“you’re not going to get tenure from it or anything, but”

today i had a really ecstatic discussion about tumblr with one of my favorite professors. we were talking about feminism and the theoretical really, really for real this time merging with the personal.

she said she heard i was a “tumblr queen” and that she didn’t remember who told her this and was like “what’s your tumblr?” and i was like “i really don’t know if you should look at my tumblr” and told her the story about my dad (which i also told my therapist, who rolled her eyes and said “it’s good that you told him not read it”). we discussed “poached theory,” which is really the greatest term.

there was a moment of “it’s about the personal, but not the personal”—she is a for real deleuzean (with an exciting freudian streak)—and we both agreed that we disagree with the panic espoused by jodi dean (among others). losing control is the lure and that’s good. or fun or sexy or something. 

she also said she has decided to stop feeling that she’s cold because she is interested in technology and i said “tumblr is warm” and she rubbed her arms and agreed.

then we sort of congratulated ourselves on being where everything is going, and she added, offhandedly, “you’re not going to get tenure from it or anything, but.” 

but some guy who works at morgan stanley asked me out so maybe i can just marry rich. this rich person will just have to generously overlook the vaguely-informed poached marxism all over my tumblr, also my man-hating, but pretty much anyone is going to have to overlook that anyway. or like it. 

related: look at how beautiful una chung’s website is. “machines: a critique of new media.” “gilles deleuze and the composition of living.” “technological imaginaries: aesthetics and politics of science fiction.” it’s so dreamy.

tumblr feminism online and IRL forever

cedars:

sassmadness:

farahjoon:

bubberd:

Oh my god. Farah look at this. our lives. OUR LIVES. 

things I love about tumblr:

• we don’t give each other shit about being online all day because slackerdom is, like, okay
•  the feminists I know and love on here literally don’t give a fuck. they’re unapologetically divisive and I always feel insecure about my separatist vibes, so having folks around whose existences reify radical alienation as theory, praxis, and hobby is super fucking validating 
• also cats

this is so relevant to my life, especially in regards to my excellent weekend with sarah.

Best part of Roanoke was that it was basically Tumblr out loud with alcohol. The number of times Sydney or I said #bullying men or “this seems like something p-strut would like” or “rgr on makeupping changed my life”. The number of times I realized that even though I’m not a central part of this community, and even though I’m new and shit, that these are becoming the reference points by which I understand the world. 

The thing is, I don’t want to listen to mainstream academics talk about Deleuze and Baudrillard and Berlant and Butler. I want all that theory as poached theory, and I want it with all-caps THIS THIS THIS WHAT IS BODIES after it. That’s how I want to talk about things and those are the things I want to talk about.

Need more feminists who don’t give a fuck. Alienation as theory/praxis/hobby/entertainment is everything I want in life.

yes to all this, from shamelessly being online all day to the importance of poached theory. 

(Source: heyfunniest)

Digital Identity 1

sassmadness:

Sarah and I are liveblogging the conference on Tumblr, because what else would we do?  We also femme flagged as Tumblr academics last night: reddish-orange nails, with a gold ring finger.

Sarah’s friend Bonnie is talking about Shakesville and safe space.  It’s so funny, because when we first got the program for the conference, I saw Bonnie’s presentation and was really worried that her presentation was going to be really similar to mine.  But then surprise!  It’s very similar to mine, which is actually relieving insofar as that maybe my research is a little validated?  

Thinking about safe space as a practice- authoritative public speech, the ability to attach authority to this public speech.  Using Althusser’s concept of ideology in order to enforce what’s happening- mocking, shaming, affection, boundary policing.  Why we should care- it dramatizes the reality of dominant political space (I don’t feel safe commenting elsewhere on the Internet.)  The negotiation of public feminist identity, not perfectly done.

Next up is some early research on asexuality- he pulls out the History of Sexuality vol. 1 and says “I”m going to read from a book you may have heard of.”  LOL PERHAPS THEORY BRO?  But also incredibly endearing bro.  How has the internet informed the creation of these sexual identities?  The internet as a place for the production of experts.  Issues of control- a comfort placed in the fact that the page itself (asexuality.org) looks like an institution.  Allows splinter groups to claim space by taking it off of Yahool.

“Beyond Binary Digital Embodiment”- Complex matrix of interactions between the organic body, the cyberbody, the network of information flows, the software which mediates these reactions.  (What are bodies).  An active interface through which one relates to others.  Which bodies mean which to what self at what time?  The experience of the body as understood through the Deleuzian fold (I’m glad that I have the intenet to look things up.)

“Queer Space, Cyber Space”- the implications of a queer internet.  She’s talking about online temporalities, which I really wish that I had been able to incorporate into my presentation.  Overlapping and disjointed presences.  The internet is queer in both structure and nature.  How is it that the internet queers us all?  It is accomplished by exposing identities as superfluous and unnecessary, by dissolving the identities that queer theory/politics finds so problematic.  This presentation was incredible!  So many things I want to talk to this person about.  

i am so into this conference liveblogging. (all bolding mine)

"from the early days of webcams to today’s rapid-fire twitter blasts, we’ve constructed and projected certain notions of who we are through a process of accumulating seemingly insignificant and ephemeral gestures, fashioning identities that might or might not have something to do with who we actually are. we’ve become autobiographers of an obsessive nature, but, just as much, we’ve also become biographers of others, collecting scores of minute facts and impressions on whomever we choose to focus our lens."

kenneth goldsmith, uncreative writing 

Managed to get a mention of tumblr into my thesis.

canndo:

Thought of karaj as I typed the words.

this is so satisfying, i sort of feel like my work in this world in done. 

things people have said to me in the last few days when i asked if i could tumblr what they said:

• hahaha it is perfect!
• yes tumbl at will! i like secrets.
• ya go for it!
• INTO IT. 

partywitch:

I have an artist’s statement & paintings that have been published in “Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory” ♀ Thanks Kara! ♡ 

psyched to have helped get this published, to have bought this piece by grace for myself and this one for someone else, and for w&p to have gotten our conference posters made by another artist in the feminist tumblr world. 

jeanne, who was the managing editor of w&p years before i was, wrote a mini-manifesto the other day about why buying queer and feminist art is important. (the object IS alive. this is crucial.) it’s great that tumblr makes finding feminist artists so easy. i am going to “small works for big change” this saturday, too, and maybe i will buy something to go along with my favorite new sort-of-sherrie-levine-style appropriation piece, which i am one hundred percent serious about framing. aliza said she would go with me, which is perfect. feminist art and feminist collectivity and feminist coupledom forever. 

"affect to emotion to affect. it’s a speed thing."

patricia clough at the affect factory conference 

"capitalist mimicry…proliferation of mania in response to conditions that we’re in…an attempt to freak out the system by being so manic."

anna fisher at the affect factory conference. this is partly how i like to think about, hysteria, or maybe it’s an adjunct to how i think about hysteria (this could include crying), and especially hysterical tumblr posting. feminism using capitalist gestures already coded as feminine, or using feminine states that are particularly resonant with capitalism, to freak out the system. 

"one can die from being unable to write in time the book one has in one’s body. this is the book that must be braved, it demands of me a courage i desperately seek to call up in myself."

helene cixous, first days of the year. has anyone written so well about tumblr feminism without writing about tumblr feminism?