Long ago, in another coincé job, two friends had things to say. One: that every academic must have a secret life, some hobby nobody else from campus participates in, a fancy car nobody from campus rides in. Two: that I was stressed out from campus because I wasn’t hiding enough. At the time, I did … More Managing
The Reeducator said this and also said I was too intellectual, too “thinking.” (Thinking was bad, because it involved reason, which to him meant false reason and rationalization, and of course he was very anti-intellectual.) I didn’t understand what he meant, because I have deep feelings and also a lot of emotions; I was insulted … More “Feel your feelings”
Someone I know, a Cajun, said yesterday that they had “deep grief” over the same kinds of issues in this culture that I complain of. In their case, they cannot see their family because of it, and they grieve this and the situation. So that is what I have, in part, deep grief. What other … More “Deep grief”
Now we are getting somewhere. It was in many ways literally true that I had to let that department chair abuse me, which he did in the name of the Cajuns, to survive. And I needed to survive. I gave up a great deal for it, and the whole experience reproduced earlier trauma, and I … More Still more on the latest episode of disgust
I don’t ever want to feel as I did [yesterday] again. Or for the past 27 years living in Lafayette. Therefore, this is what I have to say to the Cajuns of that Cajun Renaissance: yes, I have a PhD, and if you say so, yes, it’s better than yours. Yes, I’ve got broader academic … More Epistle to the Cajuns
Right, in a broader sense the revolution I’m in was lost 50 years ago and I know it. But my not wanting to be defeated is this: I don’t feel like quitting the university without another university job, it’s just that in my particular department religious adoration of the suffering Cajuns is required at all … More Something I said to a friend
Axé.
“After this year it seems pretty clear that universities have no backbone, the enlightenment values you and I were raised with have been abandoned (Post-modernists share a lot of the blame but that is a different essay). The process began with civil rights and anti-war movements when the ruling class decided the civics, history, and … More From friends
I always have liked Benjamin and actually, I would learn German to read him in the original, and maybe Goethe. The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run … More Epigraphs for my novel, and revelations
From a Cajun friend: “There is a certain variety of active ignorance that is treated as virtue by white Louisianians. You hear them browbeat each other over their shitty beers at get-togethers, etc.” That’s exactly it. On French vs. Spanish, Spanish is far more cosmopolitan, and French is far more standardized.Spanish has more tenses, more … More The political analysis
coldhearted scientist وداد 