is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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From Desire To Boredom in No Time.
From Desire To Boredom in No Time.
About the claim I dismissed, that desire requires the possibility of transgression to remain desire.... It's not that I can't understand that transgressive acts can animate desire, nor do I think there's anything wrong with that. My point was about how in one particular conversation I had just had, trangression was being described as if desire needed to be policed by something official like society or law or, well, police, in order to remain desire. And that, my friends, I cannot abide. Can you imagine? "Hello, kind sir. You are attractive, but I am afraid I cannot desire you, because nothing is keeping me from doing so." That would be perverse.
I clarify my meaning not because anyone objected to what I wrote (to my knowledge), but because I have been having a semi-continuous dialog with myself in my head about what I meant when I wrote the last entry.
No one objected to my contention that the claim about transgression was a sucky claim, but some wanted to know why I was left out of a group dinner. Ha. Well, it just happens sometimes, doesn't it? There was no real reason why I was left out of the dinner plans. It was, as I suspected once I gave it some thought, the idiosyncratic craziness of a control freak, and the rest of the party had no idea that it had been imposed. I did go down to the bar at around 11:15, and a couple of friends of mine who had had their plans canceled had been waiting for me for hours, and hadn't called my room because they assumed I was out on the town. Ha. In retrospect, I think I am glad I was watching Spirited Away instead. It suited my mood, and it has stayed with me in ways that I am enjoying more than an overpriced meal or an evening in a hotel sports bar. I got to talk to many of the people I most wanted to see during the course of the conference, and that's what counts.
Also, the paper I gave at the conference went well. The panel was interesting because all of us were talking about human rights, but the speakers were a lawyer, an english professor, and me (I get called "philosopher," but that is an odd title to give to oneself, no?), so the ways in which we talked about the topic differed vastly. I got some good questions and feedback.
Meanwhile back at the hotel sports bar, I told the story about ending up in weird conversations with groups of academic men to my dissertation advisor and she told me that I end up surrounded by men not because of who I am but because of what I do. By which she meant: I write in a field that tends to draw more men than women. It's hard for me to say that's true, but also, if I think about the panels I end up on and who attends them, it's hard to deny it as well.
My friend Strauss from Berlin is in town and he and I are hanging out tomorrow. That will be fun. He always makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. Plus he is smart. And aggressively quirky.
Right now I am exhausted. Too many work dinners and work meetings and teachings and readings lately. My house is a mess because I've had no time to attend to any of the day-to-day stuff. Laundry everywhere. Books in piles and scattered on the floor. Newspapers unread. Cat fur abounds. After a day or two of SLEEPING I want to do some serious cleaning.
This week the chair of the Humanities Center came to my class to observe me teaching. That made everything even more tiring than teaching a 2.5 class already is, but it went well so that's fine. My students continue to amaze me with the effort they are putting into trying to understand Levinas. The Humanities Center Chair (no, he is not an inanimate object) was marveling at how I've gotten them all so engaged in the work, and I suppose it's nice that he is giving me that credit, but I don't think it is all me, and possibly isn't even mostly me. They're just a great group of students.
Man, is this a boring entry or what? I'll go sleep now and try to come back at you with something funny or interesting ASAP, I promise.
12:56 a.m. - March 23, 2006
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