Trying out this new format. Just a way of getting a few thoughts down, mainly for my own record, but also on the off chance someone wants to engage on one of these topics.
– Attended a virtual memorial for a prominent queer scholar recently and more than one person used it as a moment to share their own academic writing, including one who presented a draft for a yet-to-be published paper (he announced this fact prior to reading the draft). It felt gross. Perhaps I misunderstood something, but as someone outside of the field, it felt like a demonstration of how lost people are within the oppressive structures of academia that they can’t even come up for air when remembering someone among them who is now dead. When the facilitator opened it up to comments from anyone, only one person shared an unrehearsed, human story, but the mood was so stolid at that point that no one else spoke and the event ended shortly thereafter.
– The Triennial at the New Museum has me thinking a lot about legibility, and what it means to exhibit art coming from countless different contexts in a single space where the vast majority of people attending will have no meaningful experience of at least some, if not the majority, of those contexts.
– It’s ultimately banal to say it, but so many people are so incredibly unhappy in their relationships. The pandemic has forced most people’s hand in one way or another. And yet, being in a couple is still seen as a status to attain in this culture, and couples often actively view themselves as being of a different status than single people. And yet that status, in many cases, is predicated on upholding the lie that any two people could ever be everything that the other person needs and wants. So the status, like most forms of status, is upheld with such a vigor because of the insecurity of the people who fear losing their status if the truth came out about their frequent and intense unhappiness.
