thesis&i.
2 strategien fir mat der thèse emzegoen tëscht deenen ech am moment zimlich hin an hierpendelen:
1. léif kleng thèse, ech froen dech heimat ganz héiflich an matt ‘wann ech glift draga’ als hannergrondmusik fir deng frëndlichst mattaarbicht sou dass mer eis kontraktuell zesummenaarbicht geschwenn op en enn brengen an matt eise béider liewen weiderfuere kënnen. merci dass du hei nit domm gëss.
2. kleng domm houer, wanns du nit paréiers, da schécken ech déch do wu de peffer wiisst, an do kanns de dann frecken an vermuuschten. mech huet na nie een sou gelangweilt matt senge ville gescheite wierder di ech amfong nit wierklich verstin, an et huet na nie ee mech esou op de baam gedriwwe iwwer eng däermosse laang zäit wi’s du. verstan?
grommel.
GROMMEL.
will it ever end?
end of melodrama, back to work… GROMMEL.
image rippled from here.
it’s in your power, says hobbes.
i’ve been psyching myself up to believe the following:
i’m supergirl who finishes thesis without grumbling. grrrrrr…. hear me roar.
it’s in my power to FINISH the thesis entirely. i just have to actually get uncomfortable and deal with it. motivate myself again and again that it’s actually a pleasure finishing it, not a high ordeal. this is difficult in the november uniform grey.
it’s really strange how fast i become disconnected from the things i write that then are oh-so- disappointing. writing is such an incomplete technology, i should draw more – i think that captures more of the process.
i am all about written communication now, though. conveying my point clearly, ruthlessly deleting what is less to the point and making it a beautiful clean sculpture that is compellingly beautiful and true. hehehe.
and banishing all irrelevant meanderings to this place.
i’m sure no one will notice for it is teeming with them already. 
above a draft of lincoln’s proclamation for emancipation…
bureaucracy.
American science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has proposed a theory he refers to as “Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy”, which states:
“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
This robust tendency is purported to operate to the effect that:
“…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.”
day 478?
it was one of those days. it could have been day 478 with the masters/phd.
right now, i am feverish and bored out of my mind with whatever even very remotely evokes anthropology, academia, explanation, argument. as dani used to say ‘where’s the bucket!!’ today, i definitely do not want to be in the pinning-down corner of language, but in the expansive corner of poetry. even better: silence.
but i will be better in the morning. and write better anthropology, too.
discipline-trapped (again).
no matter how many times I consider it, and however much I want to believe this is how it is, I think there is a definite problem with Ingold’s assertion of shared worlds, a continuous world of subject positions. I cannot imagine how much you can legitimately speak of shared worlds, if at the first round you try to speak outside of your discipline you are misunderstood and even an enormous amount of arguing cannot get you a lot further, possibly because other disciplines are not quite as open to the workings of disciplines that are not their own. Anthropologists (whatever else they do in terms of ridiculous closed argument-styles in a highly hermetic language) do open themselves up for difference when doing fieldwork. They learn, among other practical skills, how to learn to see how other people see, through dialogic engagement and everyday presence in other people’s environments/lifeworlds.
It made me quite sad to discover myself thinking that speaking outside my discipline was, to a significant degree, a waste of my time, if I am not willing to speak another’s language entirely and actually lose a lot of what I have to say about a certain social contexts and human lives. If I cast everything I know about people’s lifeworlds in utilitarian terms, am I not defeating the purpose of what made me look at those lifeworlds in the first place? The trouble with being in and of a subaltern discipline has hit me, again…
The consequence of this line of thinking frightens me, because it radically questions ideas of intervention, and makes me question the kinds of ideas I have been harbouring about the possible uses of anthropology outside of ‘academic argument’. If by adapting to power I change the content of my inquiry so much that it is unrecognisable and largely just like any other policy-speak (drawing also on those boxed conclusions), do I want to go ahead with it still? In an environment more and more hostile to alternative thinking do I really want to bail out from education and go into policy?
Ach, let’s finish this piece of academic argument aka thesis first… and if that doesn’t win me over to academia, nothing will...
p.s. happy kleeserchersdag! bei mech war e jo dest joer scho mi frei komm…
mfg von bert brecht: erst das fressen…
Perfiderweise hat man diese Kernelemente des Neoliberalismus auch noch ideologisch aufgeladen – indem man sie mit dem Begriff der Demokratie verlinkte, als sei das eine ohne das andere nicht denkbar. Wirtschaftsliberalismus und Demokratie schienen zwei Seiten einer goldenen Medaille zu sein. Sozialistische Ideen galten bestenfalls als Beiwerk einer altbacken-autoritären Gesinnung, schlimmstenfalls als Ausweis einer demokratiefernen Weltsicht.
Dabei wurde nicht die Frage gestellt, wie frei und demokratisch es sich langfristig unter der Fuchtel einer Finanzoligarchie lebt – einer kleinen Gruppe von Bankvorständen, für die der Staat kein entscheidungsmächtiger Partner auf Augenhöhe ist, sondern nur eine Oma mit Notgroschen im Sparstrumpf. Merkwürdigerweise schreiben nun die gleichen Zeitungen und Magazine, die bislang unermüdlich die unsportliche Ängstlichkeit der Deutschen beklagt und jede Form von Etatismus angeprangert haben, „Mehr Regulierung! Mehr Staat! Mehr Kontrolle!“ – Die Amnesie der Überheblichen.
Von Brecht stammt das schöne Diktum: Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral. Unter der Drohung, das ganze Finanzsystem könne zusammenbrechen, scheinen in der Tat plötzlich alle Mittel gerechtfertigt: Nachdem die Banken jahrelang fantastische Gewinne gemacht haben und sich als Glücksritter feiern ließen, müssen die Verluste jetzt gemeinschaftlich getragen werden. Das ist nichts Anderes als Sozialismus, nur für Wohlhabende – willkommen in der Volksrepublik Wall Street!
Tanja Dückers,
notes on the crisis.
- permanent crisis of capitalism? (one of many, or different now?)
- ordinary people will lose out, that much is clear – but what are the practical conclusions we draw from this. someone mentioned ‘paradigm shift’ this morning. (it woke me up instantly – unheard of!)
- a space of hope? (pleease…)
aberdeen at night.
single piece of advice: learn to spell ‘fuel’ before starting the revolution. thanks ever so much.
this informative piece of graffiti got ripped off a few nights later from this supermarket advertisement panel.
fever.
One
A black and white arrow with a red beak landed next to my head and started whispering into my ear. In line with my custom of general restraint, I let it happen, and did not react instantly, even though I may have been startled. I do not recall now. My companion turned to me in mild disbelief, his eyes and mouth widened and he took a step back. He may have forgotten to breathe for just a moment, but found his bearings back fast. The oystercatcher told me everything I needed to know for the present. As my being became clear, I realised I had not been at my best all my life. I learn to read all over, letters dancing without connection in front of my sliding-halting fingers.
Two
As I swung with the rhythms of conversations in human intricacy and noisy leather, I never managed to leave the thought of you behind entirely. As a ripple in an ever-expanding circle, you unknowingly proved all laws of thermodynamics strangely outdated. Heather honey brought us from one continent to the next as your voice travelled over from the other room. I missed you suddenly even though we have never been close. Our avoidance rituals were telling me to let go of the thought of mutuality. Still you turn my head in silence.
Three
The linen was rare green, but it felt and smelled like that week could last forever. Of course it did not, but for a moment it felt comforting to be caught in arrest. I touched the linen and it tore my skin. We spent the afternoon busying ourselves with asking the wrong questions and making conversation. We never took the turn to get off anxiety pills and expose make-believe contentment as fear. You waved and disappeared from view. I longed for the oystercatcher song. I ran across wet tarmac and thought I was stepping on many tombs and shards of glass. I laugh it off.
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