I see what the notes for that article are about: working in the neoliberal university. Now, at last, I can write the piece, and I should. Things to be fought in particular include various forms of so-called bean-counting and the excessive bureaucratic busywork, but more broadly we are fighting the neoliberal university. I think it … More What is a scholar?
…because they are just too tattered, they are depressing me. They are wonderful and epoch-making as well, and I hate to let them go since they are like limbs. They are: New German Critique 22 (Winter 1981), special issue on Modernism. Articles by Habermas, Giddens, Bürger, Huyssen, Nägele, Bainard Cowan, Michael Ryan, more. Revista Iberoamericana … More Books and journals going now
Today I wrote 302 words and discovered lacunae in my research — serious ones. Advice to new faculty is that it is never true that reading and writing, in that order, do not come first — no matter how many times they say that in your current context, this is not true. I have too … More La fragmentación
I will find out whether I am still in LASA and ILLI. I will find out whether I can receive paper copies of my father’s insurance bill. I will do other things on my lists. I am changing my life. I do wish the university were not such a space of torture, and that I … More More things I will do
In the Verhaeghe book, in the chapter on identity, is a great deal of material on the market university including a list of euphemisms like those I discuss in my article — although his choice of examples is, conveniently enough, a completely different set than mine is. (The list is on page 161.) There is … More The market university
They have made it too difficult to get. Why should you move across the country to a less than desirable job on the theory that it will be stable and will be a space in which you can do your work, just to be tossed out — particularly when it is not a job that … More On tenure
This has to do with my having traumatized myself by ignoring what was really going on and trying to say my problem was “time management.” The thing is that I do not want to be efficient. I don’t want to sit down with one eye on the clock and try to rush. I don’t want … More On efficiency
I am trying hard to clear my workspace. It always looks neat but that is deceptive since the files and books are not fully organized; part of my block involves not knowing where things are, or not having them at hand. The current revolution has been enabled by my purchase of a new bookcase. I … More The notes, the notes
Working classes internalize harm. They respond to hurt and pain that liquid capital inflicts on them by, first and foremost, self-harming. It’s easier for them to believe the neoliberal narrative that they fail because something is wrong with them. So they self-punish and self-destruct. Creative and professional classes have better defenses against this. They externalize … More The modern workplace
Why was it that, back then when we were in Comparative Literature, we thought Linguistics was the other cool field? I think it had to do with not being a discipline that reproduced a nation-state or the Area Studies model, and that was theoretical, and that (we thought then) could begin to dismantle colonial arrangements … More Sur la linguistique
coldhearted scientist وداد 