is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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At Least They Understood My Lectures!
At Least They Understood My Lectures!
I just got back to Pennsy from the most grueling conference ever. It wasn�t as anxiety-laced and depressing as APA (American Philosophical Association, the conference where all the job interviews get held, so you can taste nervousness in the air), but the schedule was relentless. Plus the organizers decided to hold it at Purdue University during the same weekend that everyone was graduating from Purdue University, so it was impossible to find a hotel nearby. Purdue is in Lafayette, Indiana, which doesn't have an airport (o! Amherst!) and is about an hour�s drive from Indianapolis. I flew to Indianapolis, rented a car, stayed at an overpriced hotel nowhere near the conference, and then for three days left the hotel at 8am and didn�t get back until 11pm.
My hotel was called Towne Place Suites. What, did someone just pick three nouns referring to topographical spaces and place them together in random fashion? That is my hotel.
Part of the problem with the conference, which is not the conference's problem, is that it is the end of the academic year right now, and everyone is exhausted. Still, it was the meeting of the North American Levinas Society, so it couldn�t have been all bad. I heard some good papers and some bad papers, and some papers I just had to register my disagreement with. My paper went very well and I even got a publishing offer out of it. A well known Levinas scholar wants to publish a monograph consisting of his paper and two others, including mine. So that�s good.
Plus I met this amazingly beautiful (and beautiful-souled) South African guy who gave a really moving paper on why even cosmopolitan philosophy helps engender rather than overcome our indifference to world poverty. I tried to talk to him after his paper but then I noticed that he was basically surrounded by women trying to talk to him, and that felt lame so I left. But he came to see my paper the next day and joined me for lunch, and we discussed Levinas, and then he let me ask him lots of questions about living through the post-apartheid transition in South Africa, and that was great. It was one of those conversations that renews one�s faith in humanity.
No, he is not my new BF.
I also saw lots of Levinas-related friends, and had some fun dinner conversations, and got to hang out with some people who were at Collegium in Italy with me, etc. So, even though my attitude wasn�t quite right for a conference just now, and the schedule was unrelenting, and I had to go to Indiana and drive a rental car around, it was worth the trip.
But man! Driving a rental car around. I can�t BELIEVE how bad the music on the radio is in Indiana. I kept keeping the radio on scan so I�d hear ten seconds of every station, and I kept making pained faces at the sounds I was hearing. I�m sure I looked like a crazy person. But there are some VERY SHITTY songs in the world, and those are all the songs that get played in Indiana. I can report, however, that the song �Riding Dirty� (the rap song by Chamillionaire about police racial profiling African American drivers) (it�s not really an entirely shitty song, it�s just overexposed) gets played just as often in Indiana as it does in Pennsylvania: often enough that it is impossible to be in the car for 10 minutes and NOT hear that song.
Also, in Indiana, people like to drive really fast and very close up on your ass at all times. I can�t believe they�re not all dead from car accidents already. Anyway, I was NOT playing along with that. So of course all the drivers on the road hated me. Quoth Chamillionaire: "they see me rolling. they hating." But they will not catch me riding dirty.
I saw a television commercial for a motor home dealer whose last name is Raper, and the phone number for his business is, I kid you not: 1-800-RAPER-RV.
The second day of the conference was Sunday, and I woke up and turned on the morning news and the first thing I heard was, �in case you�re on your way to church or the track�.�
This morning I woke up and went to take advantage of the free breakfast in the hotel restaurant and was faced with nine large truck-driving men who did not make me feel like one of their peeps at all.
One thing I learned at the conference: it is impossible to tell the story about the wood duck without sounding like someone who is coming unhinged.
And, finally, Enrique Dussel, a philosopher from Argentina who is exiled in Mexico and has written a lot about economic liberation, and who is a Levinasian unlike most other Levinasians, gave a plenary address at the conference that was very enjoyable. For instance, he began by talking about how what we call �political philosophy� applies to 10% of the global population but uses universalizing terms that render the other 90% 'barbarians.' He said, �I would like to see Rawls in Kenya!�. You know that made me laugh.
Then he told a story about how he came to be exiled from Argentina. He woke up one night because his house was shaking. Was it an earthquake? The apocalypse? He asked himself these things as he was jarred out of sleep. No, his house had been bombed. After he got past the initial shock, he said to himself, �At least they understood my lectures!�
11:34 p.m. - May 16, 2006
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