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doing Justice to my silence(s)

i like to be alone because it spares me the chore of having to articulate my thoughts.

sometimes being with people, talking (or not talking) to them, answering their questions exhausts me. buttressing with my forehead all of reality that is inarticulable--which is most of reality--doesn't usually exhaust me. having to convince others that this reality exists, its weight bearing down on me, its shape, molding my existence--exhausts me. of course, i do not know reality. i only see it, or feel it, more aptly, in slivers, in the way a dream is known. something drives me to turn my eyes on reality, and i do this always by naming what it is not and chasing it into crevices.

in conversation i only feel at ease when i avoid reality altogether--talk about the weather, make a joke, order a cup of tea--or...

when i Talk about it...

i could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, refined minds, whether male or female, till i had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.--jane eyre, charlotte bronte

...with words like ants carrying ten times their weight. as shakespeare says, "look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight."

i find the worst confluence of events to be when reality is hailed by my partner(s) in conversation...but only i know it. and, being compelled by Justice, i must labor to bring it into the room...

this involves sailing around what i "know"--which i am made aware of by my feelings--in a dingy...mapping its contours...i end up giving up because the shore i'm exploring is connected to a continent.

for the longest time i didn't bother to articulate my thoughts...but then i realized...the Beauty of a thing is related to the degree of labor required to bring it into the world as pinned down in language.

it is my suchness to translate.

what i write is what i have the gumption to translate.

if i am ever sad it is because i don't know what to say.

that is...an unbridgeable rift exists between my feelings and my words. either because the choosing--out of everything so beautiful--seems arbitrary...or because the work is intimidating.

this is a koan.

what dwells in vision's periphery gains power; what is looked at disintegrates.

the problem with words

entire conversations take place between/amongst persons in which a "common language" is used yet each party reads the meaning of the words exchanged in differing, often mutually incompatible ways. and quite frequently, all parties walk away from that conversation understanding not what has been issued (as it was conceived of by the issuer(s)) but what they choose to believe has been issued.

and that is why words have far more meanings than their dictionary definitions would suggest. the word "man" means one thing when it is used by a white, racist woman (who need not know herself as racist, and probably would vehemently deny her racism anyway) to refer to her white husband, and another thing when it is used by the same woman to refer to a black man. in fact, she could not comfortably exist unless she allowed "man" to mean something different in these two contexts. to her, "black man" stands in for "boy."

that is why the slogan "i AM a man." makes sense.

were the anonymous internet poster who issued the following words to refer to a group of white people using the word "folks"...that word would point to a very different meaning than the one it points to here (i've used this quote before but it is so exceptionally racist i can't help myself):

Black representation at the low-scoring end of the IQ scale has strong implications for society. At least 25 percent of Blacks are below 75 in IQ, and an IQ in the 70-75 range is classified as “borderline retarded” by most psychologists. Practically no one in that IQ range will graduate from high school or even learn much of elementary school basics; none will qualify for the armed forces, and few will be able to find good employment.
They therefore take to violence or mobs to feel accepted.
I am of the opinion that these folks can be helped.

amiri bakara's/leroi jones' dutchman is the quintessential example.

when lula calls clay a "man," she means a black man, an uppity n*gg*r in a three piece suit. when lula calls clay a "man," she uses the word ironically...though nothing in her manner would betray as much (until she begins to reveal herself as deeply racist).

when clay hears lula call him a "man" he (initially) chooses to hear "man" as "man." he initially chooses to hear lula's word "you" as "you, clay, the individual"...not "you people." i say he chooses because clay knows that there is a level on which he may read lula's words as racist, but in order to preserve his own sanity, in order to remain a self-proclaimed but non-murderous, semi-functional "fool," he gives her the benefit of the doubt.

i and most others, if we thought about it, would acknowledge that we make clay's choice. if we actually fully internalized the extent to which our humanness is not appreciated by others, sanity would be quite hard to maintain. the pain of life would be unbearable. therefore, we take in other's words not as they are intended by their issuers, but as we wish them to be intended.

and because this is true, all of us literally get away with murder in our daily interactions. i can call you "you" without fearing that you will understand what i truly mean by "you"...and in so doing, i kill your humanity in my mind. conversely, you kill me every time you call me "you." every time i am something other than an "i" to you. as i outline in "the nature of empathy," the subject-object divide (so long as we perceive its existence) destroys the possibility for authentic honoring of the Other's humanness.

you can call me a "woman" because i call myself a woman, even if my "woman" is radically different from your "woman."

politicians can claim not to be racist because they use the word "people" to refer to people of color.

words convey meaning. indeed they do. but we must look into and beyond the words.

if we are interested in plunging into the soul-destroying insanity, there are languages within languages within languages to be found. if we are not, nothing can change.

the nature of empathy

to imagine is to construct in one's mind. there is always a kind of separation of the imaginer from the imagined, in the way that sometimes, when one is dreaming, the dreamer observes the dream.

absolute empathy/understanding can only take place in the space before imagination, a space of pure feeling. that absolute empathy/understanding ceases to be empathy/understanding (which requires a subject and object) because it has become Enlightenment.

imagination, however, is the tool by which we move our pre-imagined understandings closer to that absolute.

language provides a good example. i am not fluent in french, yet i know some french words.

when i hear "avec" i know it means "with."
when i hear "peut-être" i know it means "maybe."
when i hear "je suis" i know it means "i am."

but "with" is transparent to me, while "avec" is mediated, cloudy.

when i draw on the word "with," i experience the word as though it does not symbolize the meaning of "with"...rather, the meaning and the word are one.

i understand "avec" by way of analogy, through its relationship to "with." i say to myself "'avec' connects to the same meaning in the head of someone who speaks french that 'with' connects to in mine." this is the significance of saying "'avec' means 'with.'" if i were fluent in french i could still say, "'avec' means 'with.'" but i could just as truthfully say "'avec' means 'avec'."

when i consider the president, or my mother, or the chinese, or the french, or billerica memorial high school students, or eddie izzard, or the protagonist in a movie i'm watching, or one of my friends (and i empathize with these people to widely varying degrees), i understand them as people through analogy, through their relationship to me. and conversely, i understand myself as a person through my relationship to them.

i seem to exist looking out at/touching the world through a body. when i type, i cannot see my own face. i look down at my hands. i will sometimes walk by a mirror and feel stunned by my own image. i do not imagine myself as a face. yet a face, i have...as the mirror reminds me. often, when i think, i do not say to myself "i am thinking"...i simply think. similarly, i feel--forces and chemicals in me move--before i say "i am feeling (anger, joy, disgust etc.)" yet there is never a time when i find myself looking down at another person's typing hands, through their eyes. when i consider other people, i imagine their faces. when eddie izzard says "i am thinking", i imagine that what he calls "thinking" must refer to something in him that is like what i have learned to call "thinking" in myself. i imagine talking to others, or perhaps i practice what has so often been called empathy: i "imagine myself in their shoes."

that is why "thinking" means something different in each of the following sentences:

"eddie izzard is thinking."
"i am thinking."

that is why "a person" means something different in each of the following sentences:

"he is a person."
"i am a person."

for those of us who are fluent in english and not french: "[he is] a person" is to "avec" as "[i am ] a person" is to "with."

i realize that other people must similarly imagine me in this way. that to everyone except me, i am a face. i am an Other.

intellectually, i understand that others' "with" is actually "avec." intellectually, i understand that others may look down at their own hands. but all of this takes place in the realm of imagination.

i am the observer and interpreter.

i am the referent.

in the world as it is i am the referent and i am not. we are all referents. we are separate and we are not. to truly honor and do justice to Others, i must strive, asymptotically, for fluency, for feeling, for pre-imagined appreciation of the meaning literally behind their faces, which i imagine (and i use the word deliberately) will close the gap that separates me from all others.

i (insofar as "i" exist) must strive to close the space between "[he is] a person" and "[i am ] a person."

some very meta madlibs

WARNING: NOT INTENDED FOR THE CONCEPT-CHALLENGED. TO BE USED AS A METHOD OF OBSERVING PRACTICES OF READING AND CONCEPT-MAKING.

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An Adult Western

Tex Hitler, the marshall of Dodge City, rode into town. He sat coldly in the saddle, ready for trouble. He knew that his racist enemy, George the Kid, was in town. The Kid was in love with Tex's horse, Anne. Suddenly, the Kid came of the White Nugget Saloon. "Draw, Tex!" he yelled narcissistically. Tex reached for his empire, but before he could get it out of his imperialistic rhetoric, the kid fired twice, hitting Tex in the genocide and the apartheid. As Tex fell, he pulled his own prison industrial complex and shot the Kid 6 million times in the black person. The Kid dropped in a pool of blood. "Nigger Lover!" Tex said, "I hated to do it, but he was on the wrong side of the lynching."

The Family Spat

To be read by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes.

WIFE: Honey, I can't find the verbs.
HUSBAND: I put them in the imagery the last time I alluded to them.
WIFE: You always lose the spondees. Why don't you put them back on the meter?
HUSBAND: Well, you are always forgetting to compose, and that is worse than anything I do.
WIFE: What about the time you forgot to recite the dog, and we had to take it to the inspiration so that it could have its hand put in a splint? Poor thing, it has never been able to muse since then.
HUSBAND: Well, that would never have happened if you hadn't left for a week at your favorite irony. When you leave, I do all the house rhyming.
WIFE: Well, I suppose that is true. Why don't we get a maid? Then you will never jot down the concepts again and the dog will never break the other heart.

New Year's Resolutions

1. I, Dumpling, will feel every day at the gym for at least I don't know how many minutes.
2. At the dinner table, I will eat only about five servings of ire.
3. I will watch only seething television shows.
4. I will tell Dumpling that I think he/she is a bittersweet kiss.
5. I will ask my boss for a, like, ten-dollar raise.
6. I will admit that I have a melancholic personality.
7. I will take my euphoria to abjection at least once a month.
8. I will admire one book every several weeks.
9. I will try to lose at least a bunch of pounds.
10. I will return the tender professions I borrowed form Dumpling.
11. I will get on an ecstasy and only spend nil dollars.

scholarship in the neoliberal context

the culture of academia values the individual voice as the author of the new paradigm. the scholar's worth comes from authoring newness. "newness" is the contribution the scholar makes to academia. if her contribution were not in some way new, it would not be a contribution. and truly, all that has ever been valuable has had this "newness"...even if that newness is simply a new spin on a very old argument.

but this is different from putting forth what must be put forth (however a discipline, academic community or individual scholar may define "what must be put forth"). newness follows from the value of the concepts offered, not the value from the newness.

"the academic" is a goffmanian front, an institutionalized, performative identity with a precedent and momentum. to put forth what needs to be put forth is not a practice that can be institutionalized; were it, the institution would in some measure drive the putting forth, and thus undermine the purpose of the putting forth.

and indeed, it does. the existence of the front of the "academic" precedes and drives the academic's work. the job of the academic is foremost to put forth words, ideas and concepts, and secondarily to put forth necessary words, ideas and concepts.

in our society, the scientist must do science. the anthropologist must do anthropology. one must take on the front of the academic as an identity in order to gain access to disciplining and skills that allow one to become a valuable contributor to a field. one must say "i am an anthropologist." the academic must develop, cultivate and publicize "her work"--her "intellectual project"--which she will strive to make distinctively her own. insodoing, she puts the question "what must i do to succeed?" before the question "what work is needed?"

this is not a phenomenon unique to academia. rather, it is symptomatic of the neo-liberal notions of "success" and the "individual." success (financially and otherwise) is demanded of the individual in the neo-liberal context.

can academia exist any other way?

as long as trades and egos exist i don't know that the manifest telos of academia can ever truly be the production of valuable knowledge, whatever academics may say. i don't know that it needs to be either in order to produce valuable knowledge. as many authors have said, the key to writing well is to write. and at least in my understanding, what "must be put forth" often must be put forth because of the lack of insightfulness in the theorizing of others. hence the culture of academia to some extent produces words, concepts and ideas of value in the way that capitalism produces "quality" goods; competition encourages quality (or that's the argument. really...competition encourages winning.).

but i do believe scholars can take steps (and hopefully sway others through their actions) to create a different academic culture through rejecting "due credit." something as simple as writing under a pseudonym makes a powerful statement about what is important. the jabbawockeez, blue man group and slipknot (to differing degrees) have put their art before their egos through the practice of wearing masks/anonymizing make-up during their performances, and they have changed how people think about celebrity and art.

there is no reason why academics could not in some instances put their own names and faces after their work. blogging could be one of those instances. there could be academic journals in which pieces are published under pseudonyms only. scholars could perhaps build their public careers first and then blog or write anonymously.

this would not mean speaking from a disembodied, unsituated place. nor would it mean lying about oneself or hiding behind anonymity.

it is a culturally symbolic position to take. and one that should not be imposed but adopted wholeheartedly.

just as bell hooks' writing under "bell hooks" was a culturally symbolic position to take.

it is symbolically stating one's dedication to the production of important ideas over and above ambition.

in time, i imagine that such a move could lose its symbolic potency. but in this moment, it would be potent and called for.