Weighty Insecurities Part One

One of the most suspicious things about blog sites is the concept of posting anything other than daily trivia, news stories, current photos, and glib, trite information and commentary. I was sitting here thinking about what currently matters to me, and find it difficult to commit anything to this semi-private but mostly public page. So, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and divulge a few revolving thoughts....

I'm in the middle of writing my first dissertation chapter (I'm at about 15 of 30 desired pages) and am finding it incredibly hard to figure out WHY I have chosen this field. I mean, nothing I say or do will change anything in the world, other than in a few classrooms of students who generally don't give a shit and just want a grade. I know I am invested in the topic (which, by the way, is on biological racism-cum-19th century American ethnology's engagement of indelible transparency as a key concept in the perpetuation of biological and scientific violence against non-Caucasian folks. Race becomes codified as a permanent "condition" with a moral correlative and has [as we know] horrific repercussions), but feel that this PhD is entirely self-indulgent. I think I had more pride in the volunteer and social work/advocacy I did while in Portland and Berkeley. Of course, when I became a grad student, all social work--real work--ceased and I became enmeshed in the theoretical, the historical, and the aesthetic-political. There is a comfort in studying something that does not affect you directly, but which you know affects the majority of people around you, and the quality of life in which they live. It's a sort of diversionary tactic to avoid events in one's own life that have been less than ideal, and, instead, turns your head toward plight that both mirror and distance your own. Foucault determined that catalogs of meaning are set up as follows: symbols and signs simultaneously reflect and distance themselves from one another. Signifed elements are possible only in relation to other signified elements and, most importantly, only possible with a viewing eye. As such, the plight I study and about which I write are both distant from and perfectly mirror my own: surveillance, bodily violence, state-instituted eradication of self and agency, etc. Literary and theoretical analysis seems the most effective means to my own emotional needs. That said, the insecurities that normally attend graduate work (fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of short comings) are magnified exponentially when one studies that which hits analogously close to home. So, where does this leave me? As I pour out the blood-ink onto the page I feel myself paradoxically emboldened and withered by the process of social/historical/political-as-self analysis. It's so fucking self-indulgent (yes, this has become my "favorite" catch phrase for the moment), yet so necessary.