coldhearted scientist وداد

These are the revelations of the week on how the phrase do not work so hard which I am convinced is a misogynistic strategy (note to men: it is a common line, too, you could try it…) —

1. when it really is a version of I do not have to, because I am being supported or You should be in a position not to have to, because a good strategist would be being supported. I actually heard a version of this this week, in the 21st century;

2. when it really is a version of, You should not be that interested in what you are doing, it is unseemly;

3. when it really is a version of, Anything you could accomplish would not be important, so you should not try.

I am of course invulnerable to #1, but I have heard #2 and #3 enough from people who would speak vociferously against #1, that it was like some sort of undermining by stealth … the enemy getting behind my lines.

These things are connected to the war metaphor because they are massively hostile statements. They are always made sitting in nice chairs in some sort of civilized atmosphere, where it is required to smile and be polite, but they are war cries and must be understood as such.

THE WAR METAPHOR

While grading I have noticed the proliferation of childrens’ songs which are really war songs, and looked up some battles. Europe has had so many wars where entire armies are wiped out, half the population is killed, and so on, it is shocking. It is like having the U.S. civil war happening all the time, or one of our ongoing colonial and imperial wars but with a mass draft.

In Brazil we used to talk about “disenchanting” our theses and dissertations. It was a reference to our antihero’s journey to recover his amulet, which had been stolen by the giant Wenceslau Pietro Pietra. To “disenchant” our projects was to work with them and finish them. We succeeded but later on my work and also my spirit were inside a glass case, as if they had been given a sleeping potion. They were visible and intact but I could not break the glass.

At Dame Eleanor Hull they liked my prisoner of war metaphors and I think these are in fact more accurate as metaphors for more recent situation. When Reeducation started, for example, I stopped being able to go into my study because I kept dreaming that in there, I was nailed to the wall and already moribund. This, I was told, was a “recovered memory” but really it was a metaphor for what was happening then in real time.

It — and what “it” is might be worth defining, so one can recognize the enemy — it has been like having been captured, or like working with enemies behind my lines who keep stealing my grain.

I have trouble concentrating in the foreign language classes because we have no program or consistent policies, or any method. There is a textbook but really each instructor uses the PowerPoints they made at some point, so one has no idea at all what any given group will know, or not, by the time they come to Spanish 3 or 4.

(This has traditionally functioned as a strategy to gaslight professors. It destroys tenure cases and encourages early retirement. Ineed, if we can be driven out entirely the instructors and the professors in languages other than Spanish will rule, and the university will have more “flexibility.”)

It is true that all the students need to know is how to pass a particular person’s classes, although we do not admit this and I have difficulty believing it. All the incessant questions about how to fool the electronic workbook, and complaints alleging that it is poor pedagogy to insist on actually using the language in class crystallize for me in this image: I am tied to a chair and they are hitting me in the jaw.

I keep better control of them than this but the way I feel at that point is that isn’t really important to teach them anything, but just to maneuvre such that I do not sustain permanent damage to my teeth or eyes and wait for the session to end, so I can rest and gather strength to withstand the next session.

This is the immediate reason why it takes me so long to recover my mind, or recover myself each day or week as a person who sits down and writes, although it is just a bagatelle compared to the others.

Myself as a prisoner of war; my research as something I locked up for safekeeping. It has been like having my identity amputated but I have not felt as whole as I do now for some time.

There is something I want to remember about this war metaphor but only write down in hieroglyphics.  It seems that I, my work, my being, have always been territory whose meaning people are fighting over. This is why after a certain point I was left with only one desire: to hide out until nightfall and then slip away unseen. It is why the novel I have in progress on this is set in a stylized version of Palestine.

Axé.