Grounding the MA

The blog has been at rest, and the reading has been too ridiculous and skimmish to recount here in any form. Kraus (Chris), Ranciere, Elsaesser, Anti-oedipal everything, late Lacan, Kittler, sensory media theory (mimesis, discourse networks, affect, video art, Cubbitt, Godard, Silverman, and for light relief, Zizekon the toilet set of psycho  on youtube.

The reason: early March meant thesis commencement meetings. The brain kicking and not kicking in, around certain conjuncted questions about My Topic: specialisation, value (?), values (own), place (Europe / the antipodes), disciplinary feeling (the need to know centres of thought/the need to feel oneself contributing) and a much fuzzier epistemological anxiety that races ahead pretending itself to be a flighty and gorgeous kind of blonde epistemophilia.

I  worry less about the non-utility of these early stages of what might be known as research, than about the rhythm of it  -  the potential for any kind of dialogical feeling just has to register as potential. You can feel and seek this too in the wrong ways (looking for dialogue in all the wrong places). In the absence of “the most likely” topic, surrounded by all kinds of books, I try to ground myself with renewed efforts at focussed + distant browsing and book borrowing, reading stupid e-flux announcements as cryptic clues or potential triggers, and less often, trying to think about all the films and video art works or artists I’ve seen that actually continue to matter aesthetically (without even trying yet to think about how yet, just which ones).  No, I do not mark them up in a little black book; a horrible way to live.

With kc, I have been trying to get my head around the stories people tell about picking their thesis. Want to post/email on this? Perhaps more interestingly what advice did you get at the time, that you still think (or only think now, or  suggest to others) was, is, useful thought – in terms of situating a person + trajectory in to a broader field of academic view? That view being about longer term disciplinary feeling, dare I say the honing of many things, including intellectuality as researcherly self-awareness – developmental work that might assert itself well enough to polish well?

My own pattering concerns have been about the question of making this year’s work connect or not connect to my own pasts and futures. E.g.:  if i only am studying film studies for a year (which is what is “happening”) what do i most want to know about “film” (aka moving images) at the end of it?

Rhetoricals. What role biography / ‘auto’biography (in my experience there’s  not much that’s auto about it) in assisting with focussing one’s longer term committment to research futures? (LB has been blogging about my life again, many lives, and this has been making me think, as usual). Just answer the  questions. Reduce. Containment.

I’ve taken the weekend off, and headed to Rotterdam for eating and film watching, updating all my IT resources, downloading great and shitty films on vuze.com.  Whew. Except that while the boy’s parents are breaking up, and he preps for first trials of his new Summer meds (rare European bi-polar II) (handling both fine), I stupidly watch Rachel Getting Married,  and am crying on the couch from the revelation of every dysfunctional family plot ever, every five minutes, each followed by a montage sequence of adult sisters bathing and dressing each other in formal wedding wear to an original soundtrack produced intradiegetically by musically passionate and super-individuated soulful countercultural blokes. Wrong film.

Emails seem much better for these inbetween times when you have nothing and everything to report. But I wanted to not get into the sharing of anxiety via email too much this time around as I have felt more productively on my own again, less reflective and more Nike style about the whole academic thing, which is fine for coursework, but perhaps not so much for disciplinary feeling, identifactory imaginging.  Impatient aversions still. The irony is I’ve been so useful these past few weeks in helping 5 other friends complete thesis proposals, clarify goals, apply for phds, finish art works, submit book reviews. It really casts a strange light on my relationship to myself lately (and in these paragraphs). Hilariously, I start final course work on Hegel and self-consciousness this week.