On Finishing My MA Thesis

I submitted my MA Thesis on 10 May. The title came to me a few hours before I submitted it, (and the one above is actually the penultimate draft.) The final title was, “‘If You Do Not Have an ID in Kenya, You Do Not Exist’: Or Stateless Kenyan Nubians as Biopolitical Subjects.” The Thesis itself addresses sovereignty and biopolitics in the colonial and postcolonial state.

Since I submitted it, I’ve been dealing with a sort of ‘let down.’ This is 8 months of work (almost like gestation!) that culminated in a 58-page document with 18.389 words, produced through 11,807 minutes of ‘editing time’ (the equivalent of about 196.8 hours or 8.2 days). Broken down, this means that I spent about an hour a day writing my Thesis over 8 months (to say nothing of the research process, which included reading and producing annotated bibliographies.)

I will never deny how much effort academic output requires. Academic work is work. It’s just not the work I want to do. Political Theory is like a delicious meal that I can partake in, but few people are able to enjoy it with me. The cost of entry into the debate is too high.

But this feeling of ‘let down’? I suspect that it is burnout. The process of Thesis-writing gave me momentum, and I’m no longer hurtling forward. I’ve crossed the finish line and my blood is pumping and the exhaustion has set in. Now I must assure myself that I ran the race well and move on.

On Care of the Self

“Do you spend a lot of time alone?”

I nod, “Yes.”

“Do you ever feel lonely?”

I shift in my seat and cross my legs, “Honestly, I’m more likely to feel lonely in a crowded room. I am an introvert.”

She writes on her notepad. “Well, that’ll be all.”

…

Since I submitted my MA Thesis, I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘care of the Self.’ It has become a recurrent theme in my life. It has arisen in conversations with my father and my partner. I call it the Gospel of Self-Care.

If you do not care for yourself, how can you care for yourself?

Even the care-givers need care.

Selflessness doesn’t mean neglecting self-care.

Too many Black women turn themselves into husks because they do not prioritize self-care.

So I’ve asked myself, “What is my self-care regimen?” The first answer was that I spend time alone after a long day, processing and de-compressing. After further thought, I considered how carefully I choose the food I cook for myself (and others, yes)- nothing but whole foods.

The Self is complex and multifaceted, and our self-care should be holistic. It’s not simply an act, it’s an experience that engages the senses, emotions and intellect. This is what a mani/pedi at home means for me- it is time deliberately set aside for my Self. When I finish, my nails are buffed and polished, and the residual pride I feel lasts for days. Self-care is also a brisk run to the beach. My mind is just as engaged as my body as I take in the scenery with the slipping sand beneath my feet.

Increasingly, my self-care has not been alone time. As an introvert, I value time with others who do not disturb the space. It is a joy to share a peaceful space with someone who simply understands your wants and gives you space. It’s a space in our togetherness.

And there’s much to be said about the importance of touch. I used to go months without hugs. I did not know how deprived I was until a hug from a new friend caused the stress I carried on my shoulders to dissipate. A loving touch is extremely therapeutic. I say this as someone who avoided touch for years after surviving sexual violence.

Really, self-care, for me, is the mundane aspects of life. Quiet time, loving touches, tea and books and small favors to myself. The grinding monotony of life (especially in graduate school) can crush the spirit, and we have to vigilant in caring for our selves. If we do not care for our Self, no one else will.

Some Thoughts on the Professionalization of Feminisms: At What Cost Are Some Brought Into the Center?

Mural in Hyde Park (Chicago) depicting police violence.

Hello!

I’m finishing my Thesis and enjoying life offline during this social media break. To be frank, a social media break was the best thing that I could have done. I realize now how much tweeting feels like “work.” I may tweet #DoTheWork (while doing the work, yes), but the work is so much sweeter when I’m not checking in online. It seems that the line between “work” and “everything else” has been demolished (or rather, that it was never there to begin with.) Stepping back from Twitter has allowed me to appreciate my deepening connections with the people around me- including people I met through Twitter and got to know in real life.

I’ve also been thinking about this tendency to “professionalize” social justice work- particularly in feminisms. “Professional feminists” are almost… fashionable. Indeed, you can be a spokes(wo)man for feminisms so long as you have the credentials, vocabulary and fashion sense. I say this with all self-awareness. I could be that “professional feminist.” I will have degrees from two highly-ranked universities, extensive training in political theory (including feminist theory!), and a Twitter account. I could have a file of out-of-context bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Sarah Ahmed, Judith Butler (be real, how many of us have deciphered her dense, verbose prose with any comprehension/engagement beyond the surface?)… quotes. Tweet, rant, rinse, repeat.

Thing is, I find the cycle of selective outrage and self-serving pontification to be a hindrance to the work that is actually being done. Yes, a lot of folks donned a hoodie for Trayvon Martin when  we found a defensible position in his innocence and not-yet-adult status. But how many folks will “raise awareness” about Cemia “Ci Ci” Dove, slain Cleveland resident and transwoman? Is Ci Ci “respectable” enough for retrospective defenses of her humanity and worth? Or is that reserved for cisgender Black boys who conform to heteronormative expectations (indeed, his girlfriend’s testimony served to confirm his acceptability)? Let’s not forget that about 70% of anti-LGBT murder victims are people of color- 44% of whom were transwomen.

I ask these questions with all seriousness. I have been thinking long and hard about my own reluctance to address gender-based crimes against QPOC- especially transwomen. My (possibly theoretical and academic) concern about perpetuating a particular discourse of transwomen as victims without agency may just be getting in the way of being part of a real conversation about transphobia, gender identity, heteronormativity and homophobia in our communities- especially communities of color. (To be clear, this is not to imply that people of color are more homophobic or transphobic.)

I don’t claim the title “ally,” but I could do a whole lot better. When words fail, the best thing I can do is amplify the voices of those speaking up. In fact, people on my timeline have been quite vocal about employment and housing discrimination against transwomen, and the criminalization of transgender people by law enforcement, which just further fuels discrimination. Others on my timeline speak up about how as transgender persons on the gender spectrum, they, their gender identity, and their sense of self are daily invalidated by casual transphobia.

“What’s your real name?”

“What is your sex assigned at birth?”

“Oh, the wo/men’s bathroom is that way.”

Prying eyes and words chip away at years of self-care. For many transgender people, the timbre of one’s voice threatens to change with these micro-assaults, further entrenching the invalidation. Their anger is not “proper” or “acceptable.” It is not “dignified” enough. It is not voiced by the “acceptable” body.

And “we” “allies” do not have these conversations. Inclusion is work. It doesn’t stop with refined and sanitized (or rather, evasive?) vocabularies for gender identity and sexual orientation. Inclusion is intentional work that means leaving one’s comfort zone.

But I worry that “inclusion,” like “diversity” and “intersectionality” have become buzzwords in social justice spaces- especially professionalized spaces. Inclusion is more than ramps and single-occupancy bathrooms that retain spatial segregation and evade the real issue of “inclusion.” It’s a start, but it’s not the solution.

It would do us good to remember that professionalizing social justice is another form of respectability politics. We must ask ourselves, “whose bodies are respectable?” if and when we find ourselves in a position to “speak for” others. Indeed, whose voice is valued? To quote Arundhati Roy, “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

Let us not be lulled into a sense of “progress” as more professionalized and degreed feminists gain visibility. We must ask which epistemic locations they inhabit that render them “acceptable.” At what cost are they brought into the center? Are they tokens mobilized to shield institutions from critique? The ever-perceptive Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote, “The putative centre welcomes selective inhabitants of the margin in order to better exclude the margin.” Who is excluded at the margins? Does the future of feminism include them? Or is this feminist future built off of their backs and pilfered words? Will “subject matter expert on feminism” become another line on resumes and CVs?

What really changes when we have a new “class” of professional feminists who nibble at the hand that feeds them? Real change would render them obsolete. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you- even if it’s the mainstream media, venture capitalists or the academy.”

That’s all for now.

Hearing Loss/ Hearing-Loss

November 2011

I live with a literal loss everyday. The language of lack and difficulty is assigned to me: “hard of hearing” “hearing impaired” “hearing loss.” Oddly enough, it’s likely that I never had “normal” hearing. I’ve had bilateral hearing loss since birth, even though I was not diagnosed until three years of silence (really, an utter disinterest in speech). Now I retreat in near-silence, lamenting the interminable ringing in my ears and their waning ability to distinguish between consonant sounds.

“Discrimination,” the audiologist said, “is when your brain distinguishes between consonant sounds. According to your tests, you misidentified 65% of the words. This, compared to previous tests, suggests that you are losing…” Ah. yes. I’m losing what I didn’t know I had- on top of losing what I probably never had. “Nerve damage.. can’t be fixed with surgery… maybe if she got an implant…” Funny how the audiologist mutters under his breath, forgetting my multiple literacies. I read lips as well as I read books, and I understand that, in his eyes, I am a subject in need of “fixing.”

I even had a lover ask me, “If you could be fixed, would you do it?”

I shook my head, “No. I love my ears as they are. I do not feel disabled until you tell me that I am in need of fixing.”

He persisted, “Well, I would fix my ears if I were you.”

I blinked away tears and disbelief.

“Are you sure that this isn’t just a kneejerk reaction? Wanting to be fixed doesn’t make you self-loathing.”

Suddenly, my feet were intensely interesting, and I felt his piercing gaze that did not truly see. Needless to say, we did not last very long.

…

A few months ago, in a despondent moment I wrote the following excerpt:

1. Birth Trauma

I am the unexpected. My parents called me “foam baby” because I was conceived in spite of their use of contraceptives and barrier methods. My mother never used the word ‘accident.’ She preferred ‘miracle.’

My birth was a traumatic one. My first contact with the world was an expulsion from a warm, dark space and a wrenching. The cold, metallic tools that wrested me from my nascent space of belonging were the same ones that crushed my ear drums and unwittingly turned my umbilical cord into a slipknot. I did not cry out until they extricated me from the death-grip that was once my life source.

I should not have survived intact. I should have been born with a sign: “Handle with care.” My first breath should not have been delayed as long as it was. Even as a baby, I represented a breach in someone’s narrative. “She’ll never function at the level of her age-peers. She’ll never speak.” But just as I was prepared to enter the world feet-first, I defied their prognostications.

I read before I ever spoke with my mouth. My hands did the talking before I ever uttered a word. And soon, I lost the instinctual, tactile language and its bodily grammar through disuse. I was ‘mainstreamed.’ I learned by immersion that I was not ‘normal.’ Nor-mal. Norm-al. Outlier. Out-lier. Out-liar.

Discontinuity. Perhaps I was the discontinuity in y = (x-2)(x+4)/ (x-2)*[1]. Or maybe I was one of the many asymptotes in the y = tan(x) graph. Whatever it was, I was there but not-there. The should-have-been-there, the intuitive there-ness of being.

…

---

[1] In solving this problem, it would be a mistake to be reductive. The principle of divisibility is not infinite. Puns intended.

Thoughts on Brokenness

I am broken. I am a whole constituted of many shards that form a mosaic. I am a multi-faceted and complex person who is a product of my environment and socialization. Nonetheless, I have agency.

I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that most of my fears are not my own. My irrational fears without a concrete basis in my own life and experiences are the fears that were bequeathed to me by my loved ones. Left to my own devices, I do not fear silence, nor do I fear living a life stripped of luxuries. My fears are not their fears, yet those are the fears that echo in my head. I just wish that someone had taken the younger me aside and said, “Don’t let their fears and perceived shortcomings become yours. You will not end up pregnant with HIV.  Those words were spoken out of fear.The hand that grasps tightly out of fear is also the hand that inflicts pain and extinguishes life. Don’t let that happen to you.” That would have saved me years of anger and rootless wandering. Those words cut me deeply and I’m just now grasping how little I’ve healed in the two and half years since they were uttered.

To be honest, much of the pain I’ve learned to live with is not mine. It was never mine until I internalized it and made it mine. It is not “normal” to be a beast of burden. The world will not fall off its axis if I take time out for self-care; in other words, the irrational sense that my absence means dis-equilibrium is my ego talking. I have to love myself enough to understand that self-care is a radical act. I cannot give if I do not take care of my Self. I cannot love if I do not love my Self. I cannot offer constructive criticism if I do not know my own strengths and weaknesses. I most certainly cannot see clearly if I am not self-reflective.

It is not enough to “do good things.” Doing good deeds is not a sufficient condition for being a person whose life is well-rounded and abundant. Doing good deeds will not make me a “good person” (let’s toss that term, yes?). After all, what good are good deeds if they come from a place of bitterness, reluctant obligation and perceived scarcity? It is far easier to be generous when I understand just how much I have to offer, and how it cannot be quantified or monetized.

…

Just some thoughts I’m working through. I do not want to reproduce hurt because I am lacking in self-reflection.

#PhDOrBust… or Not: Is a PhD For Me?

I’ve been hesitant to write this post because it feels like I am possibly foreclosing options by doing so. After some deliberation, I decided to go for it.

PhD Or Bust! … or Not

The litany of “Don’t Do It, Girl!” articles about PhD programs hasn’t been that convincing to me. Too often, they are written by tenured professors who write from a privileged position of relative security amid shifts in the Academy. On the other hand, I’ve read a good number of these articles from current or former PhD students, many of whom are facing high debt loads coupled with diminishing job security and clout in the workplace. Either way, their stake in this matter is not mine. More to the point, most of them do not resemble me remotely in terms of their social position. I am a Black woman with a “disability” who hails from a working-middle-class background (with more social than economic class). I do not have the same considerations as many of these writers do.

I’m in graduate school now, finishing up my MA in Social Sciences (Political Science) at the University of Chicago. I am right in the middle of the Academy. I am the frog who knows that the water is hot. I have lived the lean life of a graduate student, and it is not unlike the life of an un(der)employed recent graduate amid a recession in some respects. On the upshot, there are books, academic journals, and fascinating graduate seminars (my intellect frolics!).

As I finish my MA Thesis, I ask myself, “Do I really want or need a PhD?” After a moment, I break it down- “What do I want to do? How will a PhD help me accomplish this? Or will a PhD program mean years of foregone opportunities for practical work in the field in which I already work?”

What do I want to do? I want to do what I am already doing- research, writing, creating and designing training materials for non-profit organizations and NGOs serving “populations on the move” (thus far: homeless communities, refugees, asylees, trafficked persons, migrant workers). Do I have the skills that I need to do this? Yes. Am I gaining the experience I need? Yes. But do I need a PhD to do this work? The current answer is “No.”

In short, my interests have never been simply academic or intellectual. Yes, intellectual analysis informs my practice, but the former is not sufficient. In my experience, theorizing in an enclosed space and place is an exercise in futility. Good theory is dynamic and its validity is tested through practice.

I resist using a “Return on Investment” (ROI) analysis to assess whether a PhD is worthwhile for me, because economic analysis often fail to capture the “softer” benefits of education and other pursuits that do not immediately yield economic gains. On the other hand, as a product of home-schooling, I’ve always rejected the notion of education being legitimate only in institutionalized contexts, and it makes sense to consider the economic costs of a PhD program.

• In 5-7 years, will practical work experience matter more than a PhD and its concomitant specialized skill sets (so often attuned to the academy)? If so, why get a PhD?
• How much student loan debt do you have? Post-PhD, will your income be sufficient for repayment? What does the job market for PhD-holders in your field look like? What are the beginning salaries of successful job-searchers?
• What does your funding package look like? Do you have a scholarship, fellowship, stipend or a TA-ship?
• Furthermore, will you have to take out student loans to cover unanticipated costs during the PhD program (these costs include housing, health issues, and so on)? Will you need to work in addition to a full course load in order to make ends meet?

These questions differ from the questions I asked myself as an un(der)employed college graduate without much professional work experience. Now that I have years of professional experience and clearly-demonstrated skills, I have different considerations.

What Should Prospective Applicants to Graduate Programs Know?

To be honest, there was a lot that I did not know the first time I applied to graduate programs. I did not know that as I advanced in my graduate studies, I’d be asked to narrow my focus more and more. I did not know that the “life of the mind” is not without its fraught interpersonal politics (e.g. “Don’t cite Prof. X in Prof. Y’s class. They had a beef back in grad school.”)

And I most certainly did not know how hard and fast the lines between “traditional” disciplines in the Social Sciences are in spite of claims to “interdisciplinarity.” My undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley was in History, but my Thesis employed both Historical methods and interpretive methods employed by Political Theorists. Here at UChicago, my Thesis is based on ethnographic data and historical primary documents, while the methodology is squarely in the realm of Political Theory.

In a nutshell, everything I wished I knew before I applied to graduate school can be found on my colleague’s blog, where he has articles on every step of the process, including:

• MA or PhD?
• Your Timeline - A timeline for applicants applying to graduate programs in the U.S.
• Organization During Application Season
• The GRE and the GRE Fee Reduction
• Your CV – Tips on how to write and format your CV
• Letters of Recommendation - Considerations for choosing a recommendation-writer
• Organizing Your Information - Organizing your information for a potential recommendation letter-writer
• Picking a Program – More geared toward the Humanities, but applicable to the Social Sciences
• Multiple Offers: The Power to Say No - How to negotiate when you have multiple admissions offers
• Notes on Mentors – On the importance of mentors

This seems like a long list, but I assure you, this blog is an excellent resource for prospective applicants to graduate programs (particularly in the U.S.).

In Conclusion…

After a talk with my mentor, a former Professor, I soberly reached the conclusion that a PhD is not a necessity for me, and would probably come at a great cost to me and my goals. To be frank, it was freeing. My perspective has shifted such that I can consider a PhD program as a possible future option, even as I continue to do the work that I love to do. I will still turn in my best possible Thesis, and I will still maintain communications with faculty members who taught and supported me through graduate school.

What are your considerations when you think of applying to graduate programs? How will you weigh the decision to go… or not?

“Akátá” Revisited: Wild Seed

Recently, I’ve been thinking of my position and identity within a forcible Diaspora. In February, I wrote a post entitled, “Akátá- or how I realized that Afrocentrism was not for me” and in March, I wrote, “Dear One, What Have You Lost?” In the former post, I wrote of my sense of alienation as an African-American descendant of enslaved Africans visiting West-Central Africa. In the latter post, I explored the sense of loss and rootlessness I feel as a product of a forcible Diaspora. In a more historical and political theoretical turn, I wrote “Thoughts on Slave Ships, Refugee Camps and Mass Graves,” employing a biopolitical analysis of slave ships, refugee camps and mass graves as Total Institutions to conceptualize the unearthing of mass graves with the remains of trafficked and enslaved Africans on the island of St. Helena, 150 miles off of the southern shore of Africa.

This morning, I was reading Gayatri Gopinath’s Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, and her analysis of the biogenetic, and biodeterminist roots of the term “Diaspora,” and consequently, its patriarchal and heteronormative underpinnings astounded me. In Stefan Helmreich’s etymological analysis of the term “Diaspora,” he links it to the “generative substance or seed of animals” or- in other words- sperm. (Gopinath, 5)

In Boellstorff’s article entitled, “Dubbing Culture: Indonesian Gay and Lesbi Subjectivities and Ethnography in an Already Globalized World,” he problematizes analyses of internationalized queer subjectivities which rely on biogenetic terms such as “Diaspora” “Hybridity” and “Creolization.” These terms, Boellstorff states, “imply prior unities and originary points of dispersal,” (Boellstorff, 226) and thus tend to produce West-centric analyses of queerness, which are predicated on the notion that queerness is a Western import, when it is the globalized categories of queer identities that are imported, not queer subjectivities themselves. (This, of course, implies that identity is not the same as subjectivity. Many people can identify as [label], but that self-identification can be borne of many differing subjectivities. It is dangerous to conflate labels with referents.)

In Gopinath and Boellstorff’s analyses of biogenetic, patriarchal and heteronormative concepts such as “diaspora” “hybridity” and “creolization”, kinship and belonging is traced not through the mother, but through the father. Paternity mediates belonging. This mirrors nationalistic tendencies to trace belonging and kinship through patrilineal bloodlines, wherein citizenship conferred on a jus sanguinis basis leaves children borne of unions between citizen women and non-citizen partners, and children born outside of state-sanctioned marital unions as stateless persons.

In my own experience, I have been marked as an “outsider” and dismissed as “akátá” by African immigrants in the United States. The sharp syllables of the word “akátá” assaulted my unaccustomed senses, contesting my own tenuous formulations of Blackness as transnational, transversal. In one sense, it was an abrupt, but timely, reminder of the fact that for many African immigrants, Blackness is not an expedient identity or category until they are marked as “Black – Other” in places where African-descended people are not the (political or popular) majority.)

In another sense, “Akátá” reminded me that as a product of a forcible Diaspora, I am the ever-outsider/in-between. In diasporic terms, Akátá- the wild cat that escaped the pin- is the “scattered seed.” And that seed can fall in the in-between, liminal spaces, surviving and reproducing in spaces that are otherwise unnamed, unmarked and unrecognized. It is for this reason that “struggle” is so often used to categorize stories of resistance and radical survival across the forcible African Diaspora.

Now my next task is to think of a way to conceptualize my position in forcibly dispersed community without using terms with patriarchical, heterosexist and biogenetic underpinnings.

Reading Suggestions:

• Hartman, Saidiya. (2007). Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Gopinath, Gayarti. (2005) Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Perverse Modernities). Duke University Press
• Boellestoff, Tom. (2003). Dubbing Culture: Indonesian Gay and Lesbi Subjectivities and Ethnography in an Already Globalized World. American Ethnologist 30(2): 225-242