is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Am I Talking?
Am I Talking?
The paper I gave in Baltimore (at Johns Hopkins U.) went very well. Everyone was really enthusiastic and liked my worked and asked good questions. Well, there were some skeptics but I�m not trying to start a religion so that doesn�t really matter. Skeptical questions are part of what drive philosophy.
They took me out to a tasty lunch and then I got back on the train and came home. As my friend Jennifer hugged me goodbye and said, �I�ll see you in a few weeks� we both looked at each other and exclaimed in horror because we had already established that neither of us have yet written the papers we have to deliver at the conference where we�ll see each other in a few weeks. Ha. Well, it will be good to see her then anyway. As always, back to work.
But not today. I got home yesterday, put on my pajamas, and ate some food. Then I did some reading for next week�s teaching. Woke up today and have managed to do NOTHING. I am not exaggerating, either. I haven�t even changed out of my pajamas or taken a shower. I watched television and shopped online for shoes and dresses for my sister�s wedding. I did do some house cleaning but that was minimal. And I made some macaroons for my faculty seminar tomorrow. I guess today is my weekend.
Speaking of my faculty seminar (where I and seven other professors gather every other week or so to discuss violence and terrorism, and stuff we�ve read about those things), recently one of my colleagues whose specialties are biology and non-violence was trying to state an idea she was working through while we were discussing colonialist violence. She said something like "isn't it violent simply to be the colonizer?" and then she said something else, and then I said, "are you referring to how when you universalize your terms it�s violent because it claims mastery over definitions whereas allowing that your definitions are contingent and local is compatible with pluralistic peace?" She said, "yes, I think that might be what I'm getting at." Then I felt like a jerk even though we were there to exchange ideas, and so I said, in self-mocking tone,
"allow me to restate your ideas in my own terms! I have just colonized you!" We all laughed. She said, "I'm just glad you have a vocabulary for it."
Still, I know this colleague of mine well enough to know that we rarely have the same ideas. So when we say that I captured what she was thinking, we should probably pay close attention to what we mean by "captured"!
12:06 a.m. - February 24, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
