get out

Music: John Ford Fonda: DeBaSer It's been a social week; last week for SXSW I wrote for the most part, but as the weekend approached folks started to filter into town. Mark Wright (a scholar and friend hailing from Japan, but on sabbatical this year writing a book on Burke and Freud) flew in on Friday, and we caught lunch on Saturday. Tom Frentz (aka "Tominator" or "Tomcat") came into town to chat with the psychoanalysis class too. We had a potluck for him on Sunday, and then he gave a paper on Monday (a Freudian reading of Fight Club) followed by a discussion about Jungian criticism. Then we wined and dined him and he jetted back to Arkansas on Tuesday.

Tom is one of my absolute favorite people in the world; he's been an awesome mentor and role model as well (some of y'all may bridle at the "role model" label, as Tom has been a baaaaaad boy in the past, but he's a good guy in his "dotage," as he says). He gifted me a copy of Janice Hocker Rushing's posthumously published book, Erotic Mentoring: Women's Transformations in the University. For those who do not know, Janice is Tom's late wife, who succumbed to cancer in 2004. The death was sudden and wholly unexpected, and so reading the forward by Tom and Janice's sister Joyce is hard. Indeed, reading the book is pretty tough for me. I'm about a third of the way in, and it frequently brings tears because Janice was such a lover. Anyway, this book represents the best autoethnographic work out there: it is critical, she consults 200 women in addition to drawing on her own experience, and her "critique" is multi-edged. The book begins:

Women often form personal relationships in academia with men who attempt to mold them to fit their own masculine ideals. Such relationships quickly become the dominant leit-motif in my conversations with women. Partly because the higher ranks in academia are still overwhelmingly populated by men, many romantic pairings still occur between an older man, such as a professor, and a younger woman, such as a student or an assistant professor. The pivotal myth that helps enlighten such relationships is "Pygmalion and Galetea" . . . .

I am not oblivious to my own relationships in this respect. Nevertheless, I do wonder how true this dynamic is of the academy of my generation? I wonder if the Pygmalion story has changed (and further, given my own quest for fathers, if homosociality works similarly?).

Well, I've deviated from my point: I'm getting out (of my head). "Hey hey, we're the Monkeys!" Caught a drink with a friend of a friend on Tuesday night at Club DeVille, party tomorrow night, lunch with a new acquaintance next week, and happy hour with an old college friend too. I'm finally making good on "getting out" more—my resolution for the new year. I'm also finally making some friends and acquaintances outside of my work circle, something I know I need here more than I needed in Baton Rouge.

Truth be told, though, I usually don't go out, not because I don't want to, but because I cannot afford it (cover charge + 2 drinks = groceries for a week or allergy pill refill). I have some padding from the tax returns, so I'm drawing on that! I've found a lodge that I like here (finally) so, next month I'll make good on "moving my letter" to the new lodge. There's some potential drinking buddies (and, of course, a renewed quest for "more light").

Today, however, it's definitely a not-going-out day: I'll be putting the finishing touches on the Huey paper (finally!), reviewing an article, and doing a bit of grading. Per usual, not much to say (too much to say), but I was feeling bloggishly delinquent.