It’s often anti-climactic. Like most things in life. I prefer the drama right off the bat, get my fill of it all, feel a rush, and then sit down as I watch it dwindle away in a pathetic attempt to remain important. Most things go this way for me. Places, people. Have been looking for something with lasting power, but alas, the only thing that sticks to me, like a fly sticks to that sticky poison tape, is the Academy. It gets harder mind you, and apparently (as I’ve just discovered twice in one week) I don’t always win the battles. All it wants is for me to conform. All of us should conform. It would make life easier for everyone involved: look, the institution has been here for a long f-ing time, and the people who fill its guts right now, at least in BC, aren’t really interested in caring about it in the way I hoped. Late-capitalist neoliberalism transcends the signification it supposes as it falls from the lips of professors and grad-students, and becomes them.
Gordon Campbell won the last election, in fact, the Liberals gained more seats. No one outside of Vancouver even knew what STV (http://www.stv.ca/) was about, and the Liberals’ smear campaign did an adequate job in convincing a substantial number of mindless people that we, in fact, do not want proportional representation and thus a real democracy. So the people of BC have spoken. They want a government that gives their tax dollars to corporations, that promotes a classist society, that makes education unaffordable and impossible for lower and middle class people, a government whose policies are inherently racist and even sexist, and who is slowly creating a new oligarchic state, ruled by aristocrats in the guise of democracy.
After tapping myself dry trying to preserve SFU’s place/name as a better university, trying to advocate action and mobilize grad students to create an affect that would generate increased grad student funding, after trying to mobilize people and get the attention of SFU students and promote conscious raising at large, I have to admit, I’ve lost all interest. I put my degree on the line, I threw my heart into it hoping that people would wake up and recognize their agency, hoping that the media would step forward and tell people the truth (okay, I know that’s way too idealistic, but you have to try), hoping that alternative media would penetrate the mainstream—and what I got were more then a handful of SFU grad students and the like saying, “Oh, what’s that about?” and “Hey thanks for doing that” (walking by in the hall), and “Well, the Administration is between a rock and a hard place, so….”. I put my degree on the line and my marks showed it, and I feel that almost nothing came of it, and honestly, that sucks.
I’ve never been the type of person who just got good marks because the profs liked me. In fact, for the most part it has been the opposite… (interpret that as you will). As a result I’ve worked my ass off, driving myself insane researching in order to get the same grades as my friends—meanwhile, I look over their papers and make corrections, restructure them and change their arguments slightly because I wanted them to come along this road with me. I also take too many risks with my work and it backfires a fair bit. I keep doing it because it’s the only thing that makes this interesting. … What I like about the institution is that it wants us to take risks. It thrives on risks. But then it slaps our hands for doing so, and makes it harder for those who want to. … What I like about the institution is that its right hand doesn’t know what its left hand is doing. And in that space is where one lives and works.
But in terms of saving SFU: I’m really glad to have helped start something good, that other people have jumped on that train, and are looking at it in a proactive light. As for myself, however, the election results are too disheartening. If that’s the kind of government that people want to vote for, they can have it. I’m not sure why I should I care anymore. This is a democracy after all, right, and the majority has spoken. People are uninterested in ‘revolution,’ they just want things to be the same, in fact, it seems, worse—they want more debt, they want to be screwed by corporations. What can you do? I wasn’t fighting for me anyway. It was for the public good, and was screwing myself in the process. (This is probably the most personal blog entry I’ll ever write). If the public doesn’t want it, then I don’t want to fight for it. So letting go, walking away, yet again. It’s time to focus on my own work, no one else will. The art of losing isn’t hard to master…. For different reasons, and to different people, I am sorry.
This entry marks a change in the ‘theme’ of this blog. I don’t anticipate it becoming apolitical, but I think it will deal with literature and events and reviews, etc., potentially addressing public issues through that media.
Source: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/ars_electronica_2007/
