torture as inverted mirror
de-bodiment
culture's viscera
intensive capital
the legal person
the future of endless war
persons who do not count as persons
Common Article 3
confiscation of humanity
body warehouse
necropolitics
"jail face"
homoerotic violence
bare life
the decline of the rehabilitative ideal
an excess of law
black sites
Son of Sam laws
the cultural barrier of clothes
grave violations
the captor's desire
architecture of reflection
the exponential freedom to isolate
undead life
military commisions act
the language of permissible treatment
new global gulag
imperial history of incarceration
temporal punishment and war without end
Arizona -- Iraq -- Haiti
secrecy as essence of prisons
de-citizenization
new war prisons
probable felons and the expectation of criminality
WHISC/SOA
life-long detention
the negation of negation
cultural phenomenology and affective engagement
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
flavor molecules
I just got back from the Reading Terminal Market in Philly, where I was ecstatic to find a fresh juice bar that had a carrot, celery, and beet-combo, as well as some good, cheap hummous, tabouli, and baba ghanoush.
I'm currently in town for the Big Academic Conference that many, many scholars dread because it means 1) being on the job market and having to block out the thousands of neurotic grad students all whipsering to themselves in the corners of hotel lobbies who are rehearsing their interview scripts while, simultaneously, doing it yourself; or, 2) being the person on the other end, watching the endless stream of stressed out job-seekers try to ease their way through what we all know is a very difficult and highly charged 30-minute interview; or, 3 [and the best reason to be here]) to participate in or attend one of the many, many organized panels on cutting-edge work in literary and cultural studies, and to catch up with old friends. That's why I'm here (although I have been made aware of rumors circulating that contradict this truth).
I rode in a car with my folks up from Delran up to my older sister's child-filled house in the big woods in northern NJ for Christmas day, and then took off to NYC where my younger sister lives with her husband in a tiny, little apt. in the West village. It was a busy, two-day period of family overload and couch-surfing, and when Kathy put me on a bus to Philly late this morning, I was grateful to be alone, with my thoughts.
I've arrived ahead of my friend, Gretchen, who will also here for the third reason listed above. She's not in, yet, so I made the executive decision to purchase the $10/day wireless connection in the hotel room.
Where we are staying is, uncannily, *right next door* to the Big Pharma building where my mother worked in a variety of non-pharma-related positions for her entire adult life. During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I scored a paid internship with a trade publisher at 401 North Broad St., and shared a ride with her. The internship, though, was so tedious that I had to invent ways to keep myself awake and entertained, including the time I called the Clearly Canadian beverage company on the 1-800 number that is listed on the side of the bottle -- the one that the bottles ask you to call if you have Questions? Comments? -- and asked them to account for how a pear-flavored soda in a glass bottle was in any way "all-natural." The answer, and I will never forget this, was that the company "extracted the flavor molecules" from the fruit, and that was why it was natural. O, right -- the flavor molecules . . . On the last day after two summers of paid work, during my exit-interview, the editor-in-charge told me that she was happy to hear I was going to graduate school since I clearly did not belong in the 9-to-5 world.
I'm getting side-tracked, though. I'll see what emerges during the conference and figure out a way to post it in an anonymous way.
I'm currently in town for the Big Academic Conference that many, many scholars dread because it means 1) being on the job market and having to block out the thousands of neurotic grad students all whipsering to themselves in the corners of hotel lobbies who are rehearsing their interview scripts while, simultaneously, doing it yourself; or, 2) being the person on the other end, watching the endless stream of stressed out job-seekers try to ease their way through what we all know is a very difficult and highly charged 30-minute interview; or, 3 [and the best reason to be here]) to participate in or attend one of the many, many organized panels on cutting-edge work in literary and cultural studies, and to catch up with old friends. That's why I'm here (although I have been made aware of rumors circulating that contradict this truth).
I rode in a car with my folks up from Delran up to my older sister's child-filled house in the big woods in northern NJ for Christmas day, and then took off to NYC where my younger sister lives with her husband in a tiny, little apt. in the West village. It was a busy, two-day period of family overload and couch-surfing, and when Kathy put me on a bus to Philly late this morning, I was grateful to be alone, with my thoughts.
I've arrived ahead of my friend, Gretchen, who will also here for the third reason listed above. She's not in, yet, so I made the executive decision to purchase the $10/day wireless connection in the hotel room.
Where we are staying is, uncannily, *right next door* to the Big Pharma building where my mother worked in a variety of non-pharma-related positions for her entire adult life. During the summers of my junior and senior years of college, I scored a paid internship with a trade publisher at 401 North Broad St., and shared a ride with her. The internship, though, was so tedious that I had to invent ways to keep myself awake and entertained, including the time I called the Clearly Canadian beverage company on the 1-800 number that is listed on the side of the bottle -- the one that the bottles ask you to call if you have Questions? Comments? -- and asked them to account for how a pear-flavored soda in a glass bottle was in any way "all-natural." The answer, and I will never forget this, was that the company "extracted the flavor molecules" from the fruit, and that was why it was natural. O, right -- the flavor molecules . . . On the last day after two summers of paid work, during my exit-interview, the editor-in-charge told me that she was happy to hear I was going to graduate school since I clearly did not belong in the 9-to-5 world.
I'm getting side-tracked, though. I'll see what emerges during the conference and figure out a way to post it in an anonymous way.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
statue (climb the tree)
Quickly -- as if no one from my family will be able to see, just by looking at recent history, that I have a blog and write about, well, all sorts of things -- I want to write that I am in Delran and, soon, will meet a couple of my oldest friends. Stephen and Michael (and, I hope, maybe, Tommy) will be up at the Whistler's Inn in Cinnaminson, a local bar on the Rte 130 South, not too far from here. There are rumors that Renee will be there, but I have a feeling she might not be coming.
I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.
I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.
Can't wait to seem them both.
I met Stephen in Mrs. Klopstein's kindergarten class. A girl named Laura Eberhart and I used to play a game called "statue", in which we would talk about the statue in our kindergarten class and whether or not we thought we saw him move. Stephen, as the statue, would stand or sit perfectly still, not too far from us (hands up, thrust to the side, tongue sticking out, or whatever other kind of contortion he was inspired to express), and then move, just a very little bit, and Laura and I would grab on to each other and laugh and laugh. I don't know what happened to Laura. She was my first girlfriend, and gave me a big rock painted yellow, red, and green wrapped in tissue paper for Valentine's Day that year. I've known Stephen ever since then.
I met Michael when we were both put on the Delran little league, t-ball team. Michael warmed the bench with me while everyone else played the field. He had a pizza sauce stain on his baseball hat and a big smile. It was comforting to know someone nice was on the bench with me. I didn't see him again until we re-met in high school, as nacent punk rock kids who listened to the Dead Milkmen, the Meat Men, Misfits, Circle Jerks, Social Distortion. I once spent a couple of weeks of high school at his house, sleeping on his floor. I had a bad sinus infection, I remember. His dad got me to put on those climbing boots that have spikes in the sides to climb the tree in their back yard that they were cutting down. It was one of those things where I really didn't want to do it, I was scared, but Mike's dad kind of was like, "You'll do this, and then we'll all have done it, and we'll have a bond," and so I put a belt on around my waist, stuck on the boots, and climbed up the tree. It was great.
Can't wait to seem them both.
Monday, December 18, 2006
smile (caught in the machinations of the state)
Last spring, April to be exact, I headed out to the TxDPS on South Gessner to get a new driver's license. My license had expired and, for complex reasons, I could not renew my license on-line, like most people do. I knew that the line at South Gessner would be very, very long, so I packed a stack of student essays and a thermos of coffee, and drove out bright and early, just as the building was opening. I waited in the line to get to the front desk, filled out paper work, sat and graded until my number was called, waited in another line to get my thumbprints and photo taken, was issued my temporary license, and was told my new license would be arriving within four to six weeks. In all, it took about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. But I left relieved, thinking that I would never have to return to the building again.
But I was wrong. Four to six weeks passed, and my license never came. Then my temporary license expired. I was suddenly a driver with no state-issued license to account for my identity. Naturally, I got in my car, and drove, without a license, back to South Gessner. I stood in line for about two hours with everyone else and, when I got up to the counter, I told the woman working that I never received my license. She looked up my case, raised her eyebrows, and disappeared. When she came back, we had this little exchange:
"Did the electricity go out the day you were here?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"No. I mean, it didn't go out while I was in the building . . ."
"Okay -- the day you were here, the electricity went out and our computers went down. That means that your license was never processed. Here -- let me give you another temporary license and you'll get your license in four to six weeks."
"O, well, okay . . ."
I took the temporary license and went home. Four to six weeks passed and I received nothing in the mail. I drove back to the DPS again, this time a little angry.
I stood in line and imagined the speech I was to deliver to the new woman working there: "Look," I would say, "this is my third time here. I have waited, been patient, and waited again. If I don't receive my license today," I would say, thumping on the counter for emphasis, "there are going to be hundreds of activists clamoring for a better-run, full-service, clean TxDPS outside in no time, and the media will be all over it!" This, in my imagination, would guarantee that I would leave that day with my license in hand. When I got to the counter, though, my ferocity dissolved. I felt alone and grew nervous, instead. I simply told the worker that I still hadn't received my license and, um, could she maybe help me get it?
She looked up my file and, without saying a word to me, went over and spoke to a police officer while pointing over at me. The cop nodded and came over and sat down where the worker had been, which made me very anxious. The cop looked at the computer screen (which I couldn't see) and asked me if I had recently moved. I said no. She then told me that Austin had tried to deliver my license and that it was returned by the post office. I said, "None of my other mail has been returned," which is actually a lie, because Hank and I have had several problems with the postal system since we've moved in, but that's a totally different story.
So now I'm lying to the cop, and I also realize that she thinks I am only *pretending* to not have had my license delivered, that I must be involved in a racket in which I get multiple licenses sent to my address and -- I don't know, what? sell them to underaged drinkers? The cop looks at me in the eye and, coldly, tells me I need to go have a conversation with my post office about why they are returning my mail. She starts to get up to leave.
Defeated, I almost turned around and left but, in a moment of desperation, I asked, "So, there's *nothing* I can do, here, now, after waiting all this time, to get a new license?" And she replies, "If you have ten dollars, you can apply for a re-issue for a lost license."
Why didn't she say this to begin with?
"Okay," I said, "great -- here's ten bucks," and I shoved a crumpled ten dollar bill that smelled like the floor of Lola's at her and she gave me paperwork to fill out to get a new license. I then waited, further, for my number to be called to get my photo taken.
And this is where it gets weird. When I got up to the counter to get the photo taken, the woman working (note: no men work at this DPS, that I can tell) pulled up my file, and her face turned a dark shade of red. She started wringing her hands and hissing, "God!! This isn't a re-issue! God! I hate it when people don't do their freakin' job!! Jee-zuss!!" and she disappeared. When she came back, she had more paperwork, and explained to me that this was called a "Dropped Case," and that, rather than re-issue the license, Austin had to process the license by hand, and that it was sitting in a file somewhere, along with a bunch of others that needed tending to. Um, okay . . . I signed a form and asked, "How can I be guaranteed that this will be processed? I've been coming here since April, and no one seems to know what's going on." She told me that she would personally call Austin that day and have the license produced and, in a couple of weeks, I should call her directly and ask if the work went through. She wrote down her name and number. I thanked her and left, a bit mad, but relieved that this was going to finally happen.
But, of course, it doesn't. I think this is what Marxists like to call getting caught in the machinations of the state.
Early September, I dutifully call the DPS and ask for this woman. The reply was very curt: "She don't work here no more." When I tried to explain why I was calling, I was interrupted and asked for my license number. I gave it to the woman, and she looked up my file. "There's no record of your license being sent. You have to come in and have it re-issued." As soon as I started to say, "O no, hold on, you see, I've been coming in since April? and I've been getting the run-around? and I've already been 'in' and it doesn't seem to do any good," I realized it was already too late and there was pretty much nothing at all I could do except, once more, to drive down to South Gessner and wait in line.
So, now it is the fourth time I drive down there, on to 59, South Gessner exit, past the little strip malls, the low-income housing, the school, and into the parking lot. Once again, it is an early Friday morning and I have my coffee and a copy of everything dating back to April. Once again, I stand in line for two hours, like everybody else, waiting just to get to the Information Desk. I get up to the front and explain everything all over again. Once more I am told it is a dropped case. When I ask what happened to the woman who "helped" me last time (who had given me her name and number), I was told she freaked out and quit the week I was there and left all her work undone. I was issued another temporary license and go home, fuming.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I get an envelope in the mail from Austin.
It is from DPS! O, happy day!
Unfortunately, it was just a letter on baby blue paper, telling me that there was a computer error and that the processing of my license malfunctioned and, as a result, I needed to bring the letter with me back to my nearest DPS to get another one re-issued.
Great!
I chose the South Gessner office because, honestly, I was beginning to feel right at home with the grey walls, the dirty floors, the stains on the ceilings, the smell of the bathrooms that comes out into the waiting area, the screaming of children as they run past. I enjoyed the socio-economic puzzle that I pieced together about why everyone else in line was, always, a person of color and I was, each time, the only white person, and why, when white people did come in and see the line, they always, always, always, exclaimed, loudly enough for the entire line to hear: "WHAT?! O, please -- I don't have time for this," and left. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, listen, I've been coming since April, the line is *always* this big, the waiting room is always that crowded, and there is no "good" time to come to the DPS building. Jerks!" I felt like an expert. Well-seasoned.
So, this time, the fifth time, I get up to the counter in about an hour and a half, and show my Austin-issued letter. The woman pulls up the case. She frowns and says, "You've been waiting for this since April?" I say yes. She has me fill out the familiar re-issue forms. I sign in all the right places. I say, "You know, since this isn't really an error that *I* have made, maybe it would be okay if I don't have to wait in the waiting room?" And she is nice. And she says, "Of course," and writes "Walk Up" on the top of my form and tells me to go ahead on into the line to get the picture taken. This takes a blessedly short five minutes. But, the woman who is supposed to take my photograph is terrible. She raises her voice at me and tells me if I do not have the appropriate receipt I will have to go home and come back again. Feeling infantilized, and slightly criminalized, and trying not to cry, I pull out all of my papers that I brought with me and simply give her the stack. She fills out a form that says I do not have to pay and shoves overthing back at me. She turns to her computer and flatly commands, "Smile."
And, apparantly, I did. The license came in the mail today -- finally.
The smile is not a very happy one. I look sort of scared. In fact, it looks like I am flinching with my lips. It is an uneven smile, pulled up on my right side, just a bit. But my skin is clear, which is nice, and my hair has been freshly cut, but that smile . . . it looks like it has been waiting around since April, at least.
But I was wrong. Four to six weeks passed, and my license never came. Then my temporary license expired. I was suddenly a driver with no state-issued license to account for my identity. Naturally, I got in my car, and drove, without a license, back to South Gessner. I stood in line for about two hours with everyone else and, when I got up to the counter, I told the woman working that I never received my license. She looked up my case, raised her eyebrows, and disappeared. When she came back, we had this little exchange:
"Did the electricity go out the day you were here?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"No. I mean, it didn't go out while I was in the building . . ."
"Okay -- the day you were here, the electricity went out and our computers went down. That means that your license was never processed. Here -- let me give you another temporary license and you'll get your license in four to six weeks."
"O, well, okay . . ."
I took the temporary license and went home. Four to six weeks passed and I received nothing in the mail. I drove back to the DPS again, this time a little angry.
I stood in line and imagined the speech I was to deliver to the new woman working there: "Look," I would say, "this is my third time here. I have waited, been patient, and waited again. If I don't receive my license today," I would say, thumping on the counter for emphasis, "there are going to be hundreds of activists clamoring for a better-run, full-service, clean TxDPS outside in no time, and the media will be all over it!" This, in my imagination, would guarantee that I would leave that day with my license in hand. When I got to the counter, though, my ferocity dissolved. I felt alone and grew nervous, instead. I simply told the worker that I still hadn't received my license and, um, could she maybe help me get it?
She looked up my file and, without saying a word to me, went over and spoke to a police officer while pointing over at me. The cop nodded and came over and sat down where the worker had been, which made me very anxious. The cop looked at the computer screen (which I couldn't see) and asked me if I had recently moved. I said no. She then told me that Austin had tried to deliver my license and that it was returned by the post office. I said, "None of my other mail has been returned," which is actually a lie, because Hank and I have had several problems with the postal system since we've moved in, but that's a totally different story.
So now I'm lying to the cop, and I also realize that she thinks I am only *pretending* to not have had my license delivered, that I must be involved in a racket in which I get multiple licenses sent to my address and -- I don't know, what? sell them to underaged drinkers? The cop looks at me in the eye and, coldly, tells me I need to go have a conversation with my post office about why they are returning my mail. She starts to get up to leave.
Defeated, I almost turned around and left but, in a moment of desperation, I asked, "So, there's *nothing* I can do, here, now, after waiting all this time, to get a new license?" And she replies, "If you have ten dollars, you can apply for a re-issue for a lost license."
Why didn't she say this to begin with?
"Okay," I said, "great -- here's ten bucks," and I shoved a crumpled ten dollar bill that smelled like the floor of Lola's at her and she gave me paperwork to fill out to get a new license. I then waited, further, for my number to be called to get my photo taken.
And this is where it gets weird. When I got up to the counter to get the photo taken, the woman working (note: no men work at this DPS, that I can tell) pulled up my file, and her face turned a dark shade of red. She started wringing her hands and hissing, "God!! This isn't a re-issue! God! I hate it when people don't do their freakin' job!! Jee-zuss!!" and she disappeared. When she came back, she had more paperwork, and explained to me that this was called a "Dropped Case," and that, rather than re-issue the license, Austin had to process the license by hand, and that it was sitting in a file somewhere, along with a bunch of others that needed tending to. Um, okay . . . I signed a form and asked, "How can I be guaranteed that this will be processed? I've been coming here since April, and no one seems to know what's going on." She told me that she would personally call Austin that day and have the license produced and, in a couple of weeks, I should call her directly and ask if the work went through. She wrote down her name and number. I thanked her and left, a bit mad, but relieved that this was going to finally happen.
But, of course, it doesn't. I think this is what Marxists like to call getting caught in the machinations of the state.
Early September, I dutifully call the DPS and ask for this woman. The reply was very curt: "She don't work here no more." When I tried to explain why I was calling, I was interrupted and asked for my license number. I gave it to the woman, and she looked up my file. "There's no record of your license being sent. You have to come in and have it re-issued." As soon as I started to say, "O no, hold on, you see, I've been coming in since April? and I've been getting the run-around? and I've already been 'in' and it doesn't seem to do any good," I realized it was already too late and there was pretty much nothing at all I could do except, once more, to drive down to South Gessner and wait in line.
So, now it is the fourth time I drive down there, on to 59, South Gessner exit, past the little strip malls, the low-income housing, the school, and into the parking lot. Once again, it is an early Friday morning and I have my coffee and a copy of everything dating back to April. Once again, I stand in line for two hours, like everybody else, waiting just to get to the Information Desk. I get up to the front and explain everything all over again. Once more I am told it is a dropped case. When I ask what happened to the woman who "helped" me last time (who had given me her name and number), I was told she freaked out and quit the week I was there and left all her work undone. I was issued another temporary license and go home, fuming.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks later, I get an envelope in the mail from Austin.
It is from DPS! O, happy day!
Unfortunately, it was just a letter on baby blue paper, telling me that there was a computer error and that the processing of my license malfunctioned and, as a result, I needed to bring the letter with me back to my nearest DPS to get another one re-issued.
Great!
I chose the South Gessner office because, honestly, I was beginning to feel right at home with the grey walls, the dirty floors, the stains on the ceilings, the smell of the bathrooms that comes out into the waiting area, the screaming of children as they run past. I enjoyed the socio-economic puzzle that I pieced together about why everyone else in line was, always, a person of color and I was, each time, the only white person, and why, when white people did come in and see the line, they always, always, always, exclaimed, loudly enough for the entire line to hear: "WHAT?! O, please -- I don't have time for this," and left. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hey, listen, I've been coming since April, the line is *always* this big, the waiting room is always that crowded, and there is no "good" time to come to the DPS building. Jerks!" I felt like an expert. Well-seasoned.
So, this time, the fifth time, I get up to the counter in about an hour and a half, and show my Austin-issued letter. The woman pulls up the case. She frowns and says, "You've been waiting for this since April?" I say yes. She has me fill out the familiar re-issue forms. I sign in all the right places. I say, "You know, since this isn't really an error that *I* have made, maybe it would be okay if I don't have to wait in the waiting room?" And she is nice. And she says, "Of course," and writes "Walk Up" on the top of my form and tells me to go ahead on into the line to get the picture taken. This takes a blessedly short five minutes. But, the woman who is supposed to take my photograph is terrible. She raises her voice at me and tells me if I do not have the appropriate receipt I will have to go home and come back again. Feeling infantilized, and slightly criminalized, and trying not to cry, I pull out all of my papers that I brought with me and simply give her the stack. She fills out a form that says I do not have to pay and shoves overthing back at me. She turns to her computer and flatly commands, "Smile."
And, apparantly, I did. The license came in the mail today -- finally.
The smile is not a very happy one. I look sort of scared. In fact, it looks like I am flinching with my lips. It is an uneven smile, pulled up on my right side, just a bit. But my skin is clear, which is nice, and my hair has been freshly cut, but that smile . . . it looks like it has been waiting around since April, at least.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
reading, or studying?
Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture (2005)
Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2004)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Joseph Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (2003)
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (2003)
Micahel Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750- 1850 (1978)
A friend, excited about books, recently asked me what I have plans to read over the holiday break. I replied, "I don't read books anymore."
Reading? No, not exactly. What I do with books is study them -- and I don't write that to gloat or with sass. I write it with a sense of loss.
I live with someone who reads and reads and reads books. Everything he can get his hands on. (He recently read the biography of Harpo Marx. Ask him about it. He absolutely loved it!) And when he says, "Wow, Chuck, you *really* need to read this book," I think "I would really like to" and then look at the stack of books I've chosen to study and teach for the next couple of months and know that it will not happen any time soon. That's what I mean by "reading," and that's what I mean by "loss." (Which of my classical-realist friends will comment that I *am* reading and the distinction is negligible?)
I know I should "make time" to read for pleasure whenever I can, but I feel obligated to my studies. The works I choose are often difficult, both conceptually and emotionally (see above list). I want to be able to master the material so that when I get into the classroom or sit down to write about it I can feel confident enough to be critical. Delving into prison studies means entering a world of terror, isolation, and helplessness, and I need to be strong enough to do this for the next several months. (And I wonder about the very formulation of these last sentences -- it isn't as if I am inside the prison. What does studying all of this *do* to the reader? I cannot "make time" but I am not "doing time," either. How is a sentence not unlike a "sentence?")
In addition to the theory and history above, I've also been studying Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes (1975), John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers (1984), and the collected works in H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (1998), which includes pieces by some of the most famous U.S. prison writers like George Jackson, Kathy Boudin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Assata Shakur, and Iceberg Slim.
If you are a literary and cultural critic, immersed in your studies, you forget that most people will be surprised by what you actually do for a living. They think of professors as wealthy-looking, tweed-jacket-wearing, large-house-dwelling, married white men who mostly help young people realize the true meaning of life or that we are all different in our own special way. Thank you for that, Hollywood. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom about my work. It was probably the first time I fully and openly explained what she was reluctant to find out -- that I was doing research and writing on the subject of lynching. I was scouring the NAACP archives looking for materials on the lynching of black soldiers, still in uniform, during the Red Summer of 1919. It was exhausting, depressing work. After a moment she said to me, "Are you ever going to, you know, write about something happy?"
I think of the literary critic Elaine Scarry, who wrote the inimitable book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), which takes on the subjects of war and torture in devastating (and eye-opening) ways, and who, later in life, wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just (1999), which, even if many critics thought it was silly, must have been so good for her to work on, for her own sake.
What keeps me going is that I know I am learning -- a lot. And I know I can write about this. The research on lynching led to two, important publications, which is the whole point, after all -- to make public what feels like, right now, is so private: me surrounded by a pile of books and notes, feeling a bit like a lunatic.
Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (2004)
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Joseph Hallinan, Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation (2003)
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, eds., Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (2003)
Micahel Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750- 1850 (1978)
A friend, excited about books, recently asked me what I have plans to read over the holiday break. I replied, "I don't read books anymore."
Reading? No, not exactly. What I do with books is study them -- and I don't write that to gloat or with sass. I write it with a sense of loss.
I live with someone who reads and reads and reads books. Everything he can get his hands on. (He recently read the biography of Harpo Marx. Ask him about it. He absolutely loved it!) And when he says, "Wow, Chuck, you *really* need to read this book," I think "I would really like to" and then look at the stack of books I've chosen to study and teach for the next couple of months and know that it will not happen any time soon. That's what I mean by "reading," and that's what I mean by "loss." (Which of my classical-realist friends will comment that I *am* reading and the distinction is negligible?)
I know I should "make time" to read for pleasure whenever I can, but I feel obligated to my studies. The works I choose are often difficult, both conceptually and emotionally (see above list). I want to be able to master the material so that when I get into the classroom or sit down to write about it I can feel confident enough to be critical. Delving into prison studies means entering a world of terror, isolation, and helplessness, and I need to be strong enough to do this for the next several months. (And I wonder about the very formulation of these last sentences -- it isn't as if I am inside the prison. What does studying all of this *do* to the reader? I cannot "make time" but I am not "doing time," either. How is a sentence not unlike a "sentence?")
In addition to the theory and history above, I've also been studying Miguel Pinero's play Short Eyes (1975), John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers (1984), and the collected works in H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Writing in 20th-Century America (1998), which includes pieces by some of the most famous U.S. prison writers like George Jackson, Kathy Boudin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Assata Shakur, and Iceberg Slim.
If you are a literary and cultural critic, immersed in your studies, you forget that most people will be surprised by what you actually do for a living. They think of professors as wealthy-looking, tweed-jacket-wearing, large-house-dwelling, married white men who mostly help young people realize the true meaning of life or that we are all different in our own special way. Thank you for that, Hollywood. A few years ago, I had a conversation with my mom about my work. It was probably the first time I fully and openly explained what she was reluctant to find out -- that I was doing research and writing on the subject of lynching. I was scouring the NAACP archives looking for materials on the lynching of black soldiers, still in uniform, during the Red Summer of 1919. It was exhausting, depressing work. After a moment she said to me, "Are you ever going to, you know, write about something happy?"
I think of the literary critic Elaine Scarry, who wrote the inimitable book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985), which takes on the subjects of war and torture in devastating (and eye-opening) ways, and who, later in life, wrote a book called On Beauty and Being Just (1999), which, even if many critics thought it was silly, must have been so good for her to work on, for her own sake.
What keeps me going is that I know I am learning -- a lot. And I know I can write about this. The research on lynching led to two, important publications, which is the whole point, after all -- to make public what feels like, right now, is so private: me surrounded by a pile of books and notes, feeling a bit like a lunatic.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
sign here
Confronting plagiarists is an act so dreadful that I find myself in a panic, having to take time out to calm myself down through breathing exercises and to rehearse a psychological narration that tells me to take it easy.
Rooted in a not-too-distant history of shocking encounters in which students have flown into an aggressive rage, all directed at me, the confrontation might (if you are me) be likened to early-childhood run-ins with bullies, whose certain postures and words you learn too late to understand as immediate predecesors to the awful swinging of fists.
Childhood traumas aside, the only way to cope, for me, is to calm down -- way down. I must think and perform empathy. I must ease into the whole thing gradually, like this:
"Good morning, _____, how are you? Good to see you. O, before I forget, let's step outside for a minute, there is something I want to run by you. Let's sit. How about on this bench over here? So, _____, you know what plagiarism is, right? MmHm. You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Yeah, I have to have you fill out this paper work . . ."
[Wait for student to deny plagiarism three or four times in a row and ask, helplessly, "How could this be happening?"]
"See here, how I've highlighted the stuff you took from this web site? And now see here where you have the same thing? I know, you must be very, very tired. Listen, go ahead and sign this -- unless you want to arrange a meeting with the Chair and explain this in a different way -- no? Okay, then sign here. Look, since this is an automatic failure, there really is no need to take the final. No need for extra stress, right? Alright, take this copy of the form and go ahead and get yourself some coffee or tea or something. And, promise me you will never, ever do this again? Promise? Good. Take care now, and don't ignore me when you see me in the hallway next semester!"
I had to do this twice today. Both times, it was blessedly easy. No anger, just a little bit of crying and eventual acceptance. In the second case, I was actually thanked.
But it is exhausting. Having always been the kind of student who was in awe of his professors and who would never dream of plagiarizing, much less raising his voice to a professor or verbally attacking any of them, I find it unbelieveable when this happens -- not just to me, but to all of my colleagues as well.
I told myself I would never blog at work, but now look what I've gone ahead and done.
Rooted in a not-too-distant history of shocking encounters in which students have flown into an aggressive rage, all directed at me, the confrontation might (if you are me) be likened to early-childhood run-ins with bullies, whose certain postures and words you learn too late to understand as immediate predecesors to the awful swinging of fists.
Childhood traumas aside, the only way to cope, for me, is to calm down -- way down. I must think and perform empathy. I must ease into the whole thing gradually, like this:
"Good morning, _____, how are you? Good to see you. O, before I forget, let's step outside for a minute, there is something I want to run by you. Let's sit. How about on this bench over here? So, _____, you know what plagiarism is, right? MmHm. You know what I'm about to say, don't you? Yeah, I have to have you fill out this paper work . . ."
[Wait for student to deny plagiarism three or four times in a row and ask, helplessly, "How could this be happening?"]
"See here, how I've highlighted the stuff you took from this web site? And now see here where you have the same thing? I know, you must be very, very tired. Listen, go ahead and sign this -- unless you want to arrange a meeting with the Chair and explain this in a different way -- no? Okay, then sign here. Look, since this is an automatic failure, there really is no need to take the final. No need for extra stress, right? Alright, take this copy of the form and go ahead and get yourself some coffee or tea or something. And, promise me you will never, ever do this again? Promise? Good. Take care now, and don't ignore me when you see me in the hallway next semester!"
I had to do this twice today. Both times, it was blessedly easy. No anger, just a little bit of crying and eventual acceptance. In the second case, I was actually thanked.
But it is exhausting. Having always been the kind of student who was in awe of his professors and who would never dream of plagiarizing, much less raising his voice to a professor or verbally attacking any of them, I find it unbelieveable when this happens -- not just to me, but to all of my colleagues as well.
I told myself I would never blog at work, but now look what I've gone ahead and done.
Monday, December 11, 2006
not at all
This will not be one of those posts you see on people's blogs that make you think, "Why is this blogger even bothering?"
This couldn't possibly be the kind of post that sheepishly apologizes for having been so lax on updating the blog, and then muses, in a predictable fashion, about what might be preventing attentiveness to the blog.
Who, I ask, would be banal enough to actually write a tedious explanation about how busy the blogger has been, especially with work, so much so that, when time makes itself available, the last thing the blogger wants to do is natter on about recent surprises, foibles, failures, confusions, ironies, memories, dreams, or confessions?
You will not feel embarrassed for me as I self-consciously describe how the last post, a poem about depression, makes me feel like I must drum up something wickedly funny or artfully observant to clear the blog air.
Really, there will be no need to post a comment that says, "Glad to have you back!" or "Took you long enough . . ." or "That's okay, Chuck, we all get stuck every once in a while."
You will not have to cringe, think I have run out of ideas, hope that I get out of my rut, wonder if I am actually boring, or think ill of me because I have ended the post with the two-word pseudo-sentence "More later."
No, no -- not this post.
This couldn't possibly be the kind of post that sheepishly apologizes for having been so lax on updating the blog, and then muses, in a predictable fashion, about what might be preventing attentiveness to the blog.
Who, I ask, would be banal enough to actually write a tedious explanation about how busy the blogger has been, especially with work, so much so that, when time makes itself available, the last thing the blogger wants to do is natter on about recent surprises, foibles, failures, confusions, ironies, memories, dreams, or confessions?
You will not feel embarrassed for me as I self-consciously describe how the last post, a poem about depression, makes me feel like I must drum up something wickedly funny or artfully observant to clear the blog air.
Really, there will be no need to post a comment that says, "Glad to have you back!" or "Took you long enough . . ." or "That's okay, Chuck, we all get stuck every once in a while."
You will not have to cringe, think I have run out of ideas, hope that I get out of my rut, wonder if I am actually boring, or think ill of me because I have ended the post with the two-word pseudo-sentence "More later."
No, no -- not this post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
