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A Tentative Offering

I’m working on a new book in which I attempt to take some of my academic research (on feminist/queer ethics) beyond the academy to a space beside and besides it. What does that look like? Not sure. I’m using my story blog to engage in the process of figuring out what to do and how to do it.

One thing that is haunting* (mostly productively) my process is how to resist the urge to make this book—which is loosely about character, virtue ethics, and troublemaking—a book of advice or a how-to manual, based on my research, writing and teaching. I’d like this book to be a helpful resource for others on “how to be,” but I’m trying to find a way to do that that isn’t about giving specific advice or prescriptions. I don’t want to tell anyone, especially my kids who are one of my primary audiences for this book, “This is how you should live.” I want to provide an example of one way that (mostly) works for me, and invite them to engage in the process of figuring out their own way. My constant refrain: “This is not a how-to manual, but an invitation to engage.” But, even as I deeply embrace this refrain, I wonder, is an invitation enough? If I’m not giving any advice, what am I offering?

*I use the word haunting deliberately here. My resistance to advice runs deep and requires more attention then I have time/space for in this post. I need to put digging deep into this resistance on my to-do list for this project. I know it relates to a stubborn refusal to be an expert and a reluctance to tell others, even my kids, what to do. I don’t see my resistance/refusal/reluctance as bad or wrong, just (sometimes) dangerous.

Here’s one offering, a tentative draft of words that my best self (or selves?) lives by. These are ideals that I’ve created for myself and that I aim for, but never quite achieve.

Words That My Best Self Lives By

Don’t be an Asshole.
Avoid and Expose Bullshit.
Never Stop Giving a Fuck.
Don’t Be Too Afraid to Piss People Off.

I’ll have more to say about these ideals soon.

Kate Bornstein’s Workbook: Analysis

My New Gender Workbook

What

“A step-by-step guide to achieving world peace through gender anarchy and sex positivity.”

Format

Book with clear chapters
Designed to look like composition notebook (cover)
Mostly text, with some images

Content

Narrative text describing different aspects of gender identity
3 Kate avatars, representing 3 different Kate identities, with additional commentary/stories, sprinkled throughout text in margins
Tweets, comments, stories from other voices (often twitter users) about topics in margins
Incorporating twitter voices even more, whole sections devoted to twitter threads and twitter users answers to questions like, Who Am I?
Blank (or mostly empty) pages for jotting down ideas, completing Kate’s assignments, several blank pages in the back
Various exercises, like “The 10 minute a day gender outlaw exercise” (56-57)
Crossword puzzles
Section on the beginning about comfort (4-7)
Concluding chapters explore what to do with new information/understanding developed by completing gender workbook
Book ends with series of Kate’s favorite “g’nite” tweets that Kate has written

Purpose

A resource/survival guide for readers to use to “put the ideas and theories [introduced/discussed in workbook] to work with the intention of putting an end to the suffering of all sentient beings” (xiii).

Useful for my book?

I like the inclusion of Kate’s many voices (3 different avatars) and the incorporation of tweets (in margins). I wouldn’t mind including some of my own tweets + social media posts (tumblr? instagram?). I also like how Kate uses the margins to create space for alternative accounts–zie puts different voices/theories/ideas beside each other. And, I like Kate’s use of quizzes. I had some quizzes in my last book and found it be a lot of fun to create them.

I appreciate how Kate leaves some blank pages at the end and encourages readers to write on/in the text. For my project, I want to experiment with how to get readers to take notes, write in margins. Is leaving bigger margins enough? Should I provide instructions/exercises for writing in the book? I’m not sure about this one. Does it become too heavy-handed when you ask the reader to write in the margins? How do you encourage that marginalia without requesting it?

Processing, 10 November

as long as you can stand it, stay out of the way

[on drawing cartoon characters] I don’t have to do very much except draw them again and try not to push things in any particular directions for as long as I can stand to stay out of things, but eventually that open way changes and I start wanting from them. I want them to be really good right away and this stops the natural pace of discovery and replaces it with an objective. This can’t be helped.

Lynda Barry

When is it time to stop the open way? When should you start having an objective? What happens to the discovery process? How does this work for me?

Lynda Barry’s Syllabus: Analysis

Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor

What?

This is a book of notes, drawings, and syllabi I kept during my first three years of teaching in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This chronology is rough and mixed up in places but all kept by hand on pages of either legal pads or in standard black and white marbled composition notebooks.

Barry, 3

Format:

A composition notebook
Mixture of typed, hand-written text; images; photographs
Looks like actual composition book, with doodles and notes

Content:

Course Flyers
A “formal” introduction/about this book, typed (most other text is hand-written)
Fragments from Barry’s personal notebook/journal
Discussion of Influences
Drawings by Barry and by her students
Questions posed throughout, usually hand-written
Class Announcements
Brief bits of “formal” narrative scattered throughout book, typed-up and involving descriptions of the underlying principles of Barry’s methods and her courses
Images + minimal text about principles/methodologies of course: what is bad drawing?, on liking and not liking
Pages of “informal”/”less formal” narrative, hand-written in cursive with doodles/images, about her class: what she had students do, the students’ experiences completing assignments
Drawings, text (typed and hand-written), doodles/images about picking students for the class (she had prospective students complete a questionnaire)
Assignments, including the composition notebook
Classroom Rules
Excerpts from students’ assignments, including quick diary exercises
Letters to students about class, including announcements and assignments
Reflections on failures in class and what she/students learned (I hate crayons)
Reflections on the challenges and rewards of the drawing/thinking process that Barry is teaching

Purpose

Share her method
Inspire others with her passion
Share and reflect on her experiences becoming a professor
Reflect on big questions like, What is art? What is an image?

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was inspiring, both in terms of my own book project and my approaches to thinking, writing, and creating.

Useful for my Project?

Yes. I’m particularly interested in how she incorporates syllabi and assignments into the text. I want to do this too, but my project is not exclusively focused on my time in the classroom. In fact, it’s more focused on the time outside/beside/after the classroom. I also like her tone. She exudes passion for her topic, which is infectious. Finally, I appreciate the format. It’s an actual composition book. The second book I’m looking at is Kate Bornstein’s My New Gender Workbook, which also uses the format of a composition notebook, but only looks like one, it isn’t actually a comp book. I don’t want to use Barry’s format, but I like the idea of using an unusual format (and not just mimicking one).

Processing, 9 November

On Not Being Efficient and Going Slow

About midway through her book Syllabus, Barry describes how students in one of her classes hated her crayon assignments. While crayons had been very successful in the past, this one class despised them. Why? Because, she realized, she gave them too much guidance in her efforts to make the process easier and faster for them.

I told them to color hard in order to do it right. And go straight to using force–thinking I was showing them a short-cut. This took away the way of coloring they would have found on their their own. By telling them just how to do it, I took the playing around away, the gradual figuring out that brings something alive to the activity, makes it worthwhile…

Lynda Barry

She concluded that we should forget shortcuts and that the most efficient way to do things because, “The fastest way is the slowest way” (94).

I’ve often read/wrote/thought about how taking your time increases your ability to think critically and to resist. I like how Barry links going slow and avoiding shortcuts with the creative process too. When I taught at the university, I frequently chose new assignments and readings because I was always trying to fight against the urge to shortcut/streamline the process for the students or for me. I felt that if I become too comfortable and used to assignments or classes (when I taught them multiple times), I would lose the creative/critical energy and passion for what I was doing and how I was doing it. I found that focusing on the “right” way to do things (which is like becoming the Expert) can prevent you from playing around and enjoying the process.

This idea of efficiency reminds me of something that I recently read about inconvenience. In his keynote for the 2015 Personal Digital Archive Conference, Rick Howard reflects on the potential value of personal digital records as inconvenient to collect and preserve. He writes:

But I think that inconvenience has its virtues. Wrangling with inconvenience is like choosing to write by hand instead of typing or dictating. You learn more about the words you are processing….Archives are a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and wrestling with the inconvenience of certain kinds of records causes a kind of reprocessing to commence, in which records can serve completely new purposes and often new interests.

Rick Howard