of rubbers and roads

Music: Coil: "A Cold Cell" At a dive bar named "Memphis" somewhere in Dallas last Wednesday night, Amanda asked perhaps one of the most direct (and sadly unasked) questions any student of thought should constantly be asking: how seriously do I take my theory? Do I use theory to make sense of my own life? Is there a point where I say, "that's just theory" and "here's how I really feel?" The short and best answer is that there is no good answer to these kinds of questions, for to finally settle on one will force you into strategic pragmatism (or to write the whole enterprise off), which seems empty to me, or dogmatism and the kind of lifestyle rigidity typical of conservative Texans and Objectivist, role playing fascists.

But the truth is that I sometimes get much personal comfort from theory, and sometimes I do not. Amanda meant to stress my interest in psychoanalytic theory and how (and if) I incorporated it into my life. My answer was first to stress that my therapist is not a psychoanalyst, but a more of a holistic, "New Age" listener with thirty years of experience. I said that my explorations in Freud and Lacan do not commit me to the sort of dogmatism that insists on the liberation of my drives and what not, but that my intellectual embrace of the unconscious did inform my trust in the therapeutic process.

Today I learned of the death of a mother figure for me; she passed away yesterday from the complications of cancer treatment. I was taking a break from reading Lacan's "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire" when I check my email to learn about this news. I am not quite sure what I feel at the moment, a little dazed, but also somehow comforted (and there are tears lurking just below the surface that I'm keeping from coming up, because I have the strategic pragmatic impulse in play—that impulse that refuses to feel). I looked for a plane ticket, but so far there is nothing cheaper than $500, so I cannot afford that, and I'll wait until tomorrow to call the travel agency and see if I can find something in the $300 range; if I can, I intend to go.

So in my life this Sunday morning I have four events sort of swirling in my consciousness: Lacan's "graph of desire," which I will lecture about tomorrow; the jibber-jabber of politicians on immigration from this morning's Meet the Press, the death of one of many of my mothers (but not just any other; she's a mother just the same), and scenes from a failed conference (I left SSCA early because I was spiraling into a depression I'd rather folks only read about, not see). I mean, this stuff is all about death and others, and the Other, so on one level Lacan definitely helps me put a language to my feelings: my failed romantic relationships have something to do with misplaced demands for love on both sides; my sorrow over the other death, the real one or the biological one, if you want, is also in some sense a recognition that she gave me love (in the sense of recognition; she cooked for me, schemed with me against my father—that is, my academic advisor—and so on); and this battle against Mexicans is about the racialized Other who took our happiness away, or who threatens it by, apparently, taking away my career in migrant farming.

Obviously I'm feeling blue today, but I guess my longer answer is that "theory" does invade my personal life, and I use it to make sense of my personal life, that it gives me coordinates for thinking, even if it never really tells me what I should and should not do with and in or for "my life." It helps me to think inside and outside of my academic work. I think psychoanalysis is chilling to many people precisely for this reason: the theory is notoriously (sometimes secretly) autobiographical, and because it deals principally with the individual, it's very hard to read about the contents of consciousness without thinking about your own. It's really hard to read about love or mourning or sorrow without thinking about your own feelings that attach to those labels. So I'm in "mourning," I've been mourning for many days, and I'm drawing on my own reading in psychoanalysis to make sense of that process. But it doesn't mean that I'm down with the Lacanian "short session" necessarily, or that I do not want to enjoy certain cultural fantasies that I know at some level are illusions.

Heck, I think Amanda's question is answered by the "academic blog" phenomenon itself. What else is all this strangely public, private writing about, but a chronicle of active thinking and detailing of connections between one's public career and one's private life? The two inform each other, and that is how it should be. Otherwise, I see no point to the academic life, this so-called "life of the mind." If the life of the mind does not infect you when you are gardening, then you should be an accountant.

I love and hate my job. And at least I have the love (too many people, like my biological mother, hate their jobs). So I am lucky on that score. But I hate my job, I hate the price I have to pay to get my love (publishing like a demon; the insecurity of juniorness; department politics; the petulant demands of some students, and I am especially growing to dislike the loneliness of academic scholarship in the humanities--and that I have allowed my career pursuits to crowd out my need for companionship and am only now starting to worry about it). So I'm mourning today, sometimes on the verge of tears, sometimes composed enough to keep reflecting, sometimes wondering if I will die alone and sometimes saying to myself, "worrying about dying alone is stupid; you're just depressed and you need to get over yourself." I assure you those (sometimes overly-dramatic) feelings end up in the lecture notes somehow, even if I cannot make an academic study of it.

Finally, one final point: although it is true I self-censor before I post on this blog, what gets "cut out" are the things that would get me fired or sued, or things that are cruel or that would hurt someone's feelings. The audience that I imagine who reads this are mostly friends, so I often write to "the friend." I'm not so foolish to believe, however, that I can somehow control my journal's "meaning" or what is read. As an article of (theoretical) faith, I don't think you can cut out the feeling/affect that is around the edges of the letter. I don't even to pretend to "hide" that stuff; if I did, then I'm not really sharing or being open to what others have to share with me. I think (that is, I trust; I hope).