User Profile

The woman had all the subtlety of the spring floods. One saw them coming and could only brace against their force.

— The Mask of Mirrors by M. A. Carrick (Rook & Rose, #1)

Yet I want to end this chapter by suggesting that perhaps the ultimate fantasy of education in these films, and in popular culture, is that learn-ing itself has a predictable narrative arc or sequential chronology, that it takes place across normate time, across campuses that we will always be at home in, or will always be recognizable to us— and that this narra-tive somehow makes us all more able (even slowly, through the gradual progression of “positive eugenics”). Instead of seeing education as a pro-cess of accumulation and realization, transfer, continuity, coherence, or progression, maybe it is a process of recursion, forgetting, simultaneity, regression, chaos. My hope is that we can refocus on the failures and refusals sometimes driving, sometimes ghosting, these films. This chap-ter itself is a montage, a supercut, a dream sequence, a series of flash-backs, and at a certain point this is how we all experience any film— or any learning.

— Academic Ableism by Jay T Dolmage (Page 181)

As Lisa Le Feuvre writes, “Failure, by definition, takes us beyond assumptions about what we think we know” and “the embrace of failure can become an act of bravery, of daring to go beyond normal practices and enter a realm of not- knowing” (13). Judith Halberstam explains that “as a practice, failure recognizes that alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power is never total or consistent” (88). This exploitation also offers clear resonance with disability studies theory. Halberstam argues that “while failure certainly comes accompanied by a host of negative affects, such as disappointment, disillusionment, and despair, it also provides the opportunity to” critique the belief that “suc-cess happens to good people and failure is just a consequence of a bad attitude rather than structural conditions” (3). She argues that “under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more coop-erative, more surprising ways of being in the world” (2– 3). Failure can reveal structural ableism and other forms of entrenched oppression while making space for other ways of knowing and learning.

— Academic Ableism by Jay T Dolmage (Page 184)

Wortwörtlich ist die Bedeutung von amateurism: eine »Aktivität, welche geleitet wird von Fürsorge und Liebe« (Said 1994a: 61). Die heutigen Intellektuellen sollen Said zufolge Amateure sein, die sich nicht in Sorge darüber zeigen sollten, ob das von ihnen Gesagte den Leuten gefällt oder wie sie Profit daraus schlagen können. Ihre Praxis solle dagegen idealiter eine ethische sein, die von dem Willen geleitet wird, etwas verändern zu wollen und mithin vom Wunsch getragen ist, soziale Verantwortung zu übernehmen (vgl. ebd.: 61 f.). Verärgert bemerkt er, dass »heutige Intellektuelle […] eher […] Literaturprofessoren und -professorinnen mit einem sicheren Einkommen und keinem Interesse an einer Auseinandersetzung mit der Welt außerhalb des Seminarraums [sind]. Solche Individuen […] schreiben esoterische und barbarische Prosa, die vor allem auf akademische Förderung und nicht auf soziale Veränderung abzielen.« (Ebd.: 53) Said erscheint dies verdächtig.

— Postkoloniale Theorie by María do Mar Castro Varela, Nikita Dhawan (Page 144)

But a life of being understood without any uncomfortable conversations does not exist for anyone. Talking and listening are the only sure ways to make intentions clear.

— Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen (Page 174)

For Zee, sex goes from "vaguely amusing" to "deeply chore-like" after the first two weeks of a relationship. Sex isn't repulsive, but it's a hobby other people have that Zee doesn't care for, like bowling.

— Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen (Page 169)