Random thoughts as a way of procrastinating

Why is it that I always end up screwing things up when I need to be more careful? The committee member that recently signed on and is still trying to figure out whether I’m worthy of his attention asked me to send him the proposal that I said I’d send Friday. He wanted to read it in the plane back to the U.S. from England (where he was to give a series of talks). Even if I had said I’d send it Friday, I actually didn’t expect him to read it any time soon. I mean, I’m going to turn it in Monday, and I’d be being obnoxious to think that he can give me comments at this late date, right? But then since he was being good and asking me for the proposal, I hurriedly sent it along. Only to find out later when I went to campus to print out a copy for myself–I had bcc-ed myself on the email–that I had sent him a blank document. I don’t know how that came to be. I’m suspecting that it was the skimpy internect connection, maybe, but he has no way of knowing that, right? So I freaked out for a moment. He’s going to think I’m flaky now. Oh sh**.

Then I went to the gym as planned. Since there was nothing I could do at the moment. And there was no way I was going to run back home to send him the document again. He can wait for at least two hours is what I thought.

I’ve sent the document again, and it looks like it has been sent this time. Whew. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to read it in the plane, but . . . there’s nothing I can do about that now.

I should have been reading Melanie Klein’s Love, Hate, and Reparation, or going over the proposal, but I didn’t want to do either. So I finished Nicholasa Mohr’s Nilda and read an article by Laura Briggs online on transnational adoption. The article somehow made me feel better. Or I should be more precise and say that the article’s considered critique of liberal internationalism made me feel better. I’m trying to wrap my head around critiques of liberalism these days. I understand the critiques. But I also think these critiques may have to answer the question posed by one of the Americanist professors in my dept to a very high-profile critic of liberalism: “What’s the alternative, then?” So I’m trying to understand, as thoroughly as possible, liberalism and the disstisfactoin it generated and still generates. Often, it seems to me, that the critics of liberalism themselves are not always devoid of liberal leanings. This is the non-American me speaking.

Ummm

I think I had a “moment” with my advisor in class today. I wouldn’t say it was confrontational, but it was . . . well, a difficult moment. I probably should not have criticized the critic we read in such an ungenerous manner (and also in a way that didn’t make much sense), especially since I’m pretty sure they’re friends, but . . . well . . .

Today’s class was pretty heavy. I still need to unload and decompress some of the things that came up . . . . but I’m overall confused about the state of the field, if I may.

Maybe it’s my beef with postcolonialism as an academic formation that I took out on the work that we read. And the way that now people seem to have no problem with thinking about postcolonial studies in relation to American studies. I’m generally okay with this. But I do have one big concern about the rise of the U.S. empire in American studies. Although I don’t think it intends to do this, I think it in some cases ends up reifying U.S. hegemony. One of the things I think deserves a lot more careful scrutiny is the way the study of the U.S. as an empire assumes that the countries that are said to be in a ex-colonial or a neocolonial relation to the U.S. don’t have any agency in their dealings with the U.S. Which is not to say that U.S. military force and economic dominance puts these countries in a subordinate position in their diplomatic negotiations. No, not at all. But these are much more complicated relations than can be explained through a U.S.-just-reigns-over-everything model. I think this kind of approach unwittingly deprives the countries in a “dependent” relation with the U.S. of agency and ends up reaffirming the U.S. as an empire. Unfortunately, this seems very much a governing trend in American studies now. When I read the essays in an essay collection like Shades of a Planet: U.S. literature as World literature, I can’t help feeling that what they’re arguing for so misses the point. The problem is not that nobody reads American literature as world literature, but that no other literature is read very much at all in the States. In other words, world literature really doesn’t have that much place in the U.S. And I’m remembering Lawrence Venuti’s point that the number of books written in languages other than English that are translated into English is really small. American readers do not read works in translation. There’s no cultural capital for literature written in languages other than, well, maybe a handful.

Dark

I got my fourth reader’s comment on my draft today. I don’t think I have any major work ahead now (not that I can do anything about it if I do; it’s due in a few days). My reader commented on three things. The last of which was a recommendation that I strike out the last sentence of the proposal before I move onto the chapter summaries where I try to insert a line about how what I’m looking at can be “resistant.” She said she had a beef with ethnic studies’ obligatory gesture toward resistance. Ha ha. I have no problem with striking out that line because . . . I guess I felt like I had to link (or simulate a link) between what I’m doing and resistance. That last line had a redemptive gesture out of line with the rest of the proposal. She said I didn’t need to be redemptive. And she noted that my opening, especially, is dark.

It is. That’s how I like my work to be. Deep and dark. Sometimes I feel like I need to be more “constructive” whatever that means, but those forced gestures often turn out to be failures. I like reading constructive theory; optimistic accounts of how we can all strive toward a better future. I just can’t participate in that vein of optimism.

It’d be interesting to see what conversations emerge from Walter Mignolo’s talk tomorrow. Yes, Mignolo is coming for a talk here! I’m excited! The assigned readings were articles from a special issue of Cultural Studies that sample works from the Modernity/Coloniality research program (or the MC program). I had so many moments where I had to stop when I was doing the reading last night. I really take their initiative to rethink modernity and their critique of a Eurocentric modernity seriously. I really want to believe that there is an exteriority–an exteriority that is in continuity with the interior–to moderniy, what Mignolo calls the dark side of modernity, from which one can work out an alternative to Eurocentrism. But then I find it hard to stomach a line such as “the ultimate goal is the total liberation of all humankind” (believe was from Escobar’s essay). I just find that very, very hard to buy. It’s the absoluteness of the “Other” in their argument that unsettles me. But I love what they do. I’ll see how conversation goes . . .

Reading literature

I’ve been reading a lot of fiction lately, both for a class that I’m sitting in on this semester and to make up for my lack of exposure to Latino literature. A work that I really enjoyed and an author I discovered: Carlos Bulosan’s The Cry and the Dedication and Nicholasa Mohr. Bulosan’s novel contributed to my impoverishment toward the end of the month (it was pwetty expensive), but it was worth every cent. It reminded me of Martin Delaney’s Blake a bit (l’d call them literature of organization!), and it helped me clarify some of the things I’ve noted in America Is In the Heart (the place of white and Filipina women in his literary imagination; fraternity, etc.). In its spirit and themes, it also reminded me of some of the postwar Korean literature on the war time and the war experience.

Nicholasa Mohr is a Puerto Rican American author. I think she’s classified as an author of young adult fiction, but her stories are deep and dark. I’m glad I got to know of her works, since it looks like a good part of my dissertation is going to be on Puerto Ricans and Cubans (not to mention Mexican Americans) in the 1960s. I’ve read El Bronx Remembered; am reading In Nueva York; and have borrow directed Nilda.

In terms of criticism, I’m reading (and enjoying reading) political philosophy and theory these days. I like William Connolly a lot. I’ll move on to Wendy Brown after him.

I’m doing this as I nervously await two profs on my committee to get back to me about the draft I sent them. The plan is to revise again after I get their comments and then show this version to the other two senior profs on my committee before I hand it in, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to do that. Depends on how quickly they turn around the stuff. Oh well, I’ll do what I can. The proposal is due in a week.

what injustice . . .

“What injustice may I be concealing in my ideal so that I can dream my dream of a world without injustice?”
I can’t believe I’m tearing up over William Connolly’s Identity\Difference. But I am. It’s a great book.

The Square

It’s a Korean novel, or novella, I first read in high school. I think. It was a long time ago. I’ve actually been thinking about this work for quite some time. Since last winter? Maybe? No, it all began in the spring when I met with my advisor and she talked about Richard Kim’s works. What she said reminded me of Choi’s work. The protagonist, a former POW in the Korean War, decides to defect to a Third Country during the POW exchange. In a ship headed to Calcutta, he flings himself into the sea . . .

The novella keeps coming back to me over and over again, though I try to keep it out of my mind. Though it’s a vague feeling, I think I want to say something about current discussions on cosmopolitanism through this novella. Restlss, last night, I finally glanced at the work online. Despite the recurring thoughts on the book, I haven’t reread the book. Not that I have one with me. Or not that the library owns a copy. (which, by the way, is really too bad. Oh, well, not so much my loss, I guess, since I already know the book) I thought I would get one this summer when I was in Seoul. And I didn’t. What’s funny is that I didn’t think about Choi’s work the same way, with the same urgency, I did when I was here. So I didn’t get my lazy ass to a bookstore to pick up a copy. Which I totally should have done. (the online version is hard to read and it has typos, sigh)

I even have a working title for the essay: “Suicidal Cosmopolitanism, Or, What’s Missing in Contemporary Discussions on Cosmopolitanism.” Ha ha! Will I work on it? I don’t know. I have neither the time nor energy for this right now. I think what I’ll do is keep thinking about the issues raised by the novella and by cosmopolitanism . . . and only write about it if the urge becomes so pressing I can’t do anything else.

The novella, much to the detriment of the English reading public, has not been translated. Well, I think it was translated by a priest at a Korean university a while ago, but copies of this English edition are extremely rare. I tried looking it up a couple months ago–to get one for my advisor if there’s one–and found one by a London-based bookseller who was charging 200 pounds for it. 200 pounds . . . that’s like $400, isn’t it?