Mary Rose > Recent Status Updates

“To deprive a people of their history, or to construct one for them that immortalizes humiliation, is a conscious cultural act of the powerful.”

“As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jes, I know that much of what I call history others will not. But answering that challenge of exclusion is the work of a lifetime.”

"She followed me home, and when it was clear
she wanted to stay, I began to feed her.
This had nothing to do with domestication—
I did not want a pet; she was not looking
for a hand-out or a master—
but you cannot fall off the earth
and you cannot fall out of love."

“Turner used the varnishing day (the time allowed for artists to make last-minute adjustments to their works before the exhibition opened) to add a small but conspicuous paint mark to his sea, which he then shaped into a red buoy. Constable, recognizing that this simple gesture made his own heavily worked painting look ridiculously overblown, famously declared that Turner 'has been here, and fired a gun'.”

“Twenty years of symbiotic exchanges between a system of social economics and the permutations and fruitions of 3,000 randomly assembled genetic patterns were catalogued and filed by library assistants employed on eight-month contracts to preside over the roaring silence of facts and lies that preceding assistants and technicians had been instructed and trusted to accumulate.”

“"I think it's really hard to comfortably separate talent from this unquenchable interest in the problem presented by the task," he [Michael Cunningham] said.”

"This is what Goth has given me. It didn't ask that I subscribe to anything definite in particular; rather, Goth was a way of looking at the world that I was already familiar with from the art, literature, and music of the past. It crystalized via punk into something I could believe in that held me in the bosom of darkness and at the same time set me free."

And it goes without saying that I am smitten by the Marina Abramovic standin

EA NASIR MENTION

It is very funny that the editor followed Derrida with an essay by Vilem Flusser that starts "A lot of nonsense has been talked about the world immaterial. But when people start to speak of 'immaterial culture', such nonsense can no longer be tolerated." It's like a very refreshing splash of cold water to the face

"The more I teach, the more I learn that teaching is a prophetic vocation. It demands of us allegiance to integrity of vision and belief in the face of those who would either seek to silence, censor, or discredit our words."

“Teachers who are wedded to using the same teaching style every day, who fear any digression from the concrete lesson plan, miss the opportunity for full engagement in the learning process."

“Fortunately, most of us, professors and students, do not face grave, life-threatening consequences if we speak out and engage in critical exchange. This is why it is of the utmost importance that we do not allow false notions of safety to interfere with creating a classroom community wherein students can learn how to engage in constructive dialogue, including discussion where there is intense disagreement."

“The more diverse a classroom, the greater the likelihood that there will be different levels of knowing and as a consequence professors cannot rely on a shared knowledge base to build community. When students learn about one another through the sharing of experience, a foundation for learning in community can emerge."

"I am grateful to have lived long enough to learn how much information we have been given and told was hard science or data was really a story, the interpretation of data and facts."

“The future of democratic education will be determined by the extent to which democratic values can triumph over the spirit of oligarchy that seeks to silence diverse voices, prohibit free speech, and deny citizens access to education."

Uncritically aligning yourself with Marinetti’s fascist futurist manifesto… also a choice

Referring to hijra as “trans identified men” is certainly a choice

Uncritical endorsement of political lesbianism… ok

Shunning is not “an active form of harassment” nor does it deny people their humanity, it denies a relationship. Why is severing relationships supposed to be mutually negotiated.

"I was asked to speak about survival. The difficulty for me is that survival is the least of my desires."

“If we get into this, what might we Lose? If we expose this, what might our enemies do with it? And what might it mean? Will we have to throw out all the theory we have built with such pain and struggle? Will we have to start over? How are we going to try to make each other safe while we work it through?”

“I use the word queer to mean more than lesbian. Since I first used it in 1980 I have always meant it to imply that I am not only a lesbian but a transgressive lesbian-femme, masochistic, as sexually aggressive as the women I seek out, and as pornographic in my imagination and sexual activities as the heterosexual hegemony has ever believed.”

“Entitlement, I have told them, is a matter of feeling like we rather than they. You think you have a right to things, a place in the world, and it is so intrinsically a part of you that you cannot imagine people like me, people who seem to live in your world, who don't have it.”

“The suit, as we know it today, developed in Europe as a protessional ruling class costume in the last third of the 19th century. Almost anonymous as a uniform, it was the first ruling class costume to idealise purely sedentary power. The power of the administrator and conference table… (As distinct, compared to previous upper class costumes, from the gestures of riding, hunting, dancing, duelling.)”

“My view, in sum, was that while sexual and physical abuse does occur on campuses, and prejudice and discrimination may be rampant in class, actual sexual and physical abuse do not usually take place in a classroom. So intellectual, educational settings are among the few places in life where these things can be analyzed and engaged with depth without threat of actual physical danger.”

“We have learned….through the… co-optation of a wide range of radical movements and disenfranchised communities, that as long as the system of domination and power remains intact, winning "rights" or realignment in the hierarchy simply means that the most normative elements of any community gain access to the state apparatus. When this happens, the least powerful elements remain the objects of their force.”

I find it difficult to empathize with the perspective of someone who would want to develop or nurture a relationship with an individual who has made it clear through action (if not direct conversation) that they want nothing to do with them. Even if we take Schulman’s proposition that the person being shunned is owed the chance for community repair. What do you get out of that?

Why is it taken for granted that community and friends should do the same things as trained professional social workers. Who decided that is what community is “supposed” to do?

Schulman’s insistence on phone calls is so crazy to me as an anti-phone call kind of person, especially because shes not defending it with any real reason. (Or rather defending with personal preference stated as fact.) I’m reminded of old people who get really offended by people wearing hats indoors but when pressed can’t think of any reason except that they were taught it was rude.