I felt quite refreshed reading Helen Sword’s Air and Light and Time. Chapter 3, Rhythms and Rituals, particularly spoke to me. I appreciate that Sword begins her chapter doing away with “should” and instead focusing on “may” in reference to finding our own writing rhythms and rituals. “Should” is heavy; solid; connotative with guilt. “May” is a possibility, permission, the month of spring! I particularly liked her quotation expressing this sentiment on page 53: 

“Like marching and dancing, routines and rituals share some common features. Both are intentional activities rather than passive states; both can be either communal or solitary; both involve not just repetition but change. (Marching takes you to new places; dancing transforms the places where you are.) The point of this chapter is not that “anything goes” but that, within the spacious parameters of a successful writing practice, nearly anything is possible: marching, dancing, swaying, skipping, or even standing still to feel the wind blow past. Whether you prefer polar oppositions or sliding scales, rules or ambiguity, both/and and/or either/or, there is no “right” way of writing. The best way to write is any way that works for you.” (53)

We may find our own writing rhythms and rituals, and there is freedom, individuality, promise and potential in that. Refreshing to hear since it often seems like authors attempt to prescribe a one size-fits-all solution, which can then engender feelings of guilt or confusion when it doesn’t work…we are all so varied as writers, it makes sense that rhythms and rituals will naturally and substantially differ from one person to another.

I also liked this passage, because it made me think about writing in terms of movement and performance. I am a dancer but I’ve never thought about the connections between how I write and how I dance before. I usually approach choreography with a detailed plan, much like I like to have a “map” before I start writing. I am also a “fiddle as I go” writer, much like I’m a “stop and let’s change it now before we forget” choreographer. But my rehearsals, much like my writing routines and rituals, are spaces of repetition and invention. Practicing a particular piece is also creating the piece, much like writing is a process of discovery. And honestly the best rehearsals are the ones where I release some of my control to let in creativity and ambiguity, much like writing as well. On this note, I really liked Alessandra’s comment in her blog on how she approaches writing, given her work as a playwright and actor. I’m curious to learn how other people’s work and interests inflect, compare, or contrast from the way they write? 

Thinking about “rituals” also made me reflect on the discussion of spatialized rituals in Chapter Two. Sword quotes the cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg, who explains that spatialized rituals “‘can amplify performance by inducing ‘intense concentration or a favorable motivational or emotional state,’ triggering ‘retrieval of ideas, facts, plans, and other relevant knowledge associated with the place, time, or frame of mind selected by the writer for work’” (34). I really related to this.  A particular seat in the library (or my one chair at home now…), a piece of music, a cup of coffee, sunlight — all work to get me in my writing flow much quicker. Sometimes it can take me hours to just get going, but these markers usually give me a push in the right direction. Or they allow me to more easily “fake it until I make it”– feign that I’m in the zone, until I actually am. 

Thinking about these routines and rituals encouraged me to take the BASE quiz. I tried it manually at first, but the digital version Joseph recommended definitely gave more in-depth results…

I know I tend to write in isolation, and usually share my work with only a few people, and the quiz reflected this. I think part of that comes down to who is actually interested in reading it or has the time to do so, but the other part comes down to my need to “perfect” until the last moment. I know I need to relinquish the flawed idea of a finished/perfect draft. Sending something I’m not completely happy with is ok (definitely admired this mindset in your post, Stefanie.) The quiz suggested I widen my social horizons to establish a more productive daily routine and I think having someone to regularly read my work and keep me accountable, would definitely encourage me to write and share more. How have others approached or developed the social/communal nature of their writing? 

Looking forward to discussing today.

My feelings about this reading were kind of all over the place. With that said, I am going to compartmentalize my various responses to the reading. I’ll start with what I thought was positive, then a couple of questions I had, and then the areas I thought were most useful.

First, Helen Sword’s Writer’s Diet was already included in my syllabus for undergraduate courses during the revision part of the semester in the composition courses I teach. I’ve been using the diet as a pedagogical tool for about 4 years. Students respond very well to this exercise and I encourage everyone to use it in their classrooms and for their own writing. It was exciting for me to be able to read more from someone whose tools I’ve been using for so long.

The way Sword structured the book is very effective. I find narrative to be the most convincing way to inspire people to take action and the amount of experience from real people she included was certainly inspiring. Ending each section with tips was also useful as it summarized the chapter and provided guidance to the reader on how to take action. In particular, I appreciated that she emphasized how important reading is to the writing process.

To highlight a chapter, The Other Tongue was particularly intriguing to me. If anyone has ever taken a linguistics course on the structure of prescriptive grammar then they likely have experienced learning academic English almost as a foreign language. (Maybe it was just me?- twice). Native speakers take grammar for granted and so when it comes time to apply the rules of spoken grammar to written grammar many native speakers struggle because the two are not the same. When it comes to Standardized American English (SAE), non-native speakers of English who have mastered English grammar in a structured environment can often produce very well-written pieces of writing because they understand the grammar in a way that native speakers often do not. By contrast, a native speaker (myself included) who will often say “it just sounds right” when it comes to grammar usage and figuring out how to properly structure sentences. I often try to help L2 learners of English with their grammar because it also opens me up to learning more about English.

As a quick aside, I contest that SAE is actually akin to a foreign language to even native speakers because the rules are different than spoken English. SAE is an outdated dialect of English one must work towards mastering through practice and structure. Sword points out the necessity of practicing SAE several times in the book and actually says that most writers acknowledge that their writing improves through freeform natural writing rather than a structured environment with a focus on SAE. The propriety of SAE is completely political and arbitrary and should be abandoned as the standard in academia.

As far my negative criticisms, my big one is that I don’t understand who the audience is for this text. As I’ve said, I use Sword’s Writer’s Diet in my undergraduate courses. There is also some utility for myself and academics across the spectrum. However, Sword’s intended audience seems to be people who are well into their careers as academics which leaves me wondering, exactly to whom is she writing? The tips were good but at the advanced level felt like a given. Undergraduates and beginning graduate students seem like the audience who would benefit most from the text but she writes to established professional academics who can close their office door to students and just focus on writing.

Secondly, I think there is so much context here that the text makes writing seem like a daunting herculean task. Her text attempts to mitigate those feelings but I feel like there is so much in the book that it’s undercutting the intended message.

My negative criticisms are not meant to imply that I don’t think the work has positive takeaways. I’ve already plugged the Writer’s Diet several times. Her tips are incredibly useful and she sets them up through easily digestible chapters and a narrative approach to educating the reading. Additionally, as has become the tradition, I took the BASE assessment and pasted my results below.

It seems immodest to post results that seem self-congratulatory but here they are. I think the reason why I struggled to identify the utility of this text for advanced academics and, also, the reason for my confidence as a writer is that I have been forced to develop strong writing habits out of necessity during my time as an undergraduate. I have always worked demanding full-time jobs while studying and so had to become an effective writer and learn to adapt many of the tricks and tips that Sword suggests. Perhaps, then, I take for granted a lot of the wisdom in this book. Overall, yes Sword’s book is full of useful tips but, no, I don’t think I was able to fully benefit from her guidance.

Reading Helen Sword’s Air & Light & Time & Space was a deeply reflective exercise. I’ve always felt a strong attachment to my writing process; I find it nearly ritualistic. Sword provides a near overwhelming variety of diagnoses of types of writers, ideas for writing exercises or alternatives to intuitive habits, and of course a huge range of personal experiences and advice.

I enjoyed the interviews for multiple reasons. First, it was nice to read intellectuals cited as people more than as thinkers; it is just a rare experience I have not often felt in a book. Talking about their children, their writing desks, their problems and frustrations…I think that vulnerability is important for any student to hear, and I find it more comforting than a guide of how to structure a successful essay. Also, it was interesting if not strange to see, simply, how senior academics live. This book is a sort of unwitting picaresque through the landscape of successful academic life, which feels at times like a harsh reality and other times like a fantasy, a career-of-times-past (seriously, who are these professors with cabins in the snow or apartments in Paris?). Either way, though, Sword situates the unique calls of academic labor through the rest of domestic, public, and administrative life of the human academic, and I do appreciate that.

I did, at times, find the overwhelming options for how to write in this book a bit anxiety provoking. That’s not a critique of the book in any way, but rather a window into my reflections on my own experiences with writing. There was a moment on page 14 that stuck with me through the text—Sword discusses the “aversion to scheduling” many people face, and how that on its own creates cycles of guilt and anxiety. For these people, Sword argues, prescribing daily writing can feel impossible and demotivating rather than helpful. 

I have always been an overachiever in school. In middle and high school, I would often use schoolwork as a coping mechanism for generalized anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, and a very severe panic disorder. I will never forget that, because I got great grades, my illnesses were more positively reinforced than anything; it was not until I developed chronic GI symptoms from long-term stress and could no longer go to class that I was able to convince doctors/parents that I was struggling. Fast forward to undergrad, and I am working to mediate those issues, but continue to deal with a deeply ingrained inability to form daily habits (I sometimes need reminders just to brush my teeth) as well as a penchant for losing things (yes, I did lose my apartment key this morning). 

It is only my current therapist that ever suggested to me that I may have undiagnosed ADHD, and hearing that has been life-changing for me. It was a diagnosis I almost certainly will never get formally, for most tests are performed with children who underperform in school or lose focus. I, on the other hand, tend to hyper-focus (as I am right now, can you tell from how long this is?). I find it to be one of my strengths in many ways—my academic work, for example, focuses heavily on non-linearity, which is very intuitive to how I think. It is also helpful for building bibliographies, since I’m usually mulling multiple ideas at once. However, to finally circle back to the Sword, it causes some huge problems for me with disciplined schedules. The idea of writing at the same time every day feels absolutely unachievable. I can barely take my medication every day! And I can’t find an exercise routine that’ll stick!

Again, this post is largely in agreement with Sword in her approach to the topic in such a non-hierarchical fashion. This is just a place in the text where I felt both validated and yet, somehow, still unsure of how to fill my own plate from the banquet of advice before me.

Finally, I’ll write out some of my personal writing habits in hopes that we can continue to share some of ours like the academics in this book did! When I have to write something small like a discussion post, I usually crank it out in one go. However, when I write research papers, I am big on the whole outlining thing; in fact, I’ll often make a quote page, an outline, and a “skeleton” with bullet points and quotes inside the outline. The hardest moment for me is usually the one where I transition from the skeleton to the paragraph format. When it comes to writing style, once I find my rhythm, I am pretty confident in my voice, but often go back to edit wording (I can be circuitous). The thing I struggle with most is the editing process, both personally and socially. When I first write, I’m often embarrassed to show it to anyone but the grader. I’m looking to build more peer reviewing skills in this program.

Ah, and here is my BASE! No surprise here. Everyone who posted so far has been different haha!

I really appreciated how Helen Sword demystified academic writing by incorporating other voices and perspectives; it felt like we were hearing from a wide range of academics who were coming from varying professional positions, disciplines, and countries (I found the insight from scholars in the sciences particularly interesting!). The book managed to be descriptive rather than strictly prescriptive, while still emphasizing that good writing relies on concrete habits and attitudes.

The section on “Writing for Others” really had me thinking about how we can reconcile academic work with social community during a time of pandemic. I miss the days of going to a cafe with a friend and working for hours on our separate assignments, pausing to chat or take a walk or smoke outside. That kind of activity seems so impossible now, and to be honest the thought of translating it to Zoom remains unappealing to me. So much of our social lives and our academic lives has already converged on Zoom and on screens—I don’t want yet another virtual obligation or structure! It feels like these days, even as the social realm remains important—in fact, has become more important—I’m actually turning to it as a respite from writing rather than a co-constitutive element of it. When writing I phone or visit with a friend and take that time as an opportunity to be resolutely unproductive. This produces a lot of catharsis and emotional relief, but also now that I’m more or less doing school full-time, I miss the feeling of working and thinking with others for extended bouts of time outside the format of a seminar.

Inspired by Joseph and Alessandra, I took the digital BASE test (results below); predictably, my least developed angle was the emotional one. I’ll confess that I don’t necessarily approach academic writing as an artistic craft. Or, to put it in a maybe better way, I have fewer hang-ups about academic writing than I do about the writing I do for non-academic publications (criticism, essays, etc). The latter I regard as far more personal and expressive of my particular stylistic or aesthetic sensibilities. Meanwhile, I tend to view academic assignments as jobs to get done—I of course care about them and want them to be as good as possible, but they’re not these intense, potentially damning reflections of myself the same way that my other writing is. I also think that this other (non-academic) writing is more bound up with my professional and financial stability, so my relationship to it is necessarily more fraught. For that reason, I don’t necessarily feel joyous about my academic writing, but I also don’t feel super distressed or angsty—compared to non-academic writing, the highs aren’t as high but the lows are thankfully not as low either.

Though Sword’s discussion of a daily writing practice was intimidating, it’s something I now want to try. Lately I’ve become too ritualized of a writer, to the point where if conditions aren’t perfect I feel like writing becomes impossible. I think I need to move beyond this kind of precious relationship, so I appreciated Sword’s approach to the artisanal/behavioral aspects of writing, which renders the act less sacrosanct and almost more like a daily chore.

So, this is the first time I didn’t want to throw one of our books against a wall! Mostly because I enjoy discussions on writing, craft, etc. And Helen Sword’s Air & Light & Time & Space, I think, like most books on writing, provides for an excellent discussion on the topic. First, I want to say that I appreciate Sword starting off with the Diagnostic Exercise: Mapping the BASE.  (I’ve posted my results below.) I tried to be as honest as possible with my responses, but I also know that when it comes to certain aspects of my writing (the artisanal habits, for example), I am super critical of myself and so I probably didn’t necessarily judge myself accurately in that area. (Again, I’m being totally honest!) I do have a writing group (for my fiction writing), but not for my academic work. Since most of my academic work has been for courses/seminars, I’ve always taken advantage of submitting early drafts of my work to professors so I can get feedback on clarity of ideas, etc. But now that I am shifting from being a “student academic” to a career, professional academic, I’m now taking into consideration something that Sword posits early in the book about producing original research, etc.,. as a “successful academic”:

“To be a successful academic, it is not enough merely to have mastered the craft of writing intelligibly. You must also be creative enough to produce original research, persuasive enough to convey the significance of your findings to others, prolific enough to feed the tenure and promotion machine, confident enough to withstand the slings and arrows of peer review, strategic enough to pick your way safely through the treacherous terrain of academic politics, well organized enough to juggle multiple roles and commitments, and persistent enough to keep on writing and publishing no matter what. So how do academics gain this formidable set of skills, if not through formal training?” (65,67).

I think Sword’s subsequent responses to the question posited at the end of that quote speaks to the strength of this book, and to becoming a better writer in general: there is no one-model way of getting the writing/work done. I particularly appreciate how Sword offers a broad range of responses from “successful,” well-known academic writers, like Susan Gubar, for example, to lesser known academics. I find it fascinating when well-known, famous, “successful” writers, of any field, discuss their approach to craft, or the blank page. I think it’s also good in formulating an archive, so to speak, of other writer’s methods of craft that you can utilize and experiment with in creating, or exploring, a method that best suits you.

For example, I like Toni Morrison’s writing routine of: waking up before dawn, to beat the sun; to write at the precise moment the sun rises, to light the page, more because Morrison always said in interviews that she formed the habit of waking up that early when she was caring for her two young sons as a single working mother, and that was the only time in the day she had to write. After the children grew up and left the house she continued to write at that time because she also discovered that that was the time when she was most sharp. Later in the day, she found, that she wasn’t as quick with her thoughts or that interested in writing, say, around lunch time. This was instrumental in helping me in figuring out what time, like Sword also mentions, I am able to produce writing—or more specifically a shitty draft of something. (Not editing, which is the part of writing that I relish and find most satisfying!) Of course, Morrison is referring to her creative work. But I think it is also pertinent in academic writing as well. To paraphrase something in Sword, sometimes writing is work and sometimes writing isn’t pleasurable. Sometimes you just have to find a time to pump out some writing.

Which leads me to the other thing Sword mentions, place. I think finding the sweet spot to write is also important. A few years ago, when my partner and I lived in a tiny apartment in Miami, at times our bedroom was the only quiet place where I could write and work. But I could never get more than a few words, lines, or paragraphs down because I would either get fatigued, or disinterested. When I shared this with my boyfriend he said, “You’re writing where you sleep, there has to be some sort of association between the two things. You have to find another place to do your work.” And that was extremely helpful. (How helpful advice like this is during a pandemic? We can discuss, perhaps, during class.)

Lastly, I appreciate any and all writing guidebooks that demystify and de-romanticize the writing process. And during our class I’m hoping we can share some of our own writing routines, horror stories, etc., to further normalize the complicated and unromantic-ness of writing–especially writing during COVID.

Sword’s book encourages readers to reflect upon their own writing habits. While writing styles and habits vary widely, she argues, academic writers should try to even out these elements on the base. I more or less agree with the elements she includes on the base, and that it would be good to even them out! To use Sword’s terminology. I know that in my last program my social and emotional habits were very bad. I would write and rewrite and never submit because I was ashamed to submit anything less than perfect, and afraid to ask for help or share. One of my proudest accomplishments last semester was submitting papers I wasn’t COMPLETELY happy with, including one I wasn’t really happy with at all. I had given myself deadlines within the official deadlines and when those deadlines arrived, that was it, and my attitude was really one of feeling that if something has promise, whoever reads the piece can help me make it better – I was proud of this mindset because it really was a shift from how I used to be. For me, this is a benefit of having more old people in Ph.D. programs – I think I’ve matured and become healthier, but I also think the physical and mental strain of caring too much what people think of me has become more than my older body and brain can handle. Even when I do cringe re: writing I submit or something I say, my brain just kind of drops it in a few seconds or so. It’s great!

I have to admit, it’s a little hard to read about writing habits in this particular moment. Having worked at such an intense job for so long, I had developed a work ethic (these are your hours, and you are doing nothing but work in those hours) that translated to GC, more or less. The pandemic made that all go to Hell, and it’s only gotten worse and more taxing that all these distinct tasks are taking place on one screen. There’s time and space (I guess) but air and light? Nope!

Sword talks about institutional barriers to healthy writing habits in a way that’s kind of shallow, and so I wish she just hadn’t. I also could have done without the “growth mindset” stuff, which I have a personal grudge against. That particular rant doesn’t belong here, but I’ll mention Sword’s own research re: women feeling significantly less pleasure than men while writing. I found those statistics alarming, and individuals developing a growth mindset will certainly not be helpful there.

Sword mentions that there aren’t necessarily spaces to talk about writing in academia. This is a random thought, but sometimes I wonder if (good) practices in composition studies could be translated and used in graduate classrooms. These practices often involve a lot of scaffolding and collaboration at all stages in the reading and writing process, and a lot of metacognitive reflection on both reading and writing.

I find that the discourse on debt and higher education that proliferate the public sphere often pertains to student loans. Seldom do such discussion venture toward the relationship between debt, globalization and (higher) education. Thus, this workshop’s aim is to engage in that discussion. Influenced by a reading of Moten and Harney’s chapter on Debt and Study in The Undercommons, a chapter that addresses the necessity of formulating debt in abject “others” in the (re)production and legitimacy of institutions and institutional power/authority, I want to engage in a discussion on the dependency of debt (of people, of countries, etc.) in the construction of institutions, nation-states, (higher) education, etc.,. One of my aims is to explore the language of debt (or how Moten and Harney use the language of debt in their text), which can come to mean, the “poor in debt” and/or those privileged students who receive a higher education who are not (perhaps unconsciously) (in)debted to those forced into debt. Those whose debts fund the privileged students’ education.

            This workshop also relates to our seminar discussion revolving around how the construction of whiteness and white supremacy, should be the central focus of many of the issues in academia that Katina Rogers’ Putting the PhD in Humanities to Work and Brier and Fabricant’s Austerity Blues raise. These texts, which proport to be invested in trying to impart some sort of understanding (or knowledge) on race, gender, and class inequalities (re)produced in higher education (perhaps to get the reader, whoever that reader is, politically engaged?) do not strike at the heart of the debt in which such oppressive authority and power is invested. They do not strike at the ways in which imperial powers, like the United States, invest in the debts of non-white, colonized “others.”

            Thus, my workshop will focus on two text in an attempt to engage in a more concrete conversation about the role of debt in higher education. The first text is from American sociologist Charles Lemert’s entitled, “Mysterious Power of Social Structures,” which addresses the role of social structures in (re)producing oppressive hierarchies of power. The second text entitled, “Yale and the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis: Are Yale’s Puerto Rican Profits Ethical?” is an article published in the Yale Daily, by student reporter, Nick Tabio. The article relates Yale University’s investment in Puerto Rico’s debt, which came to light in the aftermath of student protest over the US response to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Ultimately, my hope in this workshop is to engage in a constructive discussion on the role of debt in higher education and the important role of student protest in “unveiling” the “mysterious” power of social structures.

Reading Materials:

Yale and the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis

Lemert, Charles. “Mysterious Power of Social Structures.” (Will post this article soon.)

Hi everyone–

Looking at the other workshops that have been posted here, I fear I may have had the wrong approach to this assignment. I’m plugging in what I wrote anyways, with the caveat that if people have questions or would like more straightforward summaries of the readings, I’m happy to work on that. Apologies that I wrote so much, but hopefully the word count is offset by the readings, which are pretty short!

The three texts I would like to focus on during my workshop approach themes of ghostliness, memory, and silence from different disciplinary vantage points. Manan Ahmed is a historian of South Asia at Columbia University, Avery Gordon a sociologist at UCSB, and David Eng a professor of English at Brown University. Even as these scholars work within discrete fields, however, they also move outside and beyond rigid methodological divides; they marshal theories and techniques from psychoanalysis, epistemology, critical race theory, literary theory, political science, and even memoir. This range produces in each text a unique sense of density but also slipperiness, as if the authors, despite leveraging a plethora of tactics, face subject matters that evade immediate access or epistemological transparency; to quote Gordon quoting Barthes, interdisciplinary work creates “new object[s] that belong to no one” (7).

The objects of these texts “belong to no one” in that they evade the territorial claim of any single discipline; they also “belong to no one” because these studies—which approach silences, ghosts, losses, lacunae—necessarily circle the intangible, and navigate the complex territories of public inheritance and collective memory. This is perhaps most evident in Ahmed’s case, in which a source of knowledge—the archive—is presented as a public yet tightly regulated space that the individual can only enter as a nervous interloper. Ahmed may gain access to the archive, but not as a privileged historian who might excavate and interpret its offerings. Instead, a quick scan of the archive’s “topo-nomology” merely permits Ahmed to catalogue (and, under the watchful eye of his chaperone, photograph) the surfaces of that which he knows he cannot know further. 

What ethical obligations arise out of knowledge production around bodies and histories that are always moving out of our line of sight, out of our range of hearing? What should we do when we, as knowing subjects, nevertheless feel intimate, personal, and political connections to these bodies and histories that do not belong strictly to us? Ahmed, who is of Kashmiri heritage, describes the archive as marked by Partition- and colonial-era histories of interreligious persecution. He notes a possible collection between the archive, its neighborhood, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ in the text), a Sunni supremacist organization; he understandably begins to feel wary when archive officials ask him why he’s “looking for Hindus in Uch” (10). There runs a throughline between the archive’s function as a Pakistani State repository for errant, “sinful” objects, and Kashmir’s historical oppression as a community that refuses “the triumphalism of the Muslim League” (16). In pairing these larger questions of state power and nationalist violence with an earlier portrait of family life, Ahmed suggests that he is drawn to such fraught and contested spaces for more than purely academic reasons. Yet a personal connection does not always equate to a sense of ownership or access: even the stories of Ahmed’s own grandmother’s constitute “a dark archive” that he cannot share (10). As he writes, “they were not my secrets” (10). 

There are multiple modes of silencing at work in Ahmed’s telling: the silence imposed by the State, which controls and withdraws the conditions and objects of knowledge; and the self-silencing of the scholar, who feels an obligation to turn away from “half-private, half-public conjurations” that rest on an “unstable” onto-epistemological limit (11). Ahmed’s invocation of “conjuration” aptly registers the spectral quality of knowledge production around traumas that are publicly situated but also privately processed. The “unstable limit” that his scholarship traverses makes it difficult to discern who is speaking, through which socio-political mechanisms such speech is mediated, and even what, ultimately, these disembodied voices are expressing. The children who play around the archive say they hear “all kinds” of noises, and Ahmed’s account hints that not all of these are intelligible (16).

As with Ahmed, multiple forms of silence are at work in David Eng’s study of national discourse and processes of mourning after 9/11. Eng describes the organic silence that follows a shock of trauma as a potentially generative “moment before … loss is expropriated into its symbolic meaning” (86). But there is another silencing mechanism, resonant with Ahmed’s sketch, in which American society’s legitimation of certain strains of public discourse suppress “alternative narratives of community and belonging,” as well as the absence/presence of “certain deprivileged losses” (90). Eng shows us how silence can sound a lot like patriotic noise, just as, in Gordon, the invisible or marginalized are paradoxically made even less discernible in a culture governed by hypervisibility.

For the purposes of discussion, I would like to flag a few strategies that are set forth by these writers as possible responses to the erasures that racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and capitalism enact within people’s lives. Eng suggests we return neglected or marginalized losses “to the sphere of the social and to social activism,” in a move that combines “mourning and militancy” (89). By refusing to let go of that which has been erased, while also directing the attachment to that loss outwards, we can help “another story, another history” emerge in opposition to sanctioned narratives (94). Meanwhile, Gordon suggests that scholarship begins with “the marginal, with what we normally exclude or banish,” even as these “inarticulate experiences” necessarily call forth a position of scholarly humility and vulnerability (24). The ghost as a “social figure” forces us to acknowledge that systems like capitalism or State terror—systems that need to be apprehended analytically for their internal power relations to be understood—are nevertheless also experienced in “partial, coded, symptomatic, contradictory, [and] ambiguous” ways, many of which remain difficult to understand (24). Haunting is mediation, but a vexed mediation that demonstrates how individuals, due to the complexity of social life, can never be easily relayed back to or collapsed with the larger institutions and structures that enfold them.

Lastly, I want to point to the affective dimension of much of this work. If it’s true that, as Gordon maintains, scholarly encounters with ghosts transform the scholar too, it is perhaps pertinent to ask whether studies of the subject matter under discussion potentially reproduce feelings of despair, pessimism, remorse, or even (perhaps most pertinently) guilt. What are we to make of the emotional or affective costs that such work imposes on scholars, and how can we avoid the risk of allowing histories of haunting to congeal into their own rigid narratives?  It is perhaps significant that Ahmed, unlike the other two scholars in these readings, ends his account on a more ambivalent note. Rather than declaring a dedication to a subversive epistemological project or a triumphalist pursuit of occluded histories, Ahmed chooses to foreground a smaller, more enigmatic moment with his chaperone: “We returned to the chai, which had cooled down considerably, and started slurping it again” (16).

My workshop will be an introduction to the work of Sara Ahmed, an independent scholar whose work has much to teach about how institutions function. While she used to direct the Centre for Feminist Research at Goldsmiths University in London, she resigned from this position as a protest for the university’s mishandling of sexual harrassment complaints. On her website, characterizes her work in the following way: “I work at the intersection of feminist, queer, and race studies. My research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures.” I would describe Ahmed as one of the most prolific and important philosophers of our time. 

Particularly relevant to this class, I think, is Ahmed’s work about ways of navigating institutional spaces, like the university, that are traditionally the domain of white, abeled, men. In her most recent book What’s the Use, Ahmed writes: “We have to find ways of not getting used to it without getting out of it, even if sometimes, for our own survival, our feminist survival, we need to get out of it” (196). One trend I have noticed is that many texts that fall within the umbrella of Critical University Studies will (rightly) critique adjunctification and corporatization, only to fall back on some flat notion of “faculty governance” as the best past forward, either explicitly or inadvertently evoking some notion of “better” days before these trends. These accounts do not take account for the ways the academy has always been racist, sexist, ableist, etc. Ahmed’s work is brilliant in identifying and describing the interpersonal manifestations of structural violence, and, in turn, how these pervasive yet evasive instances of interpersonal violence reinforce structures. 

I have chosen three texts for discussion: 

1. Lecture – “On Complaint” (2018)

In this lecture, Ahmed discusses what the process of complaining about institutions teaches us about how institutions function. After resigning from Goldsmiths in 2016, Ahmed solicited accounts of others who have complained within institutions. These accounts will feature heavily in her forthcoming book Complaint! You can read the description of this project here: https://www.saranahmed.com/complaint. I do recommend watching the whole lecture if you have time. In most of Ahmed’s work, she layers the repetition of images and concepts over different examples or iterations of her core concepts. When she speaks one can hear this layering in a way that is really lovely. 

2. Lecture  – “Queer Use” 

You can read this here: https://feministkilljoys.com/2018/11/08/queer-use/

I haven’t been able to find the best quality video of this lecture, but videos exist. 

This lecture summarizes many of Ahmed’s points from her most recent book, What’s the Use: On the Uses of Use (2019), one of several of Ahmed’s work where she traces the ways words work (she considers this as part of a trilogy with The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Willful Subjects (2014)). In this lecture, Ahmed talks both about the ways institutions signal that they are not for everyone’s use, as she puts forth some principles of what “queer use” of institutional spaces might look like. 

3. Article – “Against Students” (2015)

Against Students

This article is perhaps more related to a niche interest of mine. At around the time this article was written, many (often, but by no means only, ostensibly left) faculty were writing articles about “overly sensitive” students who desired content warnings and safer spaces. Many of these faculty claimed that students were attempting to restrict the freedom of speech of faculty members. This article is Sara Ahmed’s response. I’ll also say that even at this time, I personally believed that the “moral panic” (as Ahmed describes this train of thought) about trigger warnings was a way to warn students against complaining about sexual harassment, almost as if to say: “If you speak out against abuse within this institution, we will characterize you as a whiny, moralistic baby.” Additionally, a lot of the language re: “snowflakes,” language that soon became popular insults hurled by Trump supporters toward those who care for justice, is language that I personally first heard used by academics who consider themselves somehow countercultural.

Required Readings/Videos:

Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 58, no. 3, 1988.

Available free online: https://hiphoplitclass.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/jordan-nobodymeanmore.pdf 

Language Pedagogy in Practice– Jordan’s essay provides a case study of her experience teaching “Black English” to predominantly Black students in New York City. The lack of Black English representation, mirroring their use of language displayed within a classroom setting, caused the students to unintentionally expose internalized biases of their own identities. Jordan had the heavy task of helping her students to unlearn the negative projections stigmatizing their use of language. Both Jordan and her students illustrate how the classroom can be a site of change. By exposing students to a fluid model of learning which prompted them to question their identities, Jordan provided tools to allow students to unlock diverse levels of critical thinking.

Lyiscott, Jamila. “Why English Class is Silencing Students of Color.” Youtube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 23 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4dc1axRwE4 

Liberation Literacies- Dr. Lyiscott’s Ted Talk explores how pedagogy and language de-centers students of color. She provides a call of action for educators to regard how the institution works to exclude students based on race and culture. Instructors do a disservice to students by erasing the culture and diverse linguistic styles of students from historically marginalized groups. Lyiscott applies the intersection of her own languages to understand how students of color are not able to see themselves through language within classroom instruction. She discusses the ways instructors can unintentionally participate in upholding systems of oppression. The language, literacy and practices from people of marginalized groups, that make up the global majority, have useful tools that should be dutifully tasked and applied within the classroom setting. 

Frohman, Denice. “Accents.” Youtube, uploaded by Denice Frohman, 30 Dec 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtOXiNx4jgQ 

Language as a Form of Resistance- Frohman’s slam poem describes the ways in which language and culture are synonymous. Their poem illustrates the ways in which English is a malleable language that can be used as a form of resistance. Many people who learn English as a second language apply the rules of their native tongue to their new language. Frohman’s poem illustrates how language resistance works to retain culture and heritage. Through poetry, Frohman demonstrates the ways slang, call and response and syntax govern the structure of language interpretation. 

“Immersion.” Youtube, uploaded by mediathatmatters, 16 Jun 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Y0HAjLKYI 

This short film tells the story of an Mexican- born elementary school student’s experience in the American academic system. He is fluent in Spanish and knows very little English which interferes with his learning abilities. He proves to do well in math, but his skill fails to translate due to his inability to communicate with his teacher. However, he is determined to take and pass the state mandated math exam, despite his principal’s reluctance to administer the exam to non-English speaking students. The film depicts how the American academic system is not designed to help non-English speaking students to learn and thrive. The system proves to be exclusive as students are denied the opportunity to become integrated into the curriculum. Instead, students like Moises are disregarded from learning practices which leads students down a path of systemic issues to follow. Moises lacked the English skills to advocate for his own education despite his resistance. The film also reveals how teachers must also advocate for their students. Although his teacher attempted to show up for her students, her resistance was also dismissed. Language scholars, such as June Jordan and Carmen Kynard, provide action methods for teachers to work in dismantling the exclusive and hierarchical structure of academia directly in their classroom.

Supplementary Video (optional):

Lyiscott, Jamila. “3 ways to speak English.” Youtube, uploaded by TED, 19 Jun 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9fmJ5xQ_mc 

*** Unable to lead class November 9th