coldhearted scientist وداد

“Sandinista” is the word they used to use here for people who wanted progress and disagreed with the old President. One could not afford to voice such disagreement but “Sandinistas” could be identified if one looked closely. They would flash covert signs of comprehension. As you will remember, sandinistas were clandestine.

I learned from the Lincoln movie is that I resemble him to a larger degree than one would think. Notice how he engages in all of this horse trading but keeps his actual objective in mind. This is why I am a challenge. In my first education and also since Reeducation started and except in certain pockets of life I have always tried to be less challenging on the theory that this was key to survival, but I may change this policy. Notice, too, that Lincoln was not in fact dealing in compromise but in confrontation, and that he paid for that with his life.

I should think about these things since everyone I am interested in, Lincoln, Sandino, Fanon, Cabral, is someone who stands up and speaks, not someone dealing in conciliation and hedging and deference as academics do.

*

I say Reeducation because I have felt myself to be in a reeducation camp but perhaps I am in a prisoner of war camp. I am not joking. As a prisoner of war in the honorable scenario I am forming, I would be a man, which would make a great difference. I would also be a citizen of a country, as opposed to a conquered person. A soldier, I would receive military courtesy and respect.

They do like to use military metaphors here and to talk about “chain of command” so perhaps I should investigate how that works in the actual military and follow it to the letter. In the meantime, perhaps I should consider that if we really are the military then I am not a prisoner of war but actually some sort of officer, and remind everyone that this is the army of a democratic country. I have a question for you: is there academic freedom when it is considered threatening to talk to colleagues, and when words like “insubordination” are cast about if you have any thoughts of your own? I am not a rude or a forceful person but I do notice here that deference — no, obedience — no, servility is valued over expertise every time.

I also resemble Lincoln in that I do not simply project evil into the old Confederacy. Still I have more or less really had it with authoritarian culture and I may start singing the “Battle Cry of Freedom” in public soon. I will keep this song in mind this week as I operate. And while my department seems to think I am a conquered person, the college thinks I am a prisoner of war and the university, unaware of these things, thinks I am a soldier or officer in our regular army. You can see why that is problematic. Working like a professional is what, in the academia as I have experienced, is not desired and this, once again, is why I do not like academia or think it is “the best job in the world.”

*

And I am tired of introspection, tired of trying to see what is wrong with me, tired of absorbing blows all week and using the weekends to recover. Before Reeducation I would use weekends to visit archives and then take time off to do interesting recreational things, but as the different strands of Reeducation, all of which had to do with white Southern culture, really, kicked in, I stopped.

And I am not a depressive person but being forced into depressive states panics me because it seems close to lethal and I do not want to risk it ever, and having to stand up to oppressive people on my own behalf and without backing panics me because it has been essentially lethal and I do not want to risk it again. But I think I will have to give up the one and try the other. I am tired of being cornered, of this dance taking place in a narrow box that comes down to gender, power, and the things money symbolizes every time.

When I awoke this morning I had a different post in my head, on the layers of these panic attacks, coming from Reeducation and this claustrophobic relationship I was in and more, and it is all true but I can see more political aspects to this and also more psychoanalytic ones and I do not think things I have said or thought about before need review now, after all.

*

That dance between two closely related authorities. B does not have what B wants and will not stand up until A grants it. A wants B to stand up, at least a little, and in exchange for something B only wants on second choice. I never rest for fear of becoming incapacitated like B. For the same reason I do not reach for what is my first choice, but stand up for my second and third choices only, which is weak ground. This is the beginning of it and only part of it but everyone in the dream is me.

Axé.