To some degree, philosophy has always been a schizophrenic discipline. This is what made me fall in love with it. While there were early claims to a teleological and steady progress towards universal and unconditional conceptions of Truth, there have also always been counter-claims that question the ability to attain such Truths, the value of such Truths, as well as the wisdom of placing such a high valuation on a perfection that is ultimately unattainable.

For example, I always found the problem of personal identity fascinating, until I was told by some philosophers of the cannon, that in order to be a fully legitimate philosophical self, I must be unified and coherent. Yet the self that I am and want to bring to philosophy is not this—it is multifarious, impure, continually in flux and so disjointed that it is often deemed incoherent, even insane by others (and often by me).

In this way, philosophy already limits me to a constant state of fracture, as it prescribes my social identity as pathological and broken. Yet a reason why I keep believing in the discipline, is because philosophy already has within it many of the tools for diagnosing and addressing these problems. Last summer Jacqueline Scott, who teaches at Loyola University, told me that Philosophy had two faces, and I never really understood what she meant until now.

At some point, and in order to demonstrate this promise in philosophy for healing itself and for helping others, I want to examine in the future further the ways in which some in philosophy are using the discipline to theorize about healthier, more meaningful identities. I now begin my own papers with this question in mind: How is this Philosophical view constraining our creation of meaning? How can this view in Philosophy aid us in creating meaningful lives? Yes, I know these questions sound like a New Age advertisement, I know. Yet I have held to this question tightly for personal reasons, and it is helping me come up with better ideas in Philosophy.

But if you asked me now if I want to go through all those years of graduate school, I would probably respond with a "No Thanks," and I am sure that my rational side is the one who demands this, not the fractured, multiple self. Getting my MA first will probably give me a better time frame, and some space to really make up my mind about this field, to re-create healthier meanings, and a healthier life for myself.

This is all to say that I am alright with the way things are right now, fractured or unified, rational or irrational, depending in my identity, depending on the context and on the day. I've led a pretty boring life these past years, with too much silence, and too many books. I just don't want that anymore for me. Substitute teaching high school Spanish classes, while getting my Masters will really help me figure things out. It will also allow me to put all my energy somewhere less selfish than on my own work. I like my life today, and have no regrets anymore, and I realize that it has changed drastically for the better since last summer, when I still did not know that Philosophy had two sides, and that I could keep them both with me. That I could pick and choose in this discipline without letting the counter-arguments bite me, despite the Janus face.

I finish schoolwork and take a break outside. I have no shoes on and it is dark, but there are lamps shining from my neighbor's window. Here in the south, as the weather gets warmer and the fireflies swim in the dark of the night, there is always a lamp somewhere in a window.

Whenever I have some free time, I find myself making mental lists, attempting to find the source of all my mistakes. This is a bad habit I've acquired lately after so much introspection: Thinking I will find the source of all my mistakes. Could it have been when I was fifteen and my father announced at the dinner table that we were officially broke? Could it have been after the fifth time we had to move in three years? Could it have been that year mom was in the hospital getting chemotherapy, when my insomnia started so early in life? Was it all the different colleges I attended, my lack of adaptation? Could it have been that harsh separation between my sisters and I? Could it be my relationship to this language, the brokenness of my tongue? The list gets broader as I play a pointless connect the dots game with myself until I realize that getting over my past might be the best way to stop making lists.

But then, there is also a side of me that wants to write so badly. And to write I need all of this, all of my past. I sent a letter to you tonight, begging you to help me write again. I already know what your response will be. "You cannot get rid of your past if you want to write, you need to keep diving into the wreck to keep writing." But I may be able to separate things now that I am wiser. I now believe what you said to me: that the difference between missing and losing is that the former has a presence, while the latter is an absence.
That to miss carries forth a feeling, of feeling at least something.
To miss is still to feel, to miss is less than numb, is more than nothing, much more than losing everything. That to miss caries with it a weight of memory waiting to be redeemed. I'm supposed to let go of everything, to detach if I want to stop surviving and start living, but I need at least something. Some things, no matter the God, can never come to pass. If prayer is where nothing happens, then what is writing?

I no longer will tell anyone the story of the wreck. To mention the thing itself is more than enough, but I have no use for its symbolic dimension anymore. I will have loss no longer. I am a thief and refuse to lose. Most of these sentences, for example, have been stolen from you, and I will not give them back, they are also a part of my past.

But I'm Only Dancing

Let me tell you what I love about dance movies, but first let me give you an insight of my life on weekends. Usually, if I haven’t either baby-sat all evening or watched somebody else’s cats/things/plants, I go to a coffee shop and I read for classes. Lately, the prevalent subjects I’m covering are issues related to torture and violence within the context of war, for my Public Policy class. Different accounts of human rights, different accounts of what life is, different accounts of what being a human is, and ontological arguments about protection of life etc.
In my feminist philosophy class, I’m covering issues related to pornography and the rights of sex workers, but also, gender issues, violence and sexual harassment cases, obscenity law, degradation issues etc.
If I have some free time in the evening, I attend my Alanon meeting at a church. Usually, on Saturdays, somebody always shares how their alcoholic mother/ husband, friend/ son, has relapsed again, or is calling them from a pay phone in jail. If I have even more free time after my meeting, I keep reading about violence and torture in the context of war, or about third world prostitution.

So, the thing is, once I get to a stopping point, it’s time for a movie. I recently discovered Eastern-European films, and the work of Krzysztof Kieślowski, thanks to a friend and professor of mine who is from Pakistan. And this sort of sounds classy when I write it down. But, you know, the last thing I want to do at this point of the night, is to watch a movie where people either starve to death, a child falls inside a frozen lake, peasants are run over by horses, or somebody dies and the only witness is, not God, but the community (there is no God in these movies, and even science and rationality are dogmatic.) So this brings me back to my dance movies.

I love Dance movies. This is my favorite dance movie formula:
A girl used to dance, but something “tragic” happens in her life, so she stops dancing. She then moves to a city, and meets some guy who believes in her. The girl then begins to get her self esteem back, and practices her dance moves in the basement. She applies to some really good dance school in NYC, but something always happens before the audition, and the girl gives up her dream again. Surprisingly, five minutes before the movies ends, the guy convinces the girl to go after her dream, so the girl runs to the audition, and is late for it. There is always a mean looking judge sitting at the audition table who says to her “You are late, and you cannot audition.” But the girl, who has self esteem now, stands up for herself, takes off her baggy clothes as the music plays, and dances so well that she gets accepted to her dream school. And the guy is always at the audition somehow and stands in awe at the fact that his girlfriend can dance, and cheers for her.

This is my second favorite formula:
A rebellious guy moves in to a small conservative town. He meets the minister’s daughter and falls in love with her. He wants to teach her how to dance rock n’ roll, but her dad doesn’t approve of him. Everybody gives the guy mean looks, and they treat him as an outcast. So the guy gets angry, and goes into a warehouse and dances his anger away. The girl is at the warehouse and witnesses how good of a dancer he is, and so they fall for each other and dance the night away.

Other things I enjoy about these movies:

1) Every character is so amazingly one dimensional, it is almost suspicious. The bad guys are inexplicably evil, the mean judges are plain unfair, the dancers are always really nice and hard workers; they are also always good looking and fit. The heterosexual relationships on those movies are always really cliché, and generic, and simple, in a good way. Basically, every character is predictable, and when I’m looking for escapism movies, I like predictable characters.

2) Looking out for the extras! Actors do not know how to dance, so every time there is a really good ballet jump, or a really good choreography, they take a distant shot and never focus on the person’s face, to let the real dancer do his/her job. It is usually fun to look out for the scenes where the actor suddenly looks like a real, lean, ballet dancer.

3) The awesome eighties or nineties music.


4)The awesome dance moves that I can later try to, unsuccessfully, copy in the privacy of my own living room.

Philosophers are trained to make distinctions. Sometimes, distinctions make a difference, sometimes distinctions are useless.
Something I am looking forward to, in Graduate school, is to take classes with both Continental and Analytic philosophers, because I want to get past these distinctions. For example, Edward Casey, my future professor, specializes in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, but has also written on Philosophy of Space and Time. Simon Critchley started out as a scientist, and ended writing books on Heidegger. Jacqueline Scott, whom I met at Penn State University, is a Nietzsche scholar who recently converted to Judaism and is also interested in Theology.I also want to make sure I take another Advanced Logic class because I know that Logic is one of my weak subjects in Philosophy (mostly because I get bored with it, but this does not mean I can just skip it.)

Professors I’ve had in my classes who do work on meta-ethics, and meta-language(and other fields with a “meta” in it) have always helped me aim for clarity in my work, and I’m grateful for this. So I personally don’t believe in this cliché, generic Analytic/Continental distinction, and don’t think professors believe in it either.

But a lot of amateurs in the field tend to use it a lot as a defense mechanism it seems. It’s like the guy who drives around in a huge truck to cover up his inferiority complex, except that in academia it goes back to philosophers making these immature distinctions between Analytic (the “macho” philosophy) and Continental (the "sissy" philosophy where, apparently, people want to talk about "mushy" real world issues such as politics, oppression, racism, violence etc.)
For example, if you are an “analytic” (amateur) philosopher, and you don’t understand Heidegger, then it must be that Heidegger is not “clear” enough! You don’t get Judith Butler? She is not "clear" enough either! What about Deleuze, or Foucault? They are not really philosophers, probably because you don't understand them either. Other adjectives I’ve heard about these thinkers are: “mushy,” “unclear,” “not a philosopher but rather a social theorist,” not clear, or rigid philosophy bur rather "poetry" etc. Gladly, it seems that once you complete graduate school and meet real students who are interested in approaching philosophy from different sides, these distinctions are blurred and most people I have encountered in the field don’t think they are useful.

I now want to use an example from politics, to look at how logical distinctions can be problematic when they are at work to justify personal beliefs. I will later use an example from my life to look at another useless distinction that has also justified personal beliefs, or inferiority complexes.

I recently had to read a book for my Public Policy class, titled “Ethics in War.” Here, an ethicist made the logical distinction between prima facie moral rights, and absolute moral rights to justify that torture of political prisoners is alright in specific cases. I don’t think these distinctions are useful. The reason why I am against them is because they appear to be subtle logical moves to avoid responsibility, and as Michael Waltzer calls it, to avoid getting one’s hands “dirty,” or admitting that one’s hands are already “dirty” when we enter in the field of politics.

For example, to justify torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, it has been argued that we rightly assume that every person has a prima facie right not to be killed, but we might nonetheless also claim that even that basic right can be forfeited by individuals who might have committed murder or “conspire to do so.” This is how the death penalty is defended too. So there is no absolute right, only prima facie rights, and these can be overridden. With a distinction of this sort, we can now say that while torture would certainly harm the prisoner, it would not necessarily wrong him. Because we can separate absolute from prima facie rights, this leads the ethicist to argue that torture is justified as long as the harm prevented outweighs the harm done.
I can think of many examples of consequentialism gone wrong, and most of them have to do with the use of this distinction regarding torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. But I’m writing a paper about it already, so I want to look at another distinction, dear journal.

A long time ago I was accused of “causing” somebody’s anger problem. And at times, I too have accused people in my life to have “caused” a lot of my own problems. But those people never really believed me when I stated this, and they shouldn’t have, because they really didn’t “cause” anything, nerveless my problems. But how can somebody get away with a statement of this sort? Simple: If one is a philosopher, one can accuse somebody, and then make an analytic distinction between being “morally responsible” and being “casually necessary” responsible for their problem. Using a further example, guns would be “causally necessary” for murder, and yet not “morally responsible” for it. With this distinction I can then be accused for having responsibility for the second sort of “causally necessary” problem, but not the first. Again, an interesting move to avoid personal responsibility for certain defects of character, and to transfer the blame, with a sophisticated logical distinction, to somebody else who does not deserve it (but might just happen to believe it for a while, due to low self-esteem issues.)With this distinction between moral and causally necessary responsibility, one could then say that while this accusation certainly harmed me, it would not necessarily wrong me.

What I’m trying to point out is that these distinctions are good in that they lessen the ethical repercussions of the “harm” done, but they are amateurish. In certain cases, getting rid of the distinction and admitting that people start of with “dirty hands” in politics, or in life, might just get us to a better point where we can really begin to talk about responsibility.

In the case of politics, the tortured prisoner has forfeited his right because he is a "threat" to society. In the case of my personal life, I am causally necessary responsible for a person’s anger because I, too, have forfeited my right to protection and am now a "threat" to the person. So I am the one at fault here. Good distinction, problematic, even traumatizing, results if I chose to buy this distinction.

In my experience, these logical distinctions, just like the Analytic/Continental one, are way too simplified and generic to get us anywhere except in the wrong direction: Towards useless philosophy, and useless accounts of responsibility. Because, really, that's the last thing we need if we are to be "thinking in dark times" like Hannah Arendt writes.

1) I've been baby-sitting for almost six months now, and I realized that I am only a good sitter when I don't get a kid with diapers who likes to stand up in the living room table. I still don't get diapers, or the whole wet wipe deal, although wet wipes are indispensable in this process. I learned this the hard way.


2) My roommates and I have been watching a lot of bad reality TV at night. The latest one that is traumatizing all of us is "Hoarders." This show is about people who are so emotionally attached to their stuff, that their homes are filled with piles and piles of crap that nobody will ever make use of. I think hoarders are pretty common here in the south. This made me begin to clean up my own room more thoroughly, and donate two bags full of stuff to Goodwill. It is making Lydia walk into my room every evening, with questions for me such as, if there was a fire in this house, what object would you want to take with you? To this, I think I have replied that we need to stop watching so much of "Hoarders."

3)So the professors who teach at my graduate program are really good professors, and the two semesters I have attended, I have gotten a lot out of my classes (despite my complains about how I'm not getting enough out of my classes). But the graduate students are a thing in themselves. I'm not talking about the ones who are trying to get into Law school, or Med school. I'm talking about the philosophers. For example, the new fad is that all my male classmates want to use the MA program as a step towards a phd program in Philosophy. This is a good idea, and it is what I did too.

But the even newer fad, is that these students really believe that they're going to make it to Yale and Princeton phd programs, so they are making philosophy their top priority. For example, two of my classmates don't have jobs, and one of them is making his wife support him. The first pair never finish their work on time, and are always behind on their assignments despite the fact that they don't even work. I have also asked them continuously to submit a paper to the latest graduate conference we organized, because it would give them more experience, but they had nothing to submit "yet."

The last one hangs out in the graduate office all day reading books, goes out for walks around campus in the afternoon, and eats his sardines in the evening before class. Meanwhile, his wife is teaching full-time at a public school, walks their dog in the evenings, and cooks for him. All of this while he attends our Feminist Methods class. She will then have to move with him and teach in some other public school, if her husband really does get accepted into a phd program outside of the state next year. And she will keep supporting him until he finally completes his phd, by the time he is forty, and maybe then gets a real job. I really want to meet this amazing, virtuous, woman.

So, I guess, when my male classmates talk to me about starting reading groups, or how they want to submit papers to conferences, I encourage them, but remain skeptical. I try to make it clear that a phd in philosophy won't get them many women, or many jobs, or anything of that sort. And that once they realize that they won't get into Yale, or Princeton, they might also understand that this whole deal is not as glamorous as they thought it to be. But we all learn the hard way, and they will too at some point. But if one of them really makes it to Yale, I would congratulate him, but really congratulate his wife even more.

4) Hannah and I have push-up competitions now. Sunday I needed a break from reading at Caribou and managed to do five in a row in the parking lot. Hannah beat me doing ten in a row, in the middle of Caribou. I was thinking that next time I will try handstands. Getting stronger is awesome.

5) Last night I submitted a new paper I wrote to the British Society of Aesthetics. I am starting to like the feeling of submitting things, even when all you get back is a rejection letter.
Rejections are not that bad anymore, I've handled seven rejections to graduate schools so far, one rejection to a graduate conference, one rejection from a dude whom I used to love, and two job rejections so far (one from a private school at a convent, the other from a school in Brooklyn.)
And, you know? After the third rejection, you just don't feel the pain anymore. This is so true, and it is also somewhat empowering (once you get past the third rejection) because you sort of keep going without taking it personally until something or somebody decides to NOT reject you, and usually, something or somebody WILL decide NOT to reject you. And so you just keep going, and cheers to that.
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