coldhearted scientist وداد

I am motivated to post some excerpts from Marx because I got a new secretary in the media laboratory which, for reasons I can explain but do not understand, I seem to supervise. The former secretary, a person after my own heart, had printed out the Communist Manifesto and hung it on the bulletin board. The current secretary appears to be a conservative Christian, and I decided that some of the more obviously subversive decorations would have to go if he were to feel at least marginally comfortable.

An important reason why I like Marx and Althusser is that they talk about ideology, not a set of ideas, you realize, but that “imagined relation
to lived conditions.” So much of what we are trained to consider ‘natural’ – social hierarchies, property, the bourgeois nuclear family – are in fact ideological constructions, and there are alternatives. And because these things are ‘in the [ideological] air we breathe,’ their artificial nature is easy to forget.

In my infamous ‘reeducation,’ for instance, I was expected to feel shame at not having had children. That this was a viable choice, even a revolutionary one, was not a permissible thought. I was also expected to have more trouble than I do with matters such as buying cars and houses, driving long distances alone, and filing income tax returns. I found myself taking these suggestions into consideration. It was a most antifeminist reeducation, but given the antifeminist atmosphere in which I live, it took some time to realize that this reeducation was not being done for the sake of individuation, but of patriarchy.

Yesterday I took the Communist Manifesto off the laboratory bulletin board, and brought it home. I had been planning to work from home in the afternoon, but my Internet connection fell down for an hour or so, and I found myself reading Marx. I actually posted the fragments I posted for apparently frivolous, Friday reasons: I hate “dating”!

I scandalized a friend last month by saying that I hate dating, and am interested only in idyllic, fantasy-like affairs, or else actual relationships. She asked, but how do you get either without first dating? I said, they spring into existence fully formed. They walk up to you. (I would, actually, say something similar about friendships: many of the friends I have, I knew were friends from the moment I met them.) I would add that the idyllic, fantasy-like affairs can turn into actual ‘relationships’. But I think the American tradition of ‘dating’ as test driving, is odd: either it is going to work, or it isn’t. With relationships, as with schools, towns, and jobs as well, every time I have had serious doubts, but still told myself to be sensible, be reasonable, and “give it a chance,” I have been wrong. It has always served me better to trust my instincts. I also think ‘dating’ is often just a way of keeping people on tap but at bay: click here for sex and socializing when you want them, click there to turn them off, when you don’t. In that way it resembles prostitution. My friend was scandalized. Are you?

Axé.