A sample of the sentiments of les autres:
Prof. Chiltepin Rocks!
[yes, yes I do]
Chiltepin is a fag.
[points for accuracy, I suppose, though I do prefer "queer"]
Turned in my paper for HAM 101 don't even care anymore it sucks
--Friday 8:00am?
--Yeah
--he'll let you revise it tho
--Don't care, I'm done
[Yeah, I know you don't care, darlings. I finished grading the goddamned things, and guess what? I don't care either. If learning nothing is your aim, don't make an effort, and you will achieve your goal as if by magic]
At least it's not all bad. Some, even most, are kind, other than the student who thinks my sexual orientation is news. But I don't need a reminder that I live in the panopticon. I deleted the app and I'm going to pretend that I never saw it. I know the panopticon doesn't work that way, though, but hey, a man can delude himself, can't he?
But if you pretend that the panopticon doesn't exist, doesn't that defeat one major purpose of the panopticon, which is to induce you to surveil yourself, whether or not you are actually being surveilled (sort of the sinister version of the idea that our consciences are, at least in part, the internalized voices of our parents/other authority figures (hopefully ones with working consciences of their own))?
ReplyDeleteMind you, it's been a long time since I read any Foucault (and I'm not sure I ever read more than snippets of _Discipline and Punish_; a lot of theory I picked up more or less in the same manner as one would pick up a contact high in other circumstances; the stuff was pretty thick in the air in my grad department, and all the more intoxicating for not (yet) being part of the formal curriculum).
You've got it right, I'm sure.
DeleteAmerican children are so sheltered, that when I say "I learned theory on the street, not in class" they just don't get it.
They seem to have a pretty low bar for "hilarious." (Just one more reminder of the awesomeness of CM, which is frequently and genuinely hilarious.) I've never seen myself mentioned on my local "beast of burden" app; from what I can tell, it's mostly people looking for cuddle buddies and weed.
ReplyDeleteYou're lucky. Our local beast-of-babble never acknowledges the existence of classes, let alone specific proffies.
ReplyDeleteI'm too thin-skinned to every try it.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that for every student who thought the comment about your sexuality was hilarious there were two who thought "Hey, an adult someone like me who seems to be fairly happy and well-adjusted? It is possible." At my institution, like Frankie says, it's mostly cuddle buddies, weed, and "I want to come out but I'm afraid to."
ReplyDeleteI finally realized, yesterday, what the allusion in the post title was. Only took me three days. I suppose I should be glad that snippets of cultural knowledge occasionally still float to the top of the muck in my brain, but sheesh.
ReplyDelete