I wrote most of my dissertation in São Paulo, Brazil, where people did not find it strange that one should make progress. There was something marvelous in this. Nobody sighed in the background, nobody suggested it should not be done. One of my friends did remark on my “strange capacity to keep working on things [I] do not like.” I took her to misunderstand: I thought I should be grimacing about it, so I was; I stopped after that, though, because … why grimace?
Of course, I did not then know what it was to be really interested in something. My favorite academic activity of 2012 was the presentation I gave on the prison industrial complex. This does not mean I am not interested in poetry but only that poetry is #2. My friend knew I had found my present project on race but was repressing it, and she knew I had not found my truest interest yet. None of this means I do not like poetry. The reason I like it, though, is that it is so abstract. I like it because I am a coldhearted scientist.
I can also see now that my entire conflict in life really has been a gender war just as Dame Eleanor Hull says. “We only value certain kinds of activities, but if you engage in such activities, we will kill you.” This is why it is good for me to Occupy the name coldhearted scientist.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 