minou

And I taught a hell of a class today.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:50:10 -0500

It was on literary theory, but still. I was pleased to realize that my unconscious reaction to my disgust at the squashing of human rights by my fellow Mainers was: TEACH BETTER. That’s good to know.

Also, we did not "reject" a law.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:40:41 -0500

We voted to strip rights from those who had previously held them (even if only for 6 months). That much more grievous, shameful fact needs to be clear.

But, hope:

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:37:45 -0500

The one of my students who was visibly upset by the way the vote turned out was not, as you might suspect, a gay student or even a super-liberal ally (such as myself). It was a married good-old-boy Mountain Dew drinking Mainer dude with kids. He’s a first year non-trad student majoring in social work. In one of his other classes, they are learning about gay history, and today he told us some things about AIDS and how making gay people second-class citizens contributed to the mishandling of the crisis and the devastation of the gay community in the 80s and 90s. I appreciated this input. And what I am saying is this: My state fucked it up yesterday, but I was reminded today that some of the things we — educators and activists — are doing IS WORKING and we need to make sure that we keep doing it. Our efforts are working; we just need to hold on and keep trying for a little while longer. Remember how we felt today. Then make that the reason.

A kid wanted to talk to me after class today about why literary criticism imposes artificial limits on personal interpretation.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:26:17 -0500

He’s an 18 year old freshman who I observed reading Ayn Rand before class. I looooove an intellectually curious student, make no mistake, but not today, kid. You and your Ayn Rand? NOT TODAY.

I need to get out of town.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:23:25 -0500

yosamanthrax:

Desperately.

Me too. I need a new scene. And I’m considering temporarily disowning my state, as well.

(BTW Sammy I love your new avatar, you look so gorgeous and I am jealous jellus jealous of you blonde)

I'm going to bed.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:27:00 -0500

I’ll have to wait until morning to hear Doc’s rant and maybe, but hopefully not, punch things. Because I am also teaching in the morning and I think we all know that me wanting to punch things + a room full of students = nothing good.

But as for tonight, I can’t take any more.

faithandbegorrah: Frederick Wiseman is a canon unto...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:59:53 -0500

faithandbegorrah:

Frederick Wiseman is a canon unto himself.

So I kind of really want to see this. For every single reason imaginable.

I always move the papers I dread grading to the bottom of the stack.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:32:10 -0500

Like they’ll go away or magically transform themselves by the time I reach them.

This shit is positively pathological.

It is closer than I'd like.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:58:37 -0500

Of course, this being Maine, the precincts are reporting by banana-phone and carrier pigeon so this could take, like, a week.

In Maine, referendum defeats you.

Hey, how about changing the fucking record?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:31:00 -0500

That would be really fun. I’m just gonna keep repeating different versions of this until it works.

Regarding Jargon

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:55:24 -0500

faithandbegorrah:

stillawannablessedbe:

A serious albeit boring question.

I don’t understand why it’s used in academic humanities criticism. Okay, I get that sometimes it provides a shorthand and a vocabulary, but just as often we’re using “praxis” where we mean “practice” and as soon as we’ve done so we’ve closed off an entire audience to the work.

I’m not arguing for the Malcolm Gladwell-ization of all academic study, but most of the grad students I know joke about the jargon, and yet still perpetuate it. Is it strictly a decision related to gaining academic street cred? (Which I don’t think is a bad goal of course, it’s your bread and butter so fine.) Or is it genuinely useful in and of itself, all the fancy po-mo words?

I am - ooooobviously - terrible about overindulging in jargon. Granted, even in my personal writing I tend toward the overblown, but still. To my mind, it’s a combination of several things: Yes, there’s an academic street cred (HA) aspect, in that showing one’s fluency in and command of the language of high scholarship is rather necessary for one’s self-presentation among colleagues, potential employers, etc. But it’s also necessary in and of itself as a particular and, yes, special vocabulary. If I say “praxis” instead of “practice,” it’s because the former has a specific meaning, however nuanced in its difference, from the latter. I obviously don’t talk in class the way I write (my posts about my teaching proves that, in multiple, unfortunate ways), but I do make a point of teaching my students the vocabulary of literary analysis. They need to know and become comfortable with terms like epistemology, subject/object, dialectical, signification, hegemony, etc. ad infinitum, because those terms have distinct meanings that the more casual and common language do not. Sure, it excludes a large part of the populace, but my job is not necessarily to speak to that populace - it is to speak to the adolescent members of that audience who are just sharpening their critical thinking skills (speaking of terms I hate…) and give them the mental and linguistic tools with which to approach literature. That last statement is, of course, a big ol’ can of worms (OOH! CLICHÉ! hate.), and it is certainly my responsibility to convey how and why the critical reading of dead white men books is applicable to the Real World of Real Issues. I don’t pretend that any of the kids who are majoring in business and taking my class to fulfill a credits prereq are going to be using “epistemological” in their everyday speech now or ten years from now, but they do need to know that that word has a distinct, particular meaning and that the use of another term in its place would not convey precisely what we mean when we employ it.

CO-SIGN! I try to use jargon as infrequently as possible, but there’s an enormous difference between “jargon” and “field-specific language needed for precision.” (See: praxis/practice). When a field-specific term actually starts to lose precision through overuse, then, I think, it has become jargon. (See: “to queer” or “queering” as verb).

Yes, yes I do sometimes sing "Fuck yo couch" in a faux-opera voice while going about my daily routine.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:55:59 -0500

What? You didn’t want to know that about me? Yeah, well, I don’t either.

Faith, do not apologize to a person who once wrote a paper called:

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:40:15 -0500

“Furniture, Dwelling, and Dinner-Service: Reading the Domestic Interior in Middlemarch.”

OK so let's get shallow for a minute.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:05:54 -0500

I have been waiting months to get my hair did and finally, this morning, it happened. I was too broke, and then I didn’t have 3 hours to sit in the chair, but finally my hair just became too gross to ignore and I made an appointment. The girl who has been doing my color for the last year or so left the salon, so I booked with her replacement — maybe not a good idea in retrospect but it was easy and one doesn’t have a lot of choices around here. The replacement girl was really nice, and she did a terrific job on my eyebrows (which, as you know, is very important to me). But the color? Meh. I don’t know what she did but it wasn’t the same thing the former girl did. And, despite the significant sum that I paid her, my hair just doesn’t look that much different. I go to a salon and spend a lot of money to get blonde, because you just can’t get good blonde out of a box. If I wanted to go just a little bit lighter brown, I’d call Miss Clairol. But when I get profesh foils, I want Nordic looking results. Fuck your subtlety, that’s not what I came here for.

So, should I wait a few days, see if the color she put on top of the bleach lightens up a bit? Or should I call the salon and ask her to correct it? I don’t want to be a jerk, because she was very nice. But I didn’t get what I wanted. Is it okay to ask her to fix it?

That's what a sign just asked me.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:21:17 -0500

Would I favor a return to Sodom and Gomorrah? If not, vote Yes on 1. So, okay, but same-sex marriage has already been legal in Maine for 6 months. What exactly do the wignuts think is going to happen if it suddenly becomes NOT ILLEGAL!?!

These “Yes on 1” fucksticks keep telling us about all these terrible things that are going to happen if same-sex marriage becomes legal in our state. Of course, it’s been legal since May 6th. Nobody is fornicating in the streets or teaching homosexuality in schools or forcing your kids to watch old footage of Bette Midler playing the baths Clockwork Orange-style. As much as I might like it if some of thse things did happen! The only thing that has changed is that everyone has the opportunity to marry the person they love if they so choose. And besides that, wouldn’t a return to Sodom and Gomorrah mean that the rapture is impending and isn’t that what you people want?

Seriously, GLBTQ pals. I support you every day in every way. So I hope that you don’t mind that today, when I voted for us all to have equal rights in marriage, I was not so much casting a vote for equality as AGAINST STUPIDITY?

Are YOU ready for Sodom and Gomorrah?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:58:49 -0500

I am! No on 1!

Luckily, this week's reading was about social class dynamics!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:44:45 -0500

And so my students, the vast majority of whom are working class, will do the exact opposite of what my Marxist-theoretical ass would do! They’ll blame poor people for being poor! I look forward to being outraged about this! GAAAAAAHHHHH

faithandbegorrah: fuckyeahphilosophy: Theodor W. Adorno, the...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:25:09 -0500

faithandbegorrah:

fuckyeahphilosophy:

Theodor W. Adorno, the carnival-goer

I would fetishize his commodity. Mmmhmm.

#”Get in my bed.” #”BRING THE DIALECTIC.”

Gecko: That's a great program! If you come up to check it out, I will show you around.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:54:15 -0500

My closet has reached critical mass.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:22:32 -0500

(As in clothes closet, not Tom Cruise closet.)

Anywhoo. There is — conservative estimate and PLEASE DON’T JUDGE (or do, whatevs, I probably would) — tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothing in there (actually 3 closets in my home and then under the bed) and nothing to wear. It’s all so crammed in and double-hung and piled and stacked that it’s become just, like, this MASS that I feel like I need an axe to address. No outfits present themselves. I just wear basically whatever I can see first, which results in me wearing the same thing to every class (I had a class once that appreciated my fashions, but no longer, although someone did compliment my bookbag this semester — Stella McCartney, thanksverymuch). What a waste. I probably own some really cool shit that even looks good on me, but I have no idea how to access it.

If any of you people are between a size 8 and 12 and want to make a roadtrip up here, I will give you free clothes for helping me sort this disaster out.

Also, I feel the need to say that I don’t generally live large, as Doc can probably confirm after his visit to my home. I just really enjoy fashions, and my size fluctuates so I buy a lot.

The shoes, can we not even talk about the shoes?