Stop me before I discourse again

Yesterday was a full day for me. I begin with German class 8:00-9:00 am. Then I have some time for prep before I teach from 10:00 am to noon. Teaching is followed by office hours from noon to 1:30 pm, but since my students are currently composing a fairly difficult paper, my office was packed with frantic freshmen until around 2:30 pm. And finally, I have a graduate seminar in postcolonial theory from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. I'm often really tired by the time I get to the seminar, so I always think I will contribute very little to the class. But somehow, I just go on autopilot and babble away, which brings me to my point. Somewhere in the middle of the class meeting, it dawned on me how incredibly schizophrenic I really am, in the literal "split mind" sense of the word.

As you have probably noted, I loath theory. I didn't get into this profession to study theory. I am only interested in literary theory in so far as it provides me better understanding of a literary text, which although theorists claim absolute relevance, much of it does not do. Instead theory is really only interested in itself. It pursues its own course, focusing on one aspect of a text in order to prove some highly academic and intangible assertion that is of no interest or relevance to anyone or anything except other academics and theories.

So, why am I taking a postcolonial theory class, you may ask. The answer is quite simple; I have to. Well, it's not exactly a requirement of the program or the university, but when I signed up for classes, I had not yet confessed that I wanted to leave the academy. I was still under the delusion that one day I would write a dissertation, and I might need either postcolonialism or the professor who teaches the class. As you know, I study 19th-century British literature. Now you can probably read a Dickens or Conan Doyle novel and not even notice the references to India and China, but a good Victorianist always remembers that Britain is not a country; it's an empire. Or at least, it was in the 19th and much of the 20th century. Those brief blurbs about the colonial enterprise can provide a great deal of insight into how Victorians... well, I'm getting too in-depth for most of you, so I'll stop there. But needless to say that while I am not interested in postcolonial discourse per se, I am incredibly interested in how post-colonial discourse gives me a way into colonial discourse. Or I should be... if I were interested in staying in the Ivory Tower.

So anyway, I took the course. I scarcely read the assigned texts, only one of which has been an actual piece of literature so far. The rest have been theory. But I skim enough of them that I can usually pick up on things my classmates are saying. It's not that hard, anyway. All of us who have been in the academy know that as soon as you understand the jargon and the modus operandi of a graduate seminar, it's pretty easy to fake it as long as one has a smattering of understanding of the texts and topics. So, I'm sitting there contributing to a conversation about Frantz Fanon and the construction of black masculinity in the postcolonial context of Antilles in Black Skin, White Masks, and we are talking about embodiment and speech acts and mimicry (or mimesis versus metonymy), and I am inwardly thinking how stupid the whole thing is. Seriously. I am discussing these concepts with my classmates, and doing a pretty damn good job of it, I might add, but I was honestly carrying on a running commentary full of expletives and biting sarcasm in my head at the exact same time.

When the class was over, I almost literally ran from the room, like I do most evenings. I got on my bike and rode home as fast as I could. My head hurt, and I could taste the bile in my mouth. Sometimes I even have to repress the urge to vomit. I am tempted to connect these impulses with Kristeva's concept of abjection, but I won't. I refuse to admit that such theories are a part of me. No. No. NO!