Update on June 11, 2018:
If you’re wondering what happened to this schedule: you can read more about it here.
I’m slowly getting back into writing for this site and thinking about how to continue the newsletter and roundup of pieces from around the web; I will be back next week with more about that.
In case you missed it: I published “A Monica for Our Time: Reinventing Sex and Trauma in an Age of #MeToo.“
For now: a very quick update: I’m going to be massively absorbed with the book project, freelance writing, and writing for this site, which is supported by many kind and generous supporters. On that note: many, many thanks to new subscribers!
As a result of things being particularly hectic, I may not always be very quick to respond to many queries and emails, and I apologise for that (I do mark all messages and reply as I can). I’m trying to find an ideal balance between juggling life matters and writing, which I love. Given my constant precarity, the slightest glitch can cost me too much, in many ways — what might be “just” the flu for some means weeks of work and time lost for me. At some point, I will get to a more stable place, but until then: my apologies for what might often seem like scatter-brain-ed-ness on my part. I’m just really, really stressed!
I’m going to publish monthly schedules of writing, for pieces that will appear on my website every week. The plan is to publish at least two articles every week, one a longish piece that involves some combination of research and analysis and another a quick, op-ed-y one.
Broadly, to explain further: there are some really large (as in size and scope) pieces, like Part 2 of the Suey Park project and a recounting of what I call the Dodo Fracas, which I’ve written about here and here. But before I produce those, I want to write smaller pieces that lay the conceptual and historical framework in place. In the case of the Dodo matter, for instance, I don’t just want it to be a piece about some personal drama between me and the likes of Doug Henwood, Nikhil Singh, Jodi Dean, Laleh Khalili and others (which is how it’s being conveniently cast by some). Rather, I want to contextualise what happened in terms of the parts of social media that are still relatively untheorised (few want to think about social media from a psychoanalytic perspective, for instance), matters of power, the economic vulnerability of academia and academics, the vast and constant changes in the relationship between the neoliberal university and the neoliberal workplace (from which the university has long assiduously separated itself) and so much more. Which is to say, what happened to me is about much, much more — I have no desire to produce confessional narratives of trauma, which is why I’ve taken over a year to finally start producing my analyses; I needed to distance myself from the experience and think about the larger context with a clearer head (and in consultation with some incredibly brilliant fellow travellers I’m privileged to know).
Below is a list of what you can expect in the next four weeks. All titles are subject to change.
Till the next!
Week of March 19:
Longform: “Social Media: Questions, Issues, Wars.” (review essay)
Op-ed: “Double Space or Death!” (I’ll let you guess what this is about)
Week of March 26:
Longform: “Sexual and Gender Abuse: Some Preliminary Thoughts”. This will be the first of several pieces on recent sexual and gender abuse scandals, including the Shitty Media Men list.
Op-Ed: “On Gossip.”
Week of April 3:
Longform: “Empire Revisited,” a review Essay on Victoria and Abdul, The Crown (two seasons), and Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond.
Op-Ed: “A Wall Is Not a Public Square,” a piece on the tendency of many to think of social media as some kind of, well, massively democratic public square.
Week of April 10:
Longform: Review essay on Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies.
Op-Ed: “On Boredom.”
Image source: The National Library of Norway
