is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Always Already Ass-kicked.
Always Already Ass-kicked.
I was laying in bed with someone recently (Oh. My. God!), enjoying an afternoon on which nothing was going to get done, when my thoughts drifted to, well, many things that will never be said by me in public, but also to something much more workaday, this paper I am writing to present at a meeting of scholars who work on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. I was laying there in bed thinking about this paper I�m writing, and about how there will probably be some disagreement amongst scholars-at-hand with regard to what I�m saying, and I was trying to strategize how I might predict and deal with the kinds of objections that might arise, when I thought to myself, �I am going to kick some Levinasian ass!�, at which point I laughed hysterically, out loud.
Now, when one is in bed with someone, laying around, and then one begins to laugh hysterically, usually one is expected to explain what is so funny. Except in this case the joke is of such limited audience that it is really NOT FUNNY AT ALL. In brief, Levinas is a philosopher of passivity, and of individual responsibility for other human beings, so �kicking ass� and �Levinas� don�t cohabit well together in a sentence. The HILARITY! Not only that, but when it comes to scholarly exchange I am resolutely against the "ass-kicking" attitude that sometimes does manifest itself in academic discussion.
More important, however is this: if there�s any ass-kicking to be done in a Levinasian scene, it would be my own kicking of my own ass, but not through any intent or design or will of my own, but simply because one of the inescapable conditions of being a human being is that we are all always already ass-kicked by the ways in which we can�t help being affected by other human beings. No choice in the matter. For better and for worse. I just wrote a loooong article about this under the name of �Peace is a Permanent Fracture: Acquire It, Please� in the new h2so4, about to be released, so I�ll leave out the details here, except to say that in the article I also explain why my I.D. bracelet says �me voici� (which means �here I am,� in French) instead of �Jill� or �fool for love.� So many questions no one really wants answered!
"Always already ass-kicked" does NOT mean anything like this: This morning I awoke to the sound of the man downstairs yelling this Sunday morning anthem at his six-year-old son: "I am going to beat you up! I am going to kick your ass! You better stop that!" The boy replied: "WAAAAAHCLAAAGHARRRRGHAAAAAAAHMAAAAAA!" etc. Upstairs from me it was all rolling and thumping and loud conversations. Morning has broken in San Francisco's Mission district.
"Always already ass-kicked" also does NOT mean anything like this: so-called self-preservationary military strikes made without establishing real or imminent threat.
OK. Now I have to go get brunch and go bra-shopping ("WAAAAAHCLAAAGHARRRRGHAAAAAAAHMAAAAAA!") with my ladies ("YAY!"). And then I go visit my Mommy in Be-nicia.
9:13 a.m. - August 01, 2004
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