The Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dissertation

It’s been awhile since I’ve “blogged.” And I’m not even sure I have readers anymore. But, I need a bit of a rant, and why not put it out into the abyss that is the world wide web.

I was blessed to get my prospectus done, defended, and passed in February. I look to be right on schedule according to my department’s setup. And instead of going into an immediate depression like so many of my other colleagues, I began typing almost immediately. I now have 20 pages of crap on my “Chapter 4″–my immigration narrative chapter. At moments, it has seemed to write itself, and I have been excited that my overkill of ideas were falling into place quite easily and seamlessly.

…until I was told to look at Zizek…

Next thing I know, I’m looking at and writing about Hegel, Shiller, Kant, Trilling (not by choice!). And my diss has slowly started to spiral out into the land of “everything is connected” and “all theories, past and present, has to do with my dissertation.” Ack. My dissertation is now some monster that must solve the meaning of “life” (both mere life and, as Zizek says, “a life worth living”). I can’t help but want to hit something now, and this all distinctly occurred the moment I picked up Welcome to the Desert of the Real…

And, now, the depression has arrived. The overwhelming task of a dissertation is butting up against the complete uselessness of what I do. I mean, in literature studies, we might be lucky if we have 5 people ever read our stuff, and at the end of the day, anything I have to say about “life” has already been said. So the sheer “uselessness” of what we do manifests from the little chance that this will have any effect on the world (the world of academia, specifically–I’m not idealist enough to think my work will ever move beyond the walls of the ivory tower).

Yet, every morning, I make coffee and sit down at my computer and type for a least 3 hours, spiralling out into grand questions and grand ideas that make me feel like I might have picked the wrong career here. That if I wanted to consider the meaning of life, I would have done religion. That if I wanted to work out why immigration is a “problem,” I would have gone into government policy-making or non-profit rights organizing. But instead, I’m writing a dissertation that doesn’t even seem to have a focused topic anymore. And, yes, I totally blame Zizek.

But I Like the Shadows!: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Appearance, and Spectacle

As I embark on another semester of “acting” like I know what I’m talking about, I am quite excited to begin my (completely-unrelated-to-dissertation) literature course with Plato’s Allegory. I imagine that all of my new students today rushed off to the CTA or dorms with their PDFs in hand, eager to delve into the thought experiment of Plato’s Allegory. Perhaps my excitement makes me slightly delusional…but whatever.

Rereading Plato, nevertheless, has made me rethink the Allegory of the Cave, as I attempt to prepare translating his ideas to non-philosophy and -english majors. His Theory of Forms will not fly with this crowd, but will fancy-footing in Truth work? I’m considering relating the appearance of things and people on the cave wall to Debord’s notion of the spectacle as a political demystification. But, Truth goes completely into question when we think about the Allegory of the Cave through Debord’s psuedo-ideology. Truth awareness becomes questionable from an ideology perspective because Truth is never “real” in the first place. Nothing is “real” under ideology.  If I teach it this way, I’m afraid my students will simply see Plato as bs…

I will, of course, deal with the traditional route to Plato’s Allegory by looking at language and naming. The naming of appearances and shadows, for Plato, simply obscures reality (Truth) for the prisoner of perception. But, I think, naming is simply a part of the cave spectacle. Naming, I believe, is no different than the shadows. Naming is simply appearance. If I approach it this way, I think I can demonstrate the literary effects of representation. I might even be able to hoodwink my students into believing that we are on the search for Truth as we read, having to question specific words, etc., within our readings (hello close-reading endorsement!). Update coming later…

WWJB?

Sorry I’ve been neglecting this blog for so long, dear friends. I got swept up into my prospectus and a diss chapter and have barely just come out to take a breath. I hope to defend the prospectus in January (yea!), and finish this premodern/nativism/style chapter by May. My fingers are crossed REALLY TIGHT.

Today I want to talk about this fascinating documentary called What Would Jesus Buy (available on netflix’s watch instantly). First off, it’s freakin hilarious, so you all should go watch it immediately. (How’s that for persuasive rhetoric? hehe.) It’s a great Christmas anti-consumer movement entirely forwarded through over-stylized fundamentalist and evangelist “preaching.” This group travels around the U.S., stopping in malls and Walmarts, telling people to quit consuming because Jesus didn’t consume. It’s hilarious.

As I watched it, I couldn’t help but wonder how this group single-handedly collapses religiosity into simply a marketing technique. “Jesus” is simply a term to invoke pathos, which then is supposed to tug at our little “universal Christian” hearts (gag me with a spoon) and make us consume “Jesus” instead of Walmart’s low low prices. The leader of this group, who spends hours upon hours on his platinum blonde rockabilly hair, performs this evangelist persona so parodically that it’s no wonder no one takes this group seriously. I am struck by how the group exaggerates this form of fanatical religiosity to the point that their entire agenda is farcical. Yet, the documentary wants its audience to believe that this group is serious, that this group actually has a message.

The documentary demonstrates, I believe, how parody is unable to be critical. Any of the people in Walmart’s parking lot listening to this group preach were there for the performance; no one actually took the message to “heart.” If parody is supposed to exaggerate the realism of its text, what happens when realism isn’t even on the table? What happens when parody is just a parody of itself? Does it just become mindless entertainment for the masses to buy?

Grilled Cheeses: Blatant Propaganda…or maybe I mean Procrastination

It has recently come to my attention that grilled cheese sandwiches are a rather appealing metaphor for writing a dissertation: It only has three ingredients (bread, butter, and cheese=3 turns in the overarching framework/argument) and three tools at the most (skillet, spatula, and stove=three major interventions). Plus, grilled cheeses must be simple because the more fancy and convoluted they get, the more they become something else. Grilled cheeses should only take a short amount of time to both prepare and eat. Grilled cheeses always have the chance of getting severely burned and quickly inedible for those of us who wonder away from the stove while cooking. Grilled cheeses always require a good two or three flips before they really grill correctly. Grilled cheeses can be made in the fanciest of condos or on the most questionable of Bunsen Burners while camping. Grilled cheeses smell good one moment and like ass the next moment. Grilled cheeses grease up anything you touch while eating them. And most importantly, grilled cheeses go well with budweiser or wine or whisky.

Defining Politics

So, my job given to me this summer was to really work out my definitions of large concepts: “capitalism,” “neoliberalism,” “culture,” and most importantly “politics.” This has proven to be a rather difficult feat considering that “politics” has become such a free-for-all word. I could define it according to scholarship on “identity politics” or criticism on contract theory and classical liberalism or theories of H/history. My major inclination is just to sum it up as govermental regulation, but this fails to engage any line of scholarship very much (it lacks the process of getting there, etc.).

In my studies over this summer, I have unfortunately come up against the fact that very few theorists actually define the word “politics” straightforwardly. Jameson does, although I question his consistency. The Saldivar brothers don’t. Anzaldua doesn’t. Perez-Torres completely alludes a definition. Foucault almost does (although I think it becomes something else before he’s able to just define it). Harvey does for the most part (although it is often coated with other people’s ideas). Carole Pateman assumes a definition without ever actually speaking to it. I could go on and on. The sad fact of the matter is I still don’t have a straight definition. It’s as though I’m incapable of actually defining the term along any lines. I keep simply producing bad sitcom one-liners. It’s completely frustrating.

Luckily Monty Python puts everything back into perspective:

No Borders Camp/Campemento Contra Las Fronteras

On both sides of the U.S.-Mexico frontera, people (mostly kids) camp out to protest the border wall, although their message is much greater than GWB’s archaic “plan” to build a very long wall. No Borders Camp has been around for a while now, but the most recent run in with the Border Patrol (pinche pendejos!) was over breakfast…. http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/11/09/18459625.php

I like to think that No Borders Camp is gaining some justice and awareness on the problematics of borders; however, this form of protest seems to be nostaglic for Ghandi-esque and passive 1960s forms, which just doesn’t seem to work anymore. And with No Borders being a passive group movement, the Border Patrol is often able to retaliate in violent style:

Regardless, the wall is still being built, although perhaps with a bit less seriousness as we get closer and closer to GWB’s end (yea!). This form of protesting can only result in moments of “peace” (as the article above shows), but it rarely figures into any notion of “progress.” These forms of protests are perhaps now simply gestures of awareness, as teleological desires appear to be impossible to achieve without a threat to money or anarchy-level riots/violence. It makes me wonder if political progress is simply a pipe dream fed to me by capitalism under the guise of justice.

Viramontes, Perspective, and Time

I have just finished Helena Maria Viramontes’ new(er) novel Their Dogs Came With Them, and being a HUGE fan of her first novel Under the Feet of Jesus, I was a bit broad-sided by this novel. Following a trend in “postmodern” L.A. fiction, Viramontes embraces the multiple-character-perspective approach, much like Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, but not as well executed or as surprising as Yamashita.  She also adopts a much more broadly disjointed time structure within this novel compared to Under the Feet of Jesus that appears rather uninspired and trite in this “new” millenium. But evaluations aside, the novel opens up some questions about the use of perspective and time within the “genre” of Latina/o literature.

The multiple-character-perspective form of the novel at first appears to be an eclectic hodgepodge of perspectives coming from the same cloth. You know, a sort of politics of difference within commonality. But, as the novel goes on, it becomes an identity exercise, where the game seems to be how many identities can one create in East L.A. in the 60s. This exercise or game forces the question of whether identity can be anything more than brief portraits of bodies without any real substance. I mean the three main character perspectives (the talkless girl growing up with her grandparents, the girl-boy gangbanger who is homeless, and the religious-angel girl) all become caricatures of these descriptions. They are simply bodies parading under the not-so-deep sign of “identity” markers: girl, gangbanger, “dumb,” homeless, religious, mexican, american. The problem is that these identity markers never actually say or do anything; they are just floating words of description and setting that don’t necessarily make a narrative, offer a theoretical/critical meaning/politics. Latinidad and chicanisma become arbitrary descriptors, leaving a lack of critical development or productivity. This form, thus, constructs a rather unproductive contradiction: it highlights the failures of “identity,” while remaining wholly indebted to some faith in the power of identity. This is definitely not Faulkner’s multiple perspective, instead proving to be more inline with a surface niche marketing technique.

But this lack of critical productivity is perhaps nothing new after (or during?) postmodernism, and under late capitalism, of course, the whole notion of “productivity” is under question, and often invoked as nostalgia. Pulling a rather overdone “nostalgia” move, the novel returns to a postmodern structure of time where each character is being told from childhood to the “present-day” 60s in disjointed, fragmented movements. Unlike Under the Feet of Jesus, where Estrella’s memory was the cause of such movements, Their Dogs Came With Them simply floats in and out of times without relation to the narrative as a whole. One moment we are seeing Turtle as a young girl trying to be a brother to her brother and the next we see Turtle as a homeless woman still trying to be a brother to her brother, but the descriptions of her looks and her personal psychoses seem to be stagnant signifiers without a signified. Thus, these movements appear to simply be character development that doesn’t actually take the narrative anywhere. But, as I already stated, these characters, these identities, are arbitrary and uncritical, which makes this “character development” uninspired. I do not prefer chronological, linear narrative over fragmented narrative, but I expect “time” to have purpose in the narrative. Viramontes seems to lack purpose on this front, as she falls into the trap of creating characters over a story.

Of course, Viramontes is highly appreciated for her beautiful phrasing, and she completely delivers on this front. She also attempts to paint a very specific historical moment in East L.A., although I think the history looks more like a fashion commercial than a politics. But, most of all, her novel brings to question what might be the purpose of identity in Latina/o/Chicana/o literature if it solely becomes a marketing tool or looks like an arbitrary body wearing certain “identity-filled” clothes? What does fucking with time do to make the narrative say something other than “look at this character some more! oooo and ahhhh”? Where is the politics? Where is the critical meaning?

Tornados, BBQs, and Dissertations, Oh My!

Upon arriving in Colorado for post-exam regrouping, I was immediately taken through the tornado strewn areas of north-eastern Colorado, a 2-hour side-trip on the way to the folks’ from the airport. After being on an airplane for more than my nicotine-craving body could handle, I was propelled to look at rather awesome home destruction and tree-stripping:

Flash forward: My partner has been BBQing like mad ever since I’ve gotten back. I’ve eaten so much meat in the past 2 or 3 weeks and have so much testosterone in my system from the meat that I don’t think I’m legitimately a woman anymore. On top of this, our fridge is full of random bits of leftover meat, so even my “snacks” are…yes, you guessed it, more meat. Growing up, I didn’t even know this much meat existed! But, it has kept me well-fed and fiesty. As Homer Simpson so eloquently put it, “All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say ‘Yo Goober! Where’s the meat!?’ I’m trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don’t win friends with salad.”

Flash backward: Passing exams means the inevitable dissertation is officially here; they signal the rite of passage known as ”You are now worthy to write a scholarly book.” And I have a topic, research questions, beginnings of chapters. But, I really don’t have an argument, a clear and definitive intervention…you know, all the things that actually matter in the humanities. But, I keep working on this damn chapter, as though some divine light will suddenly shoot down from the sky, presenting me with a brilliant framework.

“Brilliant” (meaning “cliche”) Analogies: Metaphysical one: I *AM* the tornado and the meat consumed. Neo-Marxist/Neo-Socialist one: Surplus capital going to the rebuilding of tornado-damaged buildings in the name of “philanthropy” (instead of to bridging the gap between rich and poor), along with my bourgeoisie consumption of meat to the point of commodity fetishism, solely veils the real problem of class inequality, so quit whining about your dissertation. Psychoanalytical one: the meat and tornado destruction are symbolic of the Other’s dissertation Real. French Feminist one: The phallocentrism of the meat has sold my body to the phallic eye of the tornado; I must subvert my commodified body into writing, language, and voice. Derridean one: not A and A; welcome to aporia, you cheeky bastards. Foucauldian one: I must not think of the tornado, the meat, and the dissertation as being institutions of vertical power but as a moving, unstable situation of disciplines, discursively and strategically unbalancing the force of relation.

Blanket Me in Institutionalism and then Suffocate Me with a Pillow

As I read Jameson’s Archeaologies of the Future, I have accepted that the majority of his critiques are solely about privileging the dialectical process of thinking and of argumentation. The irony of this dialectic privilege is that he really doesn’t care what the end result of the argument is, solely as long as it uses dialectic thinking. For instance, during one of his didactic moments (pg. 65-66), he positions Feuerbach and Marx “against” one another, but Marx and Feuerbach are saying the same thing.  The only difference (or conflict) between the two is that Feuerbach’s analysis is more dialectically nuanced than Marx’s.

This infuriates me as I try to map out social and political teleologies. I am constantly being disappointed by Left-Hegelian analysis, as they simply uphold a “change” of class roles (i.e., the one in bondage is actually more “powerful” than the lord via the means of production) as long as it includes a dialectical process of consciousness and denial. But, they badly miss the step of wanting to change the system where hierarchy and hegemony persist. Roles change but the “system” remains the same. Jameson is able to get away with this stance since his book is dealing with Utopia, a teleology that is riddled with impossibility, nostalgia, and a lack of actual social/political difference. And he creates an amazing historical map of utopian thought, although overflowing with semiotic boxes. Yet, so far, the book’s purpose is lackluster in a powerful argument, opting instead to just (re)create the process without an end. This might change as I get closer to finishing it.

Nevertheless, the cynic in me sees this type of scholarly work as solely a performance of scapegoating. It’s as though academics can’t offer a solution or answer to the faulty and problematic anymore, especially on a social level. They keep their answers so internal to the minute (i.e., a book, a film, the process of “thought,” the conceptual, etc.) that their work lacks any material significance. Perhaps the true irony of Jameson’s book is that it is critiquing this internality while also remaining internal to it.

I know, I know. The job of the academic (in the humanities) is not to provoke or solve the social real, especially literature geeks. My profs and fellow grad students constantly remind each other of this, as though we can escape the fact that the political pundits who are supposed to be solving problems are not and the intelligensia of the U.S. avoid it even though they are better equipped mentally and analytically to perform it or at least imagine it. Such a disappoint. Perhaps Jameson is right, although I have overstepped his boundaries to an extent: “[T]he function of Imagination slowly atrophies for want of use; it is this process which we have called the waning of the Utopian impulse, the enfeeblement of Utopian desire, and which saps our political options and tends to leave us all in the helpless position of passive accomplices and impotent handwringers” (55).

 

The Children Are Our Future…No, no they are not

Lee Edelman begins his book No Future with an analysis about how the gay community refuses the liberalist (and, personally, capitalistic and libertarian) notion that “The Children Are Our Future,” the slogan rampant in Reagan’s and Bush Sr.’s 1980s. He believes that the gay refusal of “life,” and the subsequent hailing of “death,” is a catalyst for the queer/homosexual “radical refusal of meaning” (149) since queerness operates outside its “political symptoms,” rendering “politics” unthinkable (3). He argues that the figure and/or image of the Child shapes the logic of the political, shapes the way politics must be thought. This hyper-enforced meaning of the Child, however, is operating completely under political rhetoric, a point that Edelman ignores in favor of philosophies of “thought.”

The rhetoric of “Child” within U.S. governemental policy during the 1980s influenced The War on Drugs,  and Nancy Reagan’s implementation of the slogan and children programs for ”Just Say No” ironically became a staple of T-shirts worn by stoners in the 90s. Nevertheless, the fact that this “War” allowed the U.S. to infiltrate Colombia and Venezuela in order to control their exportation of resources suggests that “Child” was simply a rheotrical device for U.S. citizens to cover up the U.S. government’s neo-imperial ventures. The fact that the U.S. government has a history of beginning civil wars in Latin America by funding militia groups one year and the ruling dictatorships another year, often disguised within the U.S. under “Child,” demonstrates that “Child” is actually an image of neoliberalist war, not “life.” And although this is certainly a form of a very specific type of “future,” it is a “future” that begs the question of life and death, yielding them inseparable under governmental rhetoric. It is a future that I don’t want any part of…  Maybe I should get my tubes tied.