My New Year's resolution is to try and make better use of this blog. My writing has just fallen apart over the last twelve months, which is probably one reason why I am finding it so difficult to get a decent foothold in the narrative that I am currently supposed to be working on (for which I need to have a draft completed by the end of the first week of January). One reason, but not the only reason. Many false starts later, I keep finding myself trying to tell a different story/explore a different theme from the one that I am supposed to be exploring. I'm not even getting
close to what I'm 'supposed' to be writing about. This would be fine if I was writing alone, but I'm not, and I don't think that it is the time or the place to write the narrative that my fingers keep itching to type! Grrr... I'd better get on the right track soon... My frustration is making my words cantankerous and itchy (and so is the heat). Cheap, school-issued Acer laptops don't go too well in 35 degree heat, I'm finding. And why am I even bothering to write on the day before New Year's Eve, you ask?
Because I've got a deadline, damnit!
I want to
write about
writing... all
writing is about
writing, yes, but this time I
really want to
write about
writing... like this...
No textual staging is innocent (Foucault 1978). Writing is an intentional
activity and, as such, a site of moral responsibility. Whoever writes
for/about/of whatever is using authority and privilege. But there is no such
thing as 'a thing' speaking of 'itself', because 'things' are always constructed
and interpreted, there is no Archimedean resolution to the problem of speaking
for others... Knowledge is always situated, embodied, and partial (Haraway
1988). We are always viewing something from somewhere, from some embodied
position. Consequently, the problem becomes a practical-ethical one. How can we
use our skills and privileges to advance the case of the nonprivileged?
-Laurel Richardson (1997) Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life
...
...
...my words are self-conscious (even more than usual).
