I know Althusser (caveat), but his insight that there is nothing outside of ideology (which for him is actions that support power, not beliefs) is undervalued. I'm so tired of obviously fascist patriarchal oppressors telling us they're "critical thinkers not ideologues" when they obviously do everything to uphold power as it is. You can't step outside of ideology without stepping into another ideological system. Better to know what system you are promoting rather than "unwittingly" back evil.
Americans are obsessed with the romance of revolution, of violently saying no to power, but because they are rarely clear about what they support instead of this, it devolves into chaos and rule of the cruelest every time. When you step outside the law to demand justice, you have to know what other than the law gives you meaning and guides your vision of the future. Not every resistor should be forced to invent their own dream of the universe; they fight for something not just against this.
This is why the social justice movements of Occupy and BLM have been so powerful--they are guided by specific questions and policy changes that are about improving the lives of workers and minoritized people. So if course that are the movements that have been demonized as not having goals or an endgame--because their endgame would necessitate the end of the unchallenged, unmitigated right of the investor class to exploit suffering infinitely. "Hey, that's my moral chaos you're dismantling!"
2024 boardgame rehoming season is upon us! @mxtiffanyleigh and I have to get rid of games every 6 months or so, and selling them is way too tedious. Knowing they will get played helps us to part with them. If you live in North America and will pay us back for shipping (packing materials and USPS Ground), you can adopt some of these beauties for your game group. (If you live in NYC, you can come get them, but you do need to come to us in the Bronx.) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TMuZloPXN_mZuMmgmY87mKjzTo3wGtuhR5_ZS2vMJ7M
Last night we watched Aniara, a 2018 Swedish film based on an epic poem cycle by Harry Martinson. It hasn't been terribly well received, but we found it quite interesting. Everyone says it's bleak, but I was quite surprised by how relatively stable the society on the ship remains over the years. It's missing a lot about diversity and discrimination that would have made it more insightful, but the questions it raises are as foundational as those in Solaris. Worth seeing, certainly.
I applied for an internal grant that I didn't get because the grant is a reward for replacing an expensive textbook with free resources. I applied for the grant so that I can afford to replace an expensive textbook with free-to-students resources. Without the grant, I can't afford to do it. It really isn't free, ever, to just say, OK, no textbooks.
One of the reasons I never changed my eye doctor when I moved is that it's an excuse to visit my old neighborhood, where everyone calls me "my love." (Everyone here is "my love." I don't mind sharing.)
There's nothing going on at the NY Botanical Garden until the new show this weekend, but I had a friend in town from Thailand and I will use any excuse to check up on my little plant friends. #bloomscrolling
Applying for an internal grant to make and print course packets for my classes in the fall, because no textbook exists that I would actually want to teach from, and the alternative (everyone looking at random online versions of 1600-1760s source material on their computers) would make me lose what is left of my mind.
This spring, I printed course packets of the readings for my first-year writing class, and it was a huge hit, though quite expensive for me. I found a cheap printer that made it within the range of imagination, but doing it for all three of my classes in the fall would break the bank. Still, having an entire class looking at booklets of readings with the same pagination and text, no computers in sight--has there ever been anything more beautiful than that?
Someone in an office behind mine is trying to get an AI assistant to simplify a fraction and it's taking sooooooo many steps of miscommunication and correction. At one point, "OK. I'm looking up 'can you represent that as a fraction' on the web. I found some cool answers; check it out!"
For a long time, I've said that the thing I love about the gothic novel, in its eighteenth-century form, is that it appealed to young women particularly because it suggests that their fears are not stupid or insignificant; there really is a conspiracy against you, and you must act, now. (The conspiracy is patriarchy! They're not wrong!)
Teaching The Turn of the Screw today, it's like the perfect meta-gothic. The real danger is how we act on our certainty of danger!
Don't try putting an onion somewhere new. Just put the onions in the same place every time, so that you don't forget about them until they gradually liquify and mysteriously fill your home with a faint, untraceable odor, that, when finally exposed directly to the organs of sense, results in an hour of retching and cleansing and sorrow. Onions go in the onion place, every time!
@carrideen
same with potatoes. learned that the hard way when a random potato that somehow escaped a grocery bag stayed hidden in the car for a couple of weeks. unimaginable horrors.
I grew up in the 90s when you could talk back to police. I grew up talking back to police. Learning how to refuse to obey police was one of my earliest lessons. (Talk about white privilege!) After 9/11, every single moron with a badge suddenly became a little god who must be obeyed, and now they're carrying machine guns for some reason and wearing camo for some reason, and driving miniature tanks for some reason, and they bark "you're welcome" at you for some reason. They march now.
One of the many many lessons of Abu Ghraib that we refuse to learn is that when you give people no training, no oversight, no consequences, no ethical boundaries, and tell them to get 100% compliance, especially from people they hate, they will become sadistic torturers and murderers. Human beings are not compliant. Anyone who knows about human beings understands this, and most of us face consequences for exercising authority with violence. The police are making little Abu Ghraibs, everywhere.