Clearly #hpj101 has been generative for me. The few posts (here and here) that have resulted, even though they come in a short period of time, are but fragments. They are the spot where a tangent line touches a circle. A few textual artifacts of the emotional maelstrom that's going on under the surface.
The word maelstrom sometimes has negative implications. In this case, I don't feel negative. On the contrary, it's invigorating. At points it's like, "Rage, old friend! Just where have you been?" My complacency is now the teenage wallflower waiting for the perfect Air Supply track to step out on the floor.
Ever read Stewart Home? Pick any one of his fiction books. It's "Holy blat, Batman! I didn't know writing could do that!" Only in this case, I did not know that this range of emotions were possible all at that same time--and that all of these emotions could be going in all these different directions.
The emotional directions are not the same as the intellectual or political directions. Instead, they clearly coexist within me, they are all happening synchronously and asynchronously, but there's almost no point in sorting it out.
Instead, I want to try and identify what Deleuze describes as affect and ride that. When I listen to Conflict's "Increase the Pressure," for the 409th time, and the hair stands up on my arms, I want that feeling. That feeling, that affect exists not just as a result of "Increase the Pressure" or Conflict's work; instead, that affect exists in and of itself. Different situations and pieces of art, though, can reflect that affect. [If I'm grokking Deleuze, and I may well not be. But then again, Deleuze was not interested in the canonization of his thinking or works.]
Now that all these feelings have been dredged up, brought to the surface for glorious discovery and memory and experience, what do I do? What do we do?
Within the context of #hpj101, it's relatively obvious. Some peeps will join the editing posse. Other peeps will not. Hopefully all of us will continue to be part of the larger HP community, although I'm sure a few will drop out due to time, shifts in attention, and life. That is always how it is.
What of us as individuals? What of us as smaller subgroups? What, just what, do we do now? How can we keep this moving forward?
I ask because I'm troubled by my own situation. I know my love and rage are authentic. They hit my skin, fire my synapses, and attach soundtracks of Abba and Bolt Thrower as a second sense. But I don't know how that impacts my teaching.
Tomorrow I walk back into my administrative position. And what can all this do for me? Later today I will provide feedback on graduating students' final papers. How will what I learned and felt this week help them?
Yep. Instrumentalization. Perhaps that's what I'm doing. Maybe not. But I don't want to be a privileged tosser that says, "Oh, I just love One Dimensional Man and I see how we can leverage our course texts to prevent assimilation into the masses," or some such tripe. If I wanted to only perform liberation for myself and others, I didn't need to be in #hpj101. So I say "bleep that."
Instead, I want to know what tools I have. Now. Today. What can I actually do or be differently for me students? That's what I'm asking. How can I be for my students?
There's nothing like existing and working in parallel to your values. I see me, the proper gz, just next door. He's really close, he is, and he embodies all this love, rage, and textual joy. He's there. He's literally centimeters outside of myself. If I can just shift, just move, just adjust justly, then I'll be him.
Perhaps I should not worry about what proper gz would do. Instead, focusing on being proper gz and knowing that proper gz will be and do whatever proper gz knows and feels is right.
End note: As per a few other texts in the #hpj101 vein, I'm writing and publishing them quickly with little to no editing. The goal is to document and record states of mind, thinking, perception, and being as I inhabit them as opposed to reflecting and archiving them historically, when I'm past them.
Sunflower graphic : Attribution 2.5 Generic (CC BY 2.5)
Nicole's Many Emotions by Ally Aubry : Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
The Dock image by SurFeRGiRL30 : Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Parallel Lines by Scriniary : Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)