things that i know (and don't)
2013-01-03
Someone on tumblr asked me about ‘identity politics’ and I wasn’t really able to give them a very good answer.
Mostly… because I don’t really know much about this sort of stuff. Yes. I have several degrees. But none of them are related to pretty much anything I have blogged about, with the exception of the stuff on logic/rationality.
I haven’t extensively read or studied the ‘great’ works of anti-oppression or whatever. I did take one survey class on ‘literary criticism’ (read: critical theory) in the second year of university (maybe 9 or so years ago?). We covered things, very briefly, on post-modernism, feminism, marxism, etc. But nothing in real depth (although, I was lucky to get primary sources instead of watered down secondary ones).
But. Yeah.
I don’t actually know about a lot of the shit people ask me about. Or that I write about. At least not in an academic sense.
I know my life. I know the work I’ve put into understanding myself (especially recently, my efforts to decolonize my own mind). Add that to the fact that I was once a philosopher (maybe still am?). And this is how I approach things.
And… in many ways, I know I’ll never spend the time reading all the great thinkers. I don’t have the time. Nor really the energy. It, of course, often means that I’ll write something… only to find out that someone else wrote similarly years before it crossed my mind. But I take great comfort in that.
It helps me immensely to know that I’m not alone in my vision of the world and how it could be, and all the ways that it is not.
Another part of me is a little sad… that it has been years of people saying the same shit, with seemingly little impact.
The largest part of me, really isn’t concerned. Because…
almost all the writing and thinking i do is about me and my personal journey
this isn’t a classroom. i’m neither teacher nor student.
and all i want
is to be free