week end
Posted on | May 20, 2004 |
getting excited about prospects for a good panel at the perth csaa meet later this year. my international scholarly confidant kris is trying to make it to his first australian conference. it will be steamy weather here in december compared to notting hill!
i’m taking an early weekend to get going on a book proposal for my phd. i have lots of examples to help me but there’s probably nothing more challenging i could do right now than to try to argue how my work is unique. eeek. greg seigworth has put me on to another US aca working on affect and pedagogy. christa’s work is really helping me situate why my focus is on textuality and voice. her approach seems far more ambitious than my attention to reception because she accounts for the volatility of the classroom situation. great stuff. i’m looking forward to meeting in illinois.
it’s been a draining few days, i think my IT woes which began on monday morning probably got me down. on the positive side, at least it’s interesting to observe just how frustrated i can get by techy difficulties. part of my fascination with the internet is that the ettiquette for how you learn how to use it is hard to navigate. when i don’t feel able to do something, it’s an unsettling sensation, one that years of good grades don’t prepare me for. in cultural theory, it’s rare to be told you are ever really wrong (except if you review a book by a prominent UK professor…) or that you ‘just can’t do it’. but moving in to a new area i’m reliant on technical knowledge to help me do what i want to do. this is what in my research i’m calling the power of the new ’scriptural economy’–borrowing from an idea first identified by De Certeau. when i can’t get the information i need fast enough, the rage i feel is intense and hard to articulate. it’s also what i fear envelopes my students when they listen to me talk in obtuse language but would rather just hear the information that will get them through the course and in to the job they really want to be doing.
so, for making me feel a bit smarter than i am today, thanks kate for scheduling a phone date after your tv appearance; and gerard for showing me that there are ropes. and thanks tom o’regan for a fab lecture on location and blockbuster films this afternoon. what a prof.