I've been reading all about the Avital Ronell scandal (Corey Robin's piece is pretty solid) and marveling at how much "influence" she was able to maintain, yea unto being called an "academic superstar" in a couple of pieces, just by working the power structures of her overlapping disciplines. Not even once, I think, did I ever see her work cited or brought up in conversation, and I studied the stuff of which she is officially a professor. (I had heard of her, yes, but I feel like she was sort of famous-for-being-famous.)
That said, my doctoral committee has not been covering itself with glory either, and this week I feel like burning the ("elite") academy to the ground and starting over. We'll make plans to relocate any affected commenters.
I've been trying to buy a car for over a month. Two private sales fell through (inspection showed work needed; sold to someone else before I could get it inspected) and now I'm on my second visit to a dealer without successfully getting something. I spent 45 minutes today waiting for an appointment to basically pay for a car I already knew I wanted. Ugh, I hate this process so much. The loan part is the worst and I haven't even dealt with that yet.
It's basically fall here today. I just got in from a walk and it was maybe 68 degrees regular.
Not complaining, but relevant to the political part of the OP: We had our primary yesterday. It went pretty well overall, including some surprising upsets of powerful Republican state legislators. There weren't very many contested races on the Dem side, although my own state House district was one of them so I'm glad it's over.
I never heard of Avital Ronell and don't know anything about literary criticism that I didn't learn from Annie Hall and I didn't really like Annie Hall. I'm a little glad to see "Nimrod" making a comeback as a name.
I would like to complain about the headline,
"Scientists Stunned By a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave." I feel like they should have added the word "fossil" to avoid raising my hopes.
Blockwalking this evening went much better than yesterday evening. Yesterday half the houses treated me like they thought I was some prissy upscale PTA representative, judging them for their face tattoos, or maybe they were just super stoned, but I felt like I was bothering them, and I signed up one person who lives in a different town altogether. Today I was on my block where everyone knows my face and I signed up a ton of people.
Mr. 6 got kicked out of YMCA summer camp today for being disobedient and eventually hitting other kids, which has not previously been his style. Fortunately the summer's almost over and we were going to go on vacation, so this only costs about a day and a half of work. Ugh.
Oh man, we've been part of the kicked-out-of-camp club a few times ourselves. It's not fun.
Mr. 6 got kicked out of YMCA summer camp today for being disobedient and eventually hitting other kids...
You've got to let him know that he should hit other kids as soon as he's asked.
Also, I should have thought to post (1) when I was coming up empty. It all sounds so insane.
I had never heard of Ronell, but I've heard of many of the people who signed the letter in her defense, and I read the letter before reading about the case and it seemed so obviously bad, hitting so many of the generic points a defense of a powerful abuser would hit when written by people with no actual knowledge of the case itself.
I'm especially disappointed that Joan Scott signed, but maybe because she's one of the few signers whose work I know not mainly by reputation alone.
Surprise ending: Four kids and a dog arrive, rip off Ronell's mask to reveal Kevin Spacey.
The weather is nice here but will soon be miserably hot and muggy again.
I had never heard of Ronell
Exactly!
I've been playing with the idea that your dysfunctional and/or pathological advisor-student relationship is a function of your critical method. If you do poststructuralist, deconstructiony stuff, you get capricious, predictably-unpredictable, high-drama behavior; if you're a marxist, you get advising utterly at odds with your class interests [to be fair, this is everyone]; if you're doing postcolonial theory, you have to fend off irrelevant meddling from the university bureaucracy as well as constant infighting among your committee members; if you're doing a digital humanities project, your advisor will never meaningfully understand it or you.
What else? Add other disciplines...
this week I feel like burning the ("elite") academy to the ground and starting over.
Yep.
way mots
ven mots
bev mots
do you even mots, brots?
15: medieval Iberian religious studies -- dealing with the unexpected.
15: ethics, with a focus on critical race theory and disability studies--defending your Black brother with a disability from sexual assault by the chair of the philosophy department, Anna Stubblefield.
Last year, #MeToo made me think maybe we need women to take over the positions of power until we get this situation under control. Now with Stubblefield, Ronell, Scott, Butler and Argento, I'm thinking maybe the problem is positions of power.
20: a lesson that some of us learned from observing (for example) Cixi, Bloody Mary, Elizabeth I, the Empress Catherine, Indira Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi and M******t T******r.
AWB has been killing it at the other place talking about the Ronell case.
If Queen Mary had been more brutal at suppressing Protestantism, maybe Margaret Thatcher would have never happened.
Feeling grumpy because I want to get some work done, but our subs delivered code that doesn't compile.
On the other hand the weather, which has been terrible, is great today. Maybe I should take the day off.
22 Would love to read some of that but I'm not going to sign up for The Other Place (though this is one of those few times I've been tempted).
I'm a little glad to see "Nimrod" making a comeback as a name.
He's Israeli. I don't think "Nimrod!" was ever an insult in Hebrew.
They have Bugs Bunny, but not in a way we understand.
"Nimrod" is absolutely the best Enigma Variation.
27: That's actually true. I remember that it was hilarious to me that Israeli kids would talk about "Bugs Bunny" and "Big Bird" without understanding that "bunny" and "big" and "bird" are words.
Yesterday sucked.
Work was rough. I feel like I was unusually busy and productive but it didn't matter. I spent a lot of the morning helping someone else with a problem of theirs - not my fault, not my project, but I had expertise and it was relatively urgent, so I did the research. I got a bunch of my own stuff done too, or at least, got significant parts of it done, but I made no progress on a couple things that are already kind of late and I still left a bit early, due to a family event, with the new guy working on something time-sensitive. I'm honestly wondering just a tiny bit if I'm having mental health issues worth medical intervention (I have an appointment with a doctor this afternoon), or if I just need to work harder on procrastination and organization, or if there's something wrong with my management or job itself.
I had fun at that family event and playing with Atossa in the park afterwards, until she had an accident. I thought we were done with potty training but apparently not. She starts pre-school today. One more thing to worry about. Also, bed time is miserable. Right now is a bad time for it because she's jet-lagged, but it hasn't been easy in months.
I feel guilty complaining about this. I just had a week to myself. Cassandane and Atossa were visiting Cassandane's parents from Friday before last until this past Tuesday. I should be, OK, "thrilled" to deal with stuff like that would be unrealistic, but more patient with it, at least.
until she had an accident. I thought we were done with potty training but apparently not. She starts pre-school today. One more thing to worry about.
It does sound like a crappy day, but just on this one point: when they say you have to be potty-trained to be in a certain class at pre-school, they just mean they are not equipped to deal with diapers. They are well-equipped to deal with chronic accidents.
31: Thanks for the reassurance, and I've heard as much from the school.
Pro tip: If it involves the coffee pot in the faculty lounge, they won't believe it was an accident.
21: for Indira Gandhi, are you primarily thinking of the state of emergency?
I'm so sick of mental health crises, which never get any easier to experience no matter how seasoned I have become, heading into middle age, at dealing with them gracefully and not making them anyone else's problem. Every single time I think: I wish I could just check into a peaceful hospital, lock the door, and stop coping at "invisible to everyone but immediate family" levels of self-control for a few days. It's just not possible. Time has also not lessened the sense that this is, in effect, a moral disability, for which no moral imperative can actually be relaxed.
That sucks pseud tree, I hope things get better for you.
Feel better soon.
We always thought you were stuck up, but now realize that is Joyce Kilmer's fault, nothing to do with you.
35 was me and now I have a question for the mineshaft. (Sorry to distract from new posts; hopefully not by much.)
AIHMB, I spent some time this summer exploring my aunt's enormous online family tree. One of the revelations was that we have more and more varied Native American ancestry than I had thought, mostly through a Métis community on the US/Canadian border. One of my cousins was recently adopted (like Kyrie Irving!) into a tribe from which we were descended generations ago -- long private story there, but it's the result of years of commitment -- and his sister has been working in a different Native community since graduating from college.
The only sense in which I identify with this heritage currently is feeling really fucking guilty that I don't do more to support and advocate for Native American communities today, and I would like to make my guilt useful to people who need it turned into labor and money. I can do my own research and narrow the field from its continental vastness, but I figured some of you might have well-informed suggestions about where to put my effort -- dairy queen, teo, Charley? ogged? Von Wafer if he ever comes around here nowadays? E-mail included if you prefer.
If it helps, I care about housing and health care issues in particular, and I need to find a new job.
That is a very admirable thing to want to do, lk! In terms of specific organizations, Native American Rights Fund is the big national organization that does legal work on a lot of Native interests. If you want to scale down geographically, I'd say look into the specific tribe(s) to which you have a connection and see what sorts of organizations/projects they're working on. Charley's a lot closer to that region both geographically and in terms of knowledge level than I am, so he may know more specifics. You could also look into similar local projects in your current area; dairy queen likely knows about the specifics.
In terms of specific issue areas, housing and health care are tricky from an individual standpoint because they're overwhelmingly funded by the federal government. Beyond advocating to preserve/expand specific programs, there's not a whole lot that would feel satisfying as an individual effort.
I'll think some more about job options.
Oh, there's also political giving, and there are actually an unusual number of Native American candidates in potentially winnable races this year. The ones that immediately come to mind are Paulette Jordan for governor of Idaho and Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids for Congress in NM and KS respectively, but there may be others.
At the local level, I went to a fundraiser last night for this guy, a very impressive Native leader who is running for state House up here.
Hey teo, thanks so much for all of this, particularly the electoral recommendations. Those areas of interest are more general, i.e. things I obsess about, even though I don't have any particular expertise. (I did get a solicitation from Partners in Health last week to advocate for raising the IHS budget according to these recommendations, though -- so exactly what you say in 41.)
You're welcome! Glad I could be helpful.