CSAA
Posted on | November 23, 2005 |
Thanks to all of you for the discussion in the last post. Whether or not we mean the same thing when we say solidarity it’s been great to see such intensity, and I’ve been really pleased that people have tried to get a conversation going despite my initial anxieties. Fear that that couldn’t happen is probably why I didn’t link in the first place, but I also made the mistake of assuming readers who were interested enough to respond would know what I was talking about. My feeling wasn’t actually as specifically motivated and certainly not as concerted as it may have sounded, so sorry if people had that impression. Maybe I should be more careful when writing whimsical Sunday afternoon posts - I didn’t really think I was heading in to territory that involved assessing our relative privileges, but then I’m not sure that’s my preferred way of thinking. I mean, it seems to me each of us has to use whatever positions of power or agency we may occupy towards the goals we think are right for however long we have the chance to. If anything unites the positions in the discussion thread, it seems to be that. Anyway, if you’re in Sydney tomorrow and still in two minds about the pre-fix event, I think it will be an important chance for a lot of us to learn more about what we actually do and what we have in common.
I’m heading to Sydney early to go to a workshop on sexual diversity with Paula Treichler. Not much blogging for a while, but hopefully some of us will be able to continue our debates in person at the CSAA conference. I’ll be the frazzled girl with bad L Word Season 1 hair trying to write my book in the back corner.
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November 23rd, 2005 @ 3:57 pm
hi Mel,
Interesting bit of a fuss kicked up around here. I’m not sure I understand some of the terms or what’s at stake in them, but I’ve enjoyed the reading.
You say “I didn’t really think I was heading in to territory that involved assessing our relative privileges, but then I’m not sure that’s my preferred way of thinking. I mean, it seems to me each of us has to use whatever positions of power or agency we may occupy towards the goals we think are right for however long we have the chance to.” I sympathize.
On the other hand, I think it’s important to recognize what those multiple positions are that we all occupy, and what they may or may not be functional for. I’m particularly nervous when those of us in universities start talking about our work as political. I’ve been trying to think about this in terms of job and of vocation. I feel a sense of vocation in that there’s certain material I really want to read, and which I hope may have some use for, you know, politics or whatever. (Though I’m really not at all sure it does.) This is how I spent a lot of my free time before I started back to university.
On the other other hand, there’s the job end of it, which involves jumping through a lot of hoops and at least partially imposing hoop-jumping on others. I think it’s really important to distinguish those two elements (and to work to disentangle them as much as possible from their … material intertwining in the university workplace). The basic point of working in a university as far as I’m concerned seems to quite simply to try and get paid to do something I’d want to do anyway, but it’s really hard because the work end of it has an impact that’s hard to avoid, and there are all sort of self-justificatory traps to fall into. Basically I think one should always be doubtful over the idea that anyone gets paid to really change the world. We may sometimes trick our bosses into doing that for a little while, but we may find in the end we’re the ones who’ve been tricked (as someone put it, maybe s0metim3s, I can’t recall, cultural studies departments are also part of the culture industry).
I don’t know if any of this is helpful, but I appreciate the chance to write it out - it’s a set of topics that have been banging around my brain for a while and your posts helped crystallize it. Sorry to go on at such length.
Best regards,
Nate