Twitter and Self-Archiving and Absences

Absences
Micro-bloging on Twitter has taken some time away from my blog, hopefully I aim to integrate them together so their absence is less felt, or perhaps, I'd should say an absence that builds interaction with the torrent of twitters a day.

Marriage and Abjection
Yesterday, as Olivia Harris funeral was taking place I felt, like I am sure many other anthropologists that knew her, a sense of absence too, a deep sense of absence. Intersected with this thoughts I had Kristeva's introduction to 'Abjection', which I had read the day before, Kristeva's words resounding in a non-melancholic state inside my thoughts (or as part of my thought-stream). I do mean, however, a re-sound inside my thoughts, strange meaning as it may have in English grammar, a vagueness, felt vagueness, a dizzy spell of thoughts as if it were (you have to close your eyes to listen to it, but when you do, you don't want to be there either, it forces your eyes open again) The two moments, the deep sense of absence and the re-sound of words inside my stream of thoughts colliding together. My thoughts ended thinking how Olivia married her life partner as she was approaching her last days making me wonder about 'timing' marriage.

Eloping and Public Witnessing
I have always battled between refusing 'marriage' as way to intercept heteronormativity although I consider 'eloping' as a way to asserting a deep sentimental economy of intimacy with one's partner. I have always thought eloping was best for me, but alas, my partner likes marriage, in the sense of a witnessed union.

When I think of a witnessed union I get a nauseous feel, something that implies a tacit sense of abjection, but it is not the individuals, or the union, but the witnessing group that it is my abject today. I have tried so much to fight it, for my partner's sake at least, and it keeps forcing my eyes open each time I try.

The sense of abjection I recall, however, was not felt in the obituary narrative. It did not have a place there. I am not reading it from there, either. It is only in my own narrative where I read it .

The event, however made me think about my own life, about when I would want to marry if I did, where that maybe there is a moment in life, on those precarious moments of lived life (specially in the precariousness of facing death or departure) in which one's sense of emotional gagging reflex does not matter anymore. And there is a practical side of things of course, inheritance, house, and children.

Maybe I should have titled today's blog: 'Marriage, and all the things in my life that remain postponed'...

Things that remain postponed in my life 2: publications
I did not come today for a long blog and here it is, getting longer...

Self-Archiving
I came here today, to this blog, though, to talk about self-archiving, not a very dis-similar theme in my heart. I plan to self-archive articles, conference papers, accepted papers that the editors never completed in taking it to the press, all those postponed papers in my life...and writing them, the other constant abject feeling in my life.

I wonder if self-archiving, like eloping, is what appeals most to me, right now, in my felt sense of academic precariousness, as opposed to the 'witnessed union', the public humiliation of much academic publishing.

Precarious thinking in public spaces
I think self-archiving makes me think positively about academic writing. Academic publishing, like weddings (as in public witnessed unions) may arrive quite late in my life, and it is right now, a time of precarious thinking.

It has infuse me with new hope for writing, for myself, not for public witnessing or otherwise, just because I want, just like a wedding in a precarious moment of life, for oneself, and for those that love us, because there are practicalities to meet, and because audiences and public witnessing does not matter that much anymore.

My paradox, as it were, is that whilst I think self-archiving may come as a form of compromise between eloping and marriage, whilst becomign marriage of some sorts, I can't still reach that compromise when it comes to actual marriage, a lesson half-learned I guess, one that, I suspect I will have to keep learning time and time over again.

The new Anthropology Journal
I included a tab for sel-archiving in the project list, which now it includes other anthropologists as well, and the possibility of a Journal.

I haven't decided on the final title but it will have the words, anthropology review, dissent, cultural politics and altermodern in some combination.

I hope to set the review to be an open source of anthropology articles, similar to Durham Anthropology Journals or similar to self-archiving, but within the remit of anthropology and theories on dissent and cultural politics in our altermodern age.