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Posted on | April 13, 2006 |
I have been in the UK for the past week and a half, and now I’ve dealt with the consequences of being away I finally have a bit of time to reflect. (Some of my students missed a class because a tutor had to quit two days before I left - yes, the only tutor that was left in Brisbane. People are cleaning toilets in this town rather than tutoring. That is the state of casual academic labour and the politics of my generation). Before the conference I spent a few days in London catching up on sleep, finishing my conference paper (see tutor quitting, above) and meeting some lovely new friends. Then it was the early Monday train to Sheffield where I couldn’t understand the taxi drivers and I caught a cold from my boss.
I didn’t see any of the Arctic Monkeys (that I know of) but I did see Richard Hoggart and I even got to talk to Stuart Hall who gave me his address so I can send him my book. Woo. It was amazing to meet someone whose work has been such a big influence on my life. He was as absolutely lovely as everyone says, which is reassuring in some deep and important way.
Anyway, the conference vibe was kinda stuffy and quirky featuring young Oxbridge boys with plaid blazers and skivvies or badly tied ties, but mostly the speakers were senior gentlemen of English Literature, Adult Education and the Public Service, the three main aspects of Hoggart’s professional life. There was even an actual Leavis contemporary who added a sense of history and a feisty edge to question time. My paper went pretty well I think - but the discussion after became a bit of a Jim McGuigan/Larry Grossberg political stoush, which was fine with me, but probably not so helpful for the other panellists I guess. The most interesting part of the conference from my perspective was looking at some of the archival material around the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial, and realising how big a deal Hoggart’s appearance was. Plus seeing how good looking and radical he was during the period that The Uses of Literacy was popular: jet black hair and a piercing, rebellious glint in his eye. It’s truly hard to imagine anyone like him in academia these days. All the young things are too cool or paranoid or burnt out to actually believe in something like a crusade against moralism.
After a generous dinner with the eminent Nina Wakeford I headed back to London to have lunch with Nick Couldry from LSE - long overdue as Nick marked my PhD and we hadn’t really talked properly since then. It was exciting to walk the corridor to his office passing names like ‘Paul Gilroy’ and ‘Nikolas Rose’ - I guess that’s what living in London is all about. So I had lots of good meetings, including one with my publisher Jill Lake, who put up with me sniffing all the way through our yummy Italian. She kinda promised that the book would be out by December, in time for the CSAA conference, which would be great, but as you’ll see from this, no one is likely to be able to afford it.
When I finally got home to my Brisbane flat after the three torturous 7 hour flights, the warm autumn breeze made me feel almost human again. I had underestimated how cold it would be, and apparently the weather was good while I was there! Unfortunately, however, as I look out over my much tinier city now, I feel no great urge to stay or to move. That was a dilemma the trip was supposed to resolve.
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April 13th, 2006 @ 12:16 pm
Hmmm… I spoke too soon (see comment on Lisa McLaughlin below). Thanks! Yeah Yeah. Um, Yeahs. Something like a phenomena, and all that.
April 19th, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
[...] In other news, I’m enjoying having Lisa McLaughlin around at the CCCS. She’s giving me lots of pointers for my next project, and her talk tomorrow sounds great. Only problem is I’m still working on the Hoggart paper, which is kinda overdue. Today I realised that I’d written whole pages of text ‘for the published version’ that I had completely forgotten about/abandoned because of the craziness attending my departure. I get seriously worried when that happens: when I realise I’ve already written something I’m trying to write. Just one step closer to my Alzheimer’s paranoia coming true. It’s kind of good in that I don’t have to write something new, but also makes it hard to determine whether I should go with what I said, or what I would have said if there had been more time (and a cultural studies audience) and I hadn’t written a 20 minute presentation. Oh dear. The perils of genre. And I’m just so sleepy since I got back from the UK. I can’t tell if it is existential or physical. But something I haven’t mentioned is that my life has been hit by another big change, which will mean I am living alone again, so maybe it’s some psychosomatic thing. Yep. When in doubt, Freud. [...]