"My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love"
Two days ago was the best of grad school and the worst of grad school. In the early afternoon, I went to a critical race theory symposium at the law school to hear David L. Eng speak. Eng has been one of my theoretical heroes since I read his book Racial Castration last year, which is about the feminization of Asian American masculinity. (I'm thrilled to report that he seemed like a big gay bespectacled teddy bear.)
Rereading the introduction of RC today, I found this gem: "In Asian American political struggles it is thus crucial that we do not conflate our conflicted identifications with our desired identities. To understand this distinction -- to understand that identification is the mechanism through which dominant histories and memories often become internalized as our own -- is to understand that we are all borrowers and thus not pure. It is to underscore that our social identities as well as our political intentions are not irreproachable, that political agency while a necessary goal must be continually interrogated for its slippages, thought of more as a variable process than a permanent position. To acknowledge that our identifications come from elsewhere -- from overlapping and opposing communities -- is to understand that our seemingly voluntary and self-willed political agendas are sometimes misaligned, compromised, or curtailed. As the subject can never be aligned with the agent, so, too, identity and identification never quite meet. All identifications are inevitably failed identifications, a continual passing as a coherent and stable social identity" (as we say in the academic world, my emphasis).
The discrepancy between desire and politics was also the theme of the Kara Walker retrospective at the Hammer Museum that I went to later that afternoon. I had read a little about Walker (while copy-editing at Meridians?) but I'd never seen her work in person before. It was less her signature silhouettes and more her writings that made the exhibit meaningful for me, in particular a collection of drawings, watercolors, and musings called "Censorship?" that responded to critics' accusations that her work wasn't pro-black/anti-racist (enough). I really loved this:
in My first Racialized
Sex fantasy Me and an (unnamed)
Black girlfriend decide to "Bring Down"
David Duke the former Klansman and
almost Louisiana Senator in SCANDAL!
yes, he's Seduced RAPED by two Black girls
And then tied, humiliated, Photograped etc.
Somehow it was more exciting then--
Doesn't Seem So unlikely now--
But that I would Fuck an
Avowed RACIST -- not at all unusual,
Since All I want is to Be loved by you
And to Share all that deep contradictory
love I possess. Make myself
Your Slave girl So you will Make
yourself my equal -- if only for a Minute
(Do I lower Myself onto you? Do you raise yourself up to me?)
or Neuter? or Nought
As for the "worst of grad school" part, well, basically I was judged "Uncool" and ditched at the museum by this hipster girl in my department that I went to the exhibit with. I have stewed over it all weekend, so I am tired of thinking about it. The point is that the whole episode stirred afresh my hatred for grad students, especially the ones in my department, where asshat-hipsterdom is overly represented.
I guess it is true that nice girls, even marginally nice ones like me, finish last.
Rereading the introduction of RC today, I found this gem: "In Asian American political struggles it is thus crucial that we do not conflate our conflicted identifications with our desired identities. To understand this distinction -- to understand that identification is the mechanism through which dominant histories and memories often become internalized as our own -- is to understand that we are all borrowers and thus not pure. It is to underscore that our social identities as well as our political intentions are not irreproachable, that political agency while a necessary goal must be continually interrogated for its slippages, thought of more as a variable process than a permanent position. To acknowledge that our identifications come from elsewhere -- from overlapping and opposing communities -- is to understand that our seemingly voluntary and self-willed political agendas are sometimes misaligned, compromised, or curtailed. As the subject can never be aligned with the agent, so, too, identity and identification never quite meet. All identifications are inevitably failed identifications, a continual passing as a coherent and stable social identity" (as we say in the academic world, my emphasis).
The discrepancy between desire and politics was also the theme of the Kara Walker retrospective at the Hammer Museum that I went to later that afternoon. I had read a little about Walker (while copy-editing at Meridians?) but I'd never seen her work in person before. It was less her signature silhouettes and more her writings that made the exhibit meaningful for me, in particular a collection of drawings, watercolors, and musings called "Censorship?" that responded to critics' accusations that her work wasn't pro-black/anti-racist (enough). I really loved this:
in My first Racialized
Sex fantasy Me and an (unnamed)
Black girlfriend decide to "Bring Down"
David Duke the former Klansman and
almost Louisiana Senator in SCANDAL!
yes, he's Seduced RAPED by two Black girls
And then tied, humiliated, Photograped etc.
Somehow it was more exciting then--
Doesn't Seem So unlikely now--
But that I would Fuck an
Avowed RACIST -- not at all unusual,
Since All I want is to Be loved by you
And to Share all that deep contradictory
love I possess. Make myself
Your Slave girl So you will Make
yourself my equal -- if only for a Minute
(Do I lower Myself onto you? Do you raise yourself up to me?)
or Neuter? or Nought
As for the "worst of grad school" part, well, basically I was judged "Uncool" and ditched at the museum by this hipster girl in my department that I went to the exhibit with. I have stewed over it all weekend, so I am tired of thinking about it. The point is that the whole episode stirred afresh my hatred for grad students, especially the ones in my department, where asshat-hipsterdom is overly represented.
I guess it is true that nice girls, even marginally nice ones like me, finish last.