+1 and have even subscribed before, but its tone finally forced me to stop reading. The writing is shot through with this attitude—present in the Greif essay—that draws boundaries between who is “right,” who is irrelevant, who is exciting, who is boring, who is useless, who is progressive, who is inside and who is outside this imaginary community that the writer has constructed. And guess what: there are always a lot more people on the outside than on the inside. You, for instance, at home reading the article about gay marriage and abortion, probably had not realized that you are stupid and provincial.
In the second or third issue (ca. 2006) there was an article about living in New York that offhandedly mentioned that rent in the city costs no more than $400. No, the price was not explained further. The implication was that if you pay more, you are living too extravagantly or don’t know the right people or are a cultural outsider who does not innately understand how to live in New York for $400/mo. If you are outside this knowledge, you must remain there.
Then, look at this. n+1 has published an instructional pamphlet that teaches you how to compliment people. It allows you, the outsider, to finally communicate with artists, who are on the inside.
The point that emerges for me is this: It is hard to find love in Greif’s essay. It is hard to find love in a bunch of highly educated dudes spending all their time pointing out who is wrong. I agree with them that critical theory is important, and that cultural and political watchdogs are necessary for flourishing, but how we treat the people we’ve criticized is also important. If we disdain the people with whom we disagree, how will society improve, since we’ve offered outsiders no rationale or means for changing? If we criticize people for knowing less than we do or for understanding differently, isn’t the next step to start a mutually edifying dialogue with them? Or is it okay to leave people behind, having stamped them as ‘wrong’ (as a lot of us seem comfortable doing with conservatives, evangelicals, et al.)?
Critical theory often strikes this “Fuck you, you’re stupid” pose, and it took me a long time before I could get over being intimidated by it and finally engage with the arguments it couched. Greif’s argument, by the way, I find totally self-centered and depressing, the kind of thing that numbs people and stamps out grace wherever it finds it. It is a mouth with all teeth and no lips.
