It's raining dead white guys

The upgrade panels are mostly slated for June, so all of us that will be going through the grinder have hunkered down to write. Henry had mentioned that I would need to come up with ten thousand words of creative work and five thousand words of critical, so imagine my surprise when various cohort members passed along the official guidelines. Which call for documents. That satisfy requirements. And forms.

I wouldn't be surprised if, should I make it to the end, they handed me a diploma and it turned out to be a degree in filling out forms. 

Everyone else's critical projects are more traditionally literature oriented, so whenever I hang out with them I hear them drop names like Foucalt and Bakhtin and Adorno and Derrida. And I stay in the corner and occasionally mutter to myself about free speech. Because interdisciplinary work looks good on funding applications, but really has no space of belonging in the bar on a Friday night when the topic is French philosophers. 

Pictured: the Bakhtin of my childhood. That and The Philosophers Song is my entire relationship with Philosophy.

And in between crises of confidence I've managed to rattle out about five thousand words on censorship in general and expurgation in particular, which has made me realize how odd it is to study something that is, by definition, an absence. With censorship you have a thick black line, a clear enemy of free speech, concrete behavior to point to and say, "this is bad." And most readers will reflexively agree with you, because over here we're all brought up to think freedom=good without really considering if we agree with the ramifications of speech that is truly free. With expurgation, you indicate an absence, and your reader may respond, "there's nothing there," to which you must retort, "Exactly!"with a twitch of the eyelid. So it is not completely unexpected when the reader then hands you a tin foil hat and tells you to stay away from high places and sharp objects. 

At least when the panel is over and done with they'll let me alone to get on with things. And it's spring again. Nothing can be that bad when you no longer risk frostbite while hunting in the rolling stacks. 

The view from my living room window - top floor of council housing means that the zombies have to eat the first three floors before they get to me.