November 14, 2001, 1:04 p.m.
I feel terrible, like my head is full of wet cotton and all my bones
have been replaced with rough metals. Luckily, I have a six-hour plane
ride to look forward to, which I'm sure will do wonders for the onset of
this cold or flu.
I haven't posted for a while because words escape me: Bush signs an
executive order suppressing all presidential records (including those
under Reagan and his father); the Justice Department violates the
Constitution with wild abandon, allowing authorities to eavesdrop on the
communications of some prisoners, even with their lawyers; abortion
providers request a meeting with Attorney General Ashcroft to voice
their concerns about the anthrax threats to clinics and he refuses; and
so on. I feel paranoid, like it's the 1980s all over.
And there's been a lot to write about but somehow I don't feel
compelled to do it here, right now. In any case, I'll be in Boston
tomorrow morning for the MIT panel on "popular culture and third wave
feminism" that night. Come say "hello" if you're in the
neighborhood.
November 2, 2001, 3:34 p.m.
While carving pumpkins I learned that Good
Vibrations is no longer a cooperative in any operative sense of the term,
going so far as firing several long-time employees for refusing to sign
a new contract which the workers had no input in writing. Of course,
this isn't public knowledge because so much of the imagined appeal of
Good Vibrations is in the store's much-vaunted liberal politics. I also
learned that most rubber dildos are made in sweatshops in Southern
California and China, which doesn't surprise me a bit.
2:45 p.m.
To: CULTSTUD-L
From: slander13@mindspring.com
Subject: Re: [cultstud-l] Re: intellectuals
At 05:02 PM 11/1/01 -0600, you wrote: "That last sentence--how those
of us who have the leisure to learn the language of theory are distanced
from theory-on-the-streets--is relevant to this thread."
I'm not saying that you're doing this, but I have to say that the
valorization of "the street" as the location of "authentic" expression
or political activism has always troubled me. (And yet I feel compelled
to note that I say this as someone who has engaged in activism and
organizing for many years, and who continues to write for the
non-academic press as a freelancer and columnist for several magazines.
I say this in part because the experience of being an activist or
organizer is so often used as "evidence" in opposition to academic work,
and I don't think that has to be the case.) I've been "on the street,"
and the production of theory "on the ground" is as complex and
contradictory as what is (imagined as) produced solely in the academy,
and is of course as mediated as any other meaningful practice. And for
many participants in the peace or antiwar movement "on the ground," the
call for "action, not discussion" feels oddly resonant with the tenor of
dominant public discourse about the war.
xo Mimi