These days I find myself filled with the impulse to burn this blog. Of course, you can’t burn a series of zeros and ones. Perhaps it is just the winter break. I never fare well when I have time on my hands. It’s as if I need some minimal resistance, some thing blocking my desire to think and write, in order to think and write. When I actually get the time I want, I no longer want what I want. All of this, of course, makes me wonder what it is that I want. Nonetheless, these days I find myself far too self-conscious, far too aware. I’ve had the tragic misfortune of coming to know my audience… An article here, a speaking gig there. Larval Subjects was conceived as just that: Larval Work. Dissatisfied with academia and the manner in which we’re forced to strategize what we will publish and work on so that we might get work, I imagined another space where I just wouldn’t care anymore. Somewhere, in his brilliant Capitalism and Religion, Goodchild speaks of this, wondering whether he wouldn’t have written better, posed questions differently, if he weren’t beset by the dynamics of capital and the necessity of intellectual labor so as to subsist. An anonymous blog would be an escape from that and the promise of a leap outside the academic machine and the manner in which it compels us to make all sorts of decisions so as to work, to get tenure, to gain time. Yet Larval Subjects is no longer so larval. I feel as if I’ve lost my compass, my desire. Recently I’ve been finding that books no longer engage me. I haven’t been worked up by certain questions or problems. I am no longer sure of what I am aiming at. Perhaps I am just exhausted by relaxation. It will be a relief when break is over and I am teaching again. It will be a relief to encounter, once again, the provocation of students. Maybe then I’ll remember my questions. Right now I’m in the habit of burning everything.
January 10, 2008 at 6:51 am
don’t burn it! just ignore it for a while.
if nothing else, let the archive stand – i wanna be able to come back and read it again.
January 10, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I second the above.
Would not to burn it be a reactive force limiting an active force? Maybe you are thinking about the blog too much from a personal perspective. The blog, at the present time may be producing resentment in you, but it certainly does produce desire in the readers. You could also consider the blog as gift-giving in the sense Bataille and Mauss speak about the concept of gift-giving. Just like the sun expends its energy to give to the earth.
January 10, 2008 at 8:34 pm
No, no, Levi. DON’T burn bridges or blogs. As Barry says you will come back. And we will still read and become stimulated by your writing. I often go through your archive to pick up on something I know you have posted earlier.
January 10, 2008 at 10:03 pm
This is weird. I have been feeling exactly in a similar way about my own blog for the last two weeks. Including not having been wanted to live with the theory in my mind (though, it is not really my profession!). The theory, the analysis, the questioning seems not be enough; but to do. Not what is to be done, not even how is to be done but only to do. That is a more serious problem to me.
I could not escape from that anxiety of not being satisfied; that being dependent so much on the other. Ana guess what? I burnt my turkish blog one week ago . Do I regret? In a way, I still feel the lack; being deprived of expressing whenever you want to do so and sharing it with the others. But, I still think, this decision might enable me to write and “do” more effectively. After all, blogging is nothing to do with the streets and the beach is only beneath the paving stones.
Keeping the archive stand (without ever posting) sounds more depressing. If one desires to be eliminated, one should do it totally. Though, who would want to lose such a qualified and terrific blog like yours?
January 10, 2008 at 11:37 pm
‘It’s as if I need some minimal resistance, some thing blocking my desire to think and write, in order to think and write. ‘
This is something I’ve noticed with friends of mine who try to be both progressives and evangelicals. I like them quite a bit so this isn’t a condemnation of them or you, just I find it interesting how people set themselves up to use energy. Some people find energy for their work in being surrounded by encouraging people and others have to exist in the midst of intense adversity.
January 11, 2008 at 3:19 pm
you could do what Clysmatics does: declare your blog dead or inactive, then keep writing it in spectral form. In this way even if you declare it definitely dead, or inactive, it will keep going of its own accord.
January 13, 2008 at 11:58 pm
burn it?
January 15, 2008 at 6:17 am
from a student’s perspective, i feel the same way about my breaks. During the quarter I pack the little extra time I have to do supplementary or personal reading and when the quarter gets close to finishing i usually have a study project set up in my mind for break. but when break rolls around and i am able to just relax for a while, knowing well i have another week or two of nothing to do ahead, i cringe at the idea of picking up a book, i completely derail the project i concocted in favor of something totally unrelated, etc etc.
then the quarter rolls around and im feeling terrible at wasting that time and not making use of it!
then i bemoan the fact that i have so little time to do my extra reading. ive found that academic situations are good for academics. its just productive being in a community thats just as invested in their own research as yours. sharing ideas, hearing thoughts around, going to lectures and having some ‘suspension of disbelief’, find something to loose that sense of self-awareness more regularly during the week. smoke some pot. watch a terrible movie with a friend. do something you know you’ll enjoy but has no intellectual worth whatsoever. you’ll find yourself desiring that community again and its a push and pull, there are always things that pop up that can inspire critical thought. just walk through any major city. its absolutely surreal, especially if you have various perspectives popping up in your head, nomadic constellations if you will. more sober experiments with more forms of stimuli!
January 17, 2008 at 12:53 am
Do work through the rest of The Human Condition… Arendt can’t be appreciated without seeing how she puts the pieces together. I’d love to read your thoughts after a fuller engagement.