divas, divers, dumpsters: don't go there

ignore me, this post
no coherence
nothing about affective communities
it's about the dysfunctional non communities that exist in many departmental pockets.....
__________________

some book projects are deemed "second books" and that is a not so subtle euphemism for "don't write that until you have tenure"

i did not dread coming back to grad school b/c i felt like a new beginning and a new program (not another English dept basically), so i was all good about it. still am feeling good about department, student, colleagues and professors. just recently been having kind of a panic attacks about what i might write for my larger project or the diss. I had intentions to write about arab americans and i will, but i keep having haunting of past shit that compels me to write about it b/c it does MATTER in material ways w/ aesthetic and political consequences.

who bothers me?

• academic divas
• sanctimonious fuckers who think that their politics are the only way
• white anthropologists who raider communities of color and publish tenure books, gain big name at tier 1 universities, and mock those who are not in prestigious institutions w/ 50 page CVs

These are gripes from my past. i need to get over it. i need to calm the fuck down. I had a little bit of a break down today. we talked about Bettie's Women w/o Class and hated the book. It isn't as exploitive as many ethnographies that i have read but my hysteria (45 minutes of nonstop crying) were not about the book; it was about my own experiences w/ academic violence and violations, the way that ethics can be arbitrary and gain purchase discursively. Manipulative and evil people who fuck over their grad students, who abuse people their are close to get ahead ARE manipulative and evil and they 'win'.

lawyers are scum. there are lots of scum at the bottom of the dumpster -- i have never been a diver or a diva. i don't want to be s cum. i don't have to be scum to get ahead. i can treat people w/ decency and respect and still do all that i want to do. why am i getting it all twisted?

today is an anniversary. i need to mark a loss and my BFF in Michigan says i should mark the date but thinking of something that is positive that i will accomplish for next year.

here's what i texted her:

i will not let anyone fuck me over in the next year
i will not let myself fuck around unnecessarily ( i can have fun but not waste time that should go towards work)
i will not fuck up in terms of my labor and the things that matter to me: writing, breathing, friendships

meditating on my affective communities, friendships, and networks that do and will sustain me.