I am more interested in other questions, on the relationship between professional and amateur work, and on what we mean by terms like “radical.” On the first issue, I have wanted a law degree because those skills and that license would permit me to do work I cannot. But as we also know, professional work … More Another paragraph I am redoing

René Char, “Arthur Rimbaud,” Recherche de la base et du sommet, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 731: “Avec Rimbaud la poésie a cessé d’être un genre littéraire, une compétition. Avant lui, Héraclite et un peintre, Georges de La Tour, avaient construit et montré quelle Maison entre toutes devait habiter l’homme: à la fois demeure pour … More Avez-vous lu Char?

Activism also means having political convictions, speaking up and acting on them, an attitude that in my experience, at least, is unusual and often unwelcome in academic life. And maybe I’ll cut: This zone has no metrics, but it is nearby. We can find it by “writing together,” they say. Axé.

The work requires an orientation toward action and problem-solving that in my experience, at least, is unusual and often unwelcome in universities. Here the formation of a committee to study a problem is often a way to defer action, but the activist world one must stand on convictions and act. ***Our old organizations in the … More Notes I have now cut and should perhaps resurrect

Around the time Hayes was released my life took me away from New Orleans, but I stayed in touch with Gary and the other prisoners by letter and telephone. I began visiting again, although from a different town, when I returned to Louisiana. The groups I had been involved with dispersed as other lives changed … More Cutting More

Put in because I was told I needed signposting. Then taken out. For this volume on the inter-discipline of law and literature, I address not a confluence of fields but the disjunction between academic activity and activist work at large. Axé.

… so it wasn’t that I didn’t want to do that, it was that I wanted a break from it, needed one, and had all this pressure not to, so instead of saying no I said yes and then shut down, could not wake up. I do regret that, it’s what this whole blog is … More Recycling Peru/Vanguardias andinas

…is not prisons and forced or coerced labor. It is the creation of an underclass (felons without rights, migrants without rights, and so on). Axé.

Most faculty do not put a great deal on the line even in terms of participation in service, shared governance, and unions. They do not take time to attend Regents’ meetings, even to speak up for their own programs. They do not participate in civic life outside of work. That is, they do not dare … More Cut from my piece

i used to ask my father, who spoke better than I do, what my Spanish sounded like and he would say it did not like a particular place, it just sounded real, such that it must be from a place, so that place must exist. This is why people always ask me, what is the … More Oh and then there is this video I have for the students: My Spanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE-c4Bj_RT0