I am rushing to get all my posts out before Friday, when the world will end. As a Mayan I must point out that the idea of the end of the world is really Aztec. Still, I have set the goal of getting all my posts on certain topics out by Friday, as I will cut the repetition of certain lines of questioning and certain narratives so as to open space for the sixth sun coming.
I am too tired to develop this now but we have these ideas.
1/ From that writer who made an impression upon us here, the idea of immigration as a “personal apocalypse.” This is important and it applies to moving generally, and changing of states generally; we in the US do not honor this transition well enough and I say we should.
2/ Jennifer has talked about this in terms of the “amputation of identity” and this is a useful image.
3/ “You must amputate your identity in daily life, but still perform it at the MLA and LASA,” is one double bind endemic to academia. This weblog, however, was started with the idea that an ancient text had been lost. We only had transliterated fragments of it and we were going to perform these, breathe life into them so as to resurrect our culture.
4/ I think I, the performer, have done quite a good job of this. The weblog was created February 18, 2006 and the first post after the introduction was this one from Rubén Darío, made on 12.19.13.1.3 in the Mayan long count.
5/ Academic advice in fact creates all kinds of double binds. You cannot both take anything and adjust and leave if you do not like it and remain loyal and retain a voice to work with while submitting to all these distortions.
6/ “We told you so, but you did not listen; now you must remain chained to the rock.” I do not like the way people moralize; the actual advice lies elsewhere and I will put it in a book once I finish my other books.
7/ Academics are conflicted because every dissertation writer and every assistant professor becomes a site of struggle, a battleground where opposing forces fight things out on horses with sharp hooves.
8/ People clamor for “professionalization” but do not realize that that is precisely where the hazing, gatekeeping and alienation of which they complain also start. This and its history is worth considering and is a dissertation. One would have to go back to Veblen at least.
Coda, flourish and apocalyptic amusement/
Perhaps deliberately, Veblen developed teaching techniques that frustrated students and administrators. Students in his courses were required not only to read French and German fluently, but to be conversant in a wide range of disciplines in order to register. After hearing him lecture in a barely audible monotone, most students quickly dropped his courses. Those who remained were generally all given C’s, not a happy prospect for potential Phi Beta Kappas. When a scholarship committee asked Veblen why his was the only low grade on one applicant’s transcript, Veblen replied that his grades were “like lightning, liable to strike anywhere.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 