February 9, 2001,
4:12 p.m. || nerve-wracking
My living nightmare -- explaining volumes and volumes of feminist
and queer theorizing about sex/gender/desire and the wide-ranging scope
of politics around transgendered identification and transsexuality in twenty
minutes --with only a few pages of Kate Bornstein's Gender Workbook
in the reader to work with-- saving enough room for the students to
talk about their fucking collages (assigned by the professor)
about how gender regulation has affected them. Collages. Not only did I have
to argue that one's psychical identifications did not necessarily "match" one's anatomy,
but that it wasn't a matter of "having the wrong body"
or "fixing" it so body aligned with self along a (historically and culturally contingent)
gender binary. How do I explain the range of options
and the level of debate when the students ask me the difference between transgender
and transsexual in less than five? It's making me nuts,
like a Planters factory.
A student approaches me after class to ask, "Is the professor ever
going to lecture, instead of just having discussion?"
And just last night as I was drifting off the sleep I delivered an
imaginary lecture about the history of art as activism to the students,
in a desperate attempt to make up for the rest of the class.
I am too invested in this teaching thing.
February 6, 2001,
8:20 a.m. || at the meridians
Last Friday after I got the conference
program, I called Mark from a public pay phone screaming like a crushed-out fourteen year-old, "I'm on a panel
with Evelynn Hammonds!"
I'm going to kill several birds with one stone -- I will answer
my e-mail (the ones that demand lengthy, thoughtful responses to
questions of transracial drag, the conflation of the personal with
the political, and "diversity training" among them) and simultaneously
craft entries for this site. I'm not the most prompt (ahem) respondent
in general, but as the Meridians conference approaches,
and with two more position papers to write by the end of April,
I'm especially terrible. I seem to have an undefinable writing quota
-- there's only so much I can do in a day, and I'm trying to reserve
my strength for tackling the phantasmatic analogy of race and sex
in digital space and the cultural politics of "free trade"
commodities.
(Why I didn't decide to do lit reviews like the others in my cohort,
I don't know.)
And on another level, I'd like to present this thing as a dialogue --
I get some amazing feedback (and good jokes!), stuff that makes me think
harder, and I'm seriously indebted. I think collaborative work is vital,
and speaking of (oh, what a segueway), the Punk Planet issue with my
collaborative column (weirdly edited, again) about the lynching
photography book is finally out on newsstands. Many thanks to
Dwayne Dixon at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke for agreeing
to participate in the experiment. As soon as I get a chance, I'll
put that column on the site.
On a last note, I have to seriously update my links again. I have a neglected list
making me feel like a
cad. Please, please, please send me to good sites.