“Vanessa Veselka: I’ve been thinking a lot about curiosity, specifically white male curiosity as a form of colonialism. Recently, a male friend of mine said, “I really think this particular photograph should [accompany your article in GQ about getting picked up by a serial killer.] I was curious about it.” This was graphic, violent sort of image. And I thought, You should investigate that curiosity. Because I wasn’t curious about it. Your girlfriend wasn’t curious about it. And again, this is a very good friend. And he meant it very honestly. But after that, I began to think: there’s something about curiosity in general that needs to be examined—this idea that one’s curiosity deserves to be satisfied. I often see media operating with that assumption—“Well, people deserve to know.” No, they don’t. What makes anyone think that their curiosity deserves to be satisfied just because they have it? What form of privilege is that? It’s ridiculous.”—
Vanessa Veselka in A Conversation with Vanessa Veselka in the American Reader
(via haventreadthat)
omg.
17 Jun 2013 / Reblogged from marginalutilite with 40 notes / feminist boredom feminist privacy concerns
““It’s only in an initial state of privation that you can begin to have thoughts about what it is you might want, to really imagine or picture it. It’s very difficult to know what we’re frustrated by. In making the case for frustration I want to make it more interesting, such that people can talk or think about it in different ways. […] What I would suggest is more time wasting, less stimulation. We need time to lie fallow like we did in childhood, so we can recuperate. Rather than be constantly told what you want and be pressurised to go after it, I think we would benefit greatly from spells of vaguely restless boredom in which desire can crystallise.””— Adam Phillips
same.
18 May 2013 / Reblogged from ourladyofperpetualhelp with 33 notes / feminist boredom uselessness dreamers
we went to see spring breakers at a theater with a large selection of alcohol. i texted aliza: “it’s amazing except for the girl next to us who is about to barf.” she fell on her way out. it felt like real spring break! i would watch this movie ten more times. it’s got feminist boredom, feminist violence, feminist terror, brutal frivolity, and girls in bikinis. there are bummer narcs and incarceration and an obsession with price tags. marc was committed to getting a reaction shot for my tumblr.
"It’s impossible to overstate how much reviewers hated MacLane and how deeply they held her in contempt, citing her “vulgarity” and calling her book “a revelation of self which is not interesting or sympathetic.” Their insistence on calling her “boring” quickly begins to seem absurd: if she was so boring, why were they so obsessed? Critics also insisted that she was doing the world a disservice by getting attention that they (disingenuously) declared ought to be granted to presumably worthier writers: “Think of the hundreds of poor lonesome girls working away at the making of literature who cannot get their literature printed and published.” When asked to explain MacLane’s popularity, they mostly just threw up their hands in befuddlement: “People go wild over young girls writing slush about themselves,” the author of a MacLane parody “explained” in 1902."
Intrigued? Next Wednesday, Kara Jesella and Normandy Sherwood and I discuss Mary MacLane at BookCourt. Come! (via emilygould)
13 Mar 2013 / Reblogged from mariecalloway with 32 notes / feminist narcissism feminist boredom
“…This will not matter, because her parents work in finance, and she has good manners, and she’s going to marry up, and she’s going to get into the movies (not just guest appearances in CSI), and she’s going to launch some clothing lines at Target (no, wait, I think she already did that), and a personal fragrance (I think she did that too), and parlay all her bad press into some self-serious complaints, making good on every opportunity to monetize her career at the expense of making actual art.”—
Here’s the kind of thing a music critic seriously writes when bashing Taylor Swift. This is just after he writes that he doesn’t “get” or “like” her “over-produced” music and what he calls “apparently honest” lyrics.
EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME???????
this is amazing. this is by rick moody, who grew up in darien, connecticut and went to a fancy prep school and then to an ivy league college and is probably better known for his 1994-novel-turned-1997-movie the ice storm than for anything else.
he also says, “look, i normally only write about things i like, things i care about, but i can’t stop myself here. taylor swift represents what makes me want to die about popular music. she makes me want to die.”
i normally only write about things i like, too, which includes writing that taylor swift makes rick moody want to die, just like beyonce made some guy hate america. this is so gratifying, even if it’s boring. whenever a male critic says something like “there is nothing in this music that does anything new besides fusing together a mandolin with a programmed drum track” at least i know that something important is happening.
21 Jan 2013 / Reblogged from whiskeybot with 73 notes / girl culture feminist boredom feminist art no more safe havens
lazz:
“But did we underestimate the stakes? In the years that Losse returns us to, those transitional years between the birth of social media and the mainstreaming of self-documentation online, there was not yet the sense that by being online one was at work producing value for someone else. If anything, we could still believe that sharing what we were doing, who we were doing it with, and how good we looked while doing it was mostly an act of creating pleasure for ourselves. In reality, we were the early wave of the permanent social media shift, always-on and never quite off the clock.”—
it’s complicated.
8 Jan 2013 / Reblogged from lazz with 8 notes / generosity gifts price tags uselessness feminist boredom
kj: thinking of you, just blocks away, while our boyfriends are in different states.
lf: i know! are we supposed to be scared? are all your pots filled with water?
kj: laura, my love, i do not own any pots. also i am not scared.
lf: i feel a lot of survivor guilt about having your crackers and cheese at my house. but i know you will disapprove of my guilt.
kj: they are YOUR crackers and cheese now!
lf: you might be happy to hear that since our hangout i have been sleeping in later (right now 9:30 but climbing).
kj: GOOD FOR YOU! i cant wait for the day when you wake up at 11.
lf: girlf how goes it now? are you stircrazy? are you writing? I’M BORED AS FUCK. please update your tumblr with some delicacies for my boredness.
kj: dude. i am reading about weber and the protestant work ethic. also drinking. i assume you are too? how are the crackers and cheese? instead of updating with weber quotes i might post a picture.
29 Oct 2012 / 16 notes / feminist boredom uselessness bed movement work
"what is marie calloway doing these days the answer is always NOT MUCH"
this is true…time for another nap. (via mariecalloway)
29 Oct 2012 / Reblogged from mariecalloway with 18 notes / feminist boredom feminist terror price tags uselessness feminist art
"feminists…should focus on the demands not simply or exclusively for more work and better work, but also for less work"
kathi weeks, the problem with work: feminism, marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries
28 Oct 2012 / 23 notes / bed price tags tumblr poetics uselessness feminist boredom
