July 16, 2002, 10:16 p.m.
Darling, it's been forever.
It's difficult to re-cap two months of adventure on the road and, uh,
in the library, especially when I've got a lecture on the reiteration of
liberal democratic theory and the humanist individual subject in digital
space the next morning at the ungodly hour of nine-thirty. (I don't
function well until at least eleven, and well, not that I'm ever
godly.)
The responses to my Abercrombie & Fitch essay on
poppolitics.com were fun. Ninety-five percent of the response was
positive and critically provoked, and the other five percent belonged to
the "how could you?!" category, as in, "How could you even to think that
this image does anything but represent all Asian Americans as servants?"
Which missed the point --and it's an important point-- that
representations do not perform the same ideological or social or
political work in their every appearance. And that to really begin to
grasp the meaning of an image, we have to examine the specific cultural
form it takes and the circumstances of its appearance. Tenets of
cultural studies scholarship to hug warmly and fondly.
This past weekend I skipped my high school reunion, ten years.
I had planned on hitching a ride with a former classmate from Sacramento,
but after a grueling first week of summer session, I cancelled. A few
of us had decided to crash the hotel after an appropriate
amount of time had passed to insure that the "catered dinner" (apparently
a pot roast with some wilted green beans) had ended. We figured no one
would be checking to see if we'd paid after the dinner. Holly
(my best friend from high school) and I had imagined
ourselves gleefully reoccupying our former roles as the sarcastic, mean girls in the
corner, talking trash and rolling eyes.
Instead, I stayed at home curled up with Wendy Brown's Politics
After History. Holly did call me though from a stairwell in the
hotel, slightly drunk, and stated that had I been there, at
least she would have seen some fights or something
to redeem the night. During their dinner at a nearby
restaurant, the former football team and cheerleading squad appeared at a neighboring
table and apparently didn't deign to recognize the motley collection of geeks. Amy
joked that maybe it was a good thing I wasn't there, because I would
have started a brawl.
(Honestly, all my brawls in high school were of the verbal sort,
though I admit a good number of them were with members of the football
team with especially Neanderthal attitudes.)
I don't recall being especially belligerent in high school, but
apparently this is how I've been remembered by some of my former
classmates (not Holly, who knows me better), some of whom approached
Holly asking after me, people I don't even know, didn't ever know,
perhaps hoping I'd stir up some shit and make the reunion a little
wilder, a little crazier.
I don't know that I would have, but it's
always nice to know that I've apparently left an impression.