Sunday, December 11, 2005
i’m thinking right now about wonder. Like, how wonder is related to my bullshit existentialism. I wonder how idyllic my own wonder is.
I wonder about class and my relationship with academia – I work a low-wage job where academics come to consume services: printing. I receive, what I perceive as, the most foul treatment from students. Requesting a simple service such as color copying and a coil bind, those with the wordiest theses will demand my servility; the slightest infraction against which results in a demoralizing behavioral reaction: I am talked down to, or made to feel stupid. I am reminded that I am a service industry worker who could not possibly understand the plight of the post-structuralist post-colonialist post-manners critical theorist, who is simply trying to get this goddamn-dense guy at the copy shop to just print and cut and laminate and trim and bind and ship my thesis, all while I wait here tapping my debit card against the counter, sighing.
I wonder if I should let these interactions phase me? Should I assign them as much meaning or feeling as I do? Should I be thinking to myself: what is this person’s commitment level to social/political/whatever change if they can’t be nice to the person (me/my co-workers) who could refuse to help them, or purposefully fuck their order up, thus making their assignment late. The person (me/my co-workers) whose livelihood outside of this hell is contingent upon the $8 per hour and the expensive health care, the eight hours a day, then the physical and emotional exhaustion, five days a week in a demoralizing uniform serving ungrateful hypocrites. The person who lives around the corner from the coffee shop they frequent, that they could potentially talk to about life, being poor, or alienated, or Queer, or an anti-capitalist. How productive are these questions? What do they bring me? What’s at stake?
Are these questions valuable in an academic context? I wonder. Are they solipsistic? Are they simplistic?
A note on the individualism contained herein: I try to trust and love myself enough to feel.
I wonder about class and my relationship with academia – I work a low-wage job where academics come to consume services: printing. I receive, what I perceive as, the most foul treatment from students. Requesting a simple service such as color copying and a coil bind, those with the wordiest theses will demand my servility; the slightest infraction against which results in a demoralizing behavioral reaction: I am talked down to, or made to feel stupid. I am reminded that I am a service industry worker who could not possibly understand the plight of the post-structuralist post-colonialist post-manners critical theorist, who is simply trying to get this goddamn-dense guy at the copy shop to just print and cut and laminate and trim and bind and ship my thesis, all while I wait here tapping my debit card against the counter, sighing.
I wonder if I should let these interactions phase me? Should I assign them as much meaning or feeling as I do? Should I be thinking to myself: what is this person’s commitment level to social/political/whatever change if they can’t be nice to the person (me/my co-workers) who could refuse to help them, or purposefully fuck their order up, thus making their assignment late. The person (me/my co-workers) whose livelihood outside of this hell is contingent upon the $8 per hour and the expensive health care, the eight hours a day, then the physical and emotional exhaustion, five days a week in a demoralizing uniform serving ungrateful hypocrites. The person who lives around the corner from the coffee shop they frequent, that they could potentially talk to about life, being poor, or alienated, or Queer, or an anti-capitalist. How productive are these questions? What do they bring me? What’s at stake?
Are these questions valuable in an academic context? I wonder. Are they solipsistic? Are they simplistic?
A note on the individualism contained herein: I try to trust and love myself enough to feel.
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