Work

In a tense conversation a couple of months ago, Patrick Mullins rightly took me to task for what I will now call a kind of self-importance and self-indulgence on my part, a wallowing in my busy-ness. At the time, I knew what he meant, but couldn't or wasn't willing to consider his points. I'm trying these days to be more reflective about it. It's not easy (poor me).

The point: why do some of us who do not have to over-extend and over-commit ourselves do so? We complain and whine, while taking on more responsibilities, a taking on which ostensibly makes us over-extended and unhappy. Then we expect everyone else to bear with us as we inconvenience them because we are so, so busy.

It makes us feel important, worthwhile. Having everyone else depend on us means we are necessary, not superfluous. It's hard to deal with being extra, not all that important in the long run. The Dufour book has made me think about the way that academia helps manage psychosis by supplying standards, criteria, measures, responsibilities. One can produce and fill the gap lost in the decline of symbolic efficiency. Actually, in the comments to the posts part of that exchange, Old mentioned why I get over-extended: because I'm not at a research university. I feel I have to prove something.

I don't admire this and hope to change it (a little analysis a couple of years ago helped, but I was afraid it would take away my drive and ambition and didn't want to lose that). My most immediate goal has not been to turn down that many things but rather to not freak out when I can't get dinner on the table before 8:00 on a school night. That's actually going pretty well. If I can shave off ten minutes or so a meal, in a few weeks we'll be close to 7:00 and then day-light savings time will be over anyway.

I'm still paying for making commitments over the past year or so. When the requests come in, the projects are always smart and interesting, things I want to be a part of. Or they involve debts I need to repay: others were willing to read my manuscripts, be outside readers on my reviews. I owe it to others to do what others have done for me. This is less a matter of over extension than of recognizing that these responsibilities means I do less of my own work--as others did for me. What's a little embarrassing is when I'm invited to visit somewhere. My childcare situation means that I have to arrange things fairly far in advance, so it's easy to fill up a term. I worry this makes me seem arrogant or ungrateful when someone invites me to do something--"oh, gee, my spring schedule was completely booked months ago."

After I finished Publicity's Secret, I was very nervous: what do I do now. I don't have a project. What will happen when people ask me what I'm doing. I don't have an answer. I don't exist. From reading Dufour, I think now that this is less my specific problem than symptomatic of the time: I need something outside to tell me who I am. Typically, I avoid the question by committing to various things. After a year or so of that, there's a project, a retroactive determination of academic interest. Dufour calls this hysterological. I may have had the same anxiety when I finished the Zizek book. But I think I filled that in with the plan that a bunch of essays would become the next book. So that's coming out with Duke. The plan worked. The hysterological gap in producing the self I want to become closes a little bit.

Do I feel okay because I've produced and accepted a gap, filled it, or embraced a fantasy? Likely a version of all of the above. Yet, I think I'm more aware of the way that presuming that pressing demands, that work, work, work, work, provides meaning and significance is fantastic and self-deceiving. Really: get over yourself. That will be my motto.

This week.

Comments

[parody center]

Sounds like you healed yourself relatively painlessly, unless of course this post is a meta-hysteriological way of extending your WORK SCHEDULE by even more selfanalysis, followed by more books on psychoanalysis, more selfanalysis and more books on politics. You'll NEVER get Ashley, Scarlett!

[Jodi]

Objet petit Ashley?

Since Gone with the Wind was an important part of my girlhood, my mother made it a point to instruct me with some regularity that Ashley was weak, way too weak for Scarlett, that Rhett was the only man really worthy of her, and that she should not have been so stupid not to know this. I conclude from these lessons that my mother was concerned about the appeal of weak, romantic men and the miseries they can bring with them. By the way, my mother also found Melanie abhorrent.

[parody center]

I conclude from these lessons that my mother was concerned about the appeal of weak, romantic men and the miseries they can bring with them. By the way, my mother also found Melanie abhorrent.

Is that why you turned out so sweet and motherly?

[parody center]

Prostrating yourself like Melanie for every task and demand, even as the Scarlett within screams that you'd rather be capricious and egocentric...

[Jodi]

my mother is turning over in her grade; it's horrifying for me to even consider that I have Melanie-esque tendencies.

[Dejan]

why did you spell grade instead of grave?

[Jodi]

sometimes a typo is just a typo

or, it could be a sign of my pathetic dependence on and investment in the academic structures of making the grade....

nah. way too far-fetched.

[parody center]

sometimes a typo is just a typo

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

[parody center]

sometimes a typo is just a typo

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

[parody center]

sometimes a typo is just a typo

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

[parody center]

and just by the way, let's say dr. Zizek is Ashley; who is Rhett then - me, or Patrick?

[Jodi]

it's more like who is Mammy and who is Prissy.

[patrick j. mullins]

it's more like who is Mammy and who is Prissy.

That's sho' like who you izz, Dejan. Now shutup and quit being such a tacky sissy.

[parody center]

Scawlett is MAAA-IHN and MAA-IHN awnlee!

[parody center]

or, it could be a sign of my pathetic dependence on and investment in the academic structures of making the grade....

now seriously, interesting interpretation: it could mean that you observe the grading work as unpleasant and a deadly burden because it problematizes your nervousness at being judged and or assessed, it could mean that you set yourself up for failure (grading is your death) or it could be that you perceive your mother´s beyond-the-grave influence as still assessing, ´´grading´´ you. Or all of that together, simultaneously.