February 21, 2002, 9:37 p.m.
Five hours ago Mark and I decided to drive to
Portland this weekend. He has $3,000 worth of vinyl to sell to a
record store there called Discourage, and I want to tag along for the
ride and the books on tape. I should be writing my column but instead I
am reading spoilers for upcoming episodes of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer
and cartoons about the right to pee, and eating some
of the Belgian chocolate from the gift basket I received last week
for speaking at an APA Alumni-Student Dinner. (It was about
"representation," so I talked about Karma, a comic book character
from Marvel's New Mutant series of the 1980s.) Next week I'm flying to
Oberlin in Ohio (birthplace of DEVO) for an APA conference, where I'm
scheduled to discuss the "future" of Asian American studies.
That's a sure doozy.
I received my grant award, so Race Riot should be printed
soon. Let's all cross our fingers, shall we?
February 13, 2002, 10:15 p.m.
I am in the middle of matching citations to
bibliographies in articles for anthologies. I've lost the cite for a
particular quote about maps of desire and displacement somewhere between
multiple incarnations and mysterious, missing disks -- all I know
is Public Culture, page seven. Tomorrow,
the anthropology library and its stacks for me, and would
someone please give me the haircut I've been longing for? A boy's cut, with bangs still long
enough to brush my eyebrows. Meanwhile deadlines fly by for various punk
obligations in a blur -- Punk Planet column,
Maximumrocknroll fanzine reviews, Race Riot copies -- but I can barely
manage to remember what day it is, at any given hour. Punk rock, so
what? But then I listen
to X-Ray Spex's "Germ-Free Adolescence" and remember why I was ever moved in the first
place.
I lied and prepared for the "third wave feminism" panel at
Practicing Transgression. I wore my mother's brown leather knee-high
boots from the late 70s, black stockings, the tan shirt
dress referencing Girl Scout or office drone, and a black
sweater. I forced a linear narrative out of my life to make it easy,
to organize my thoughts in an arbitrary and yet deliberate manner.
I wrote this story down (call the tabloids: "I
was a punk rocker and feminist theory saved my life") and read
it out loud to a crowded, wood-paneled room. I felt too warm and
out of place. I don't think I perform "woman of color"
very well.
One audience member wondered if the "third wave" wasn't a response to
the "second wave," as daughters to their mothers. Gingerly handling the
microphone, I cracked a joke about my mother in desperation (something
about how when I was an activist, my mother told me to wear good shoes
so I could dodge the police). Otherwise I would have said, "Um, no.
I think familial metaphors are terribly problematic. They re-imagine a
political dialogue as an interpersonal one, which then limits the
possibilities for critique or debate within a narrow, therapeutic
discourse of kinship and familial relations."
And in the midst of a conference commemorating a feminism I have
never felt an affinity for, never quite fit (because I didn't understand
what exactly made for a "radical women of color" politics, because I was
already too much of a poststructuralist to not query the call to
"home" or "community"), I didn't much feel like making that
intervention.
Please read about Dean's arrest at the anti-WEF
protests for using the "wrong" toilet: http://www.makezine.org/rants.html. There is so
much to say about sex/gender
regulation and policing, but Dean manages to say it better than I ever could. And I
am now reading Yumi's latest issue of External Text, as well as
Bianca's split with Alejandro (Mala/Insurgente), which is making me feel like a
cad for falling off of the zine wagon. Yumi's discussion of
femme identification reminds me of an exchange I had with Iraya several years ago:
IRAYA: Do you want to go to this conference on femme i.d. with me?
MIMI: Sure, but I'm not femme.
IRAYA: Yes, you are.
MIMI: No, I'm not!