post colonial musings redux

Am writing up some research findings for a journal article. Knowledge commodification, most often in the form of journal articles, is de rigeur. I used to love writing, now we have a decidedly mixed relationship.

My work is, in a broad sense, about social justice and knowledge dissemination. I’m intrigued by how communities on the margins of society--specifically (but not only) queers, injection drug users, mental health consumers/persons with mental illness--navigate between what mainstream society sez is normal/right/good/moral etc, and what they know to be true from their own, local experience. So power and power relations figure rather prominently. Nominally my work is post-structural and informed by the later works of Michel Foucault (the gayest non-gay man since Rock “sucks cock” Hudson), but the material implications of things--real people’s real lives--also have to be addressed. Not enough theorizing in our lives, but what we have is too often so distant from reality. You hear that Judith Butler? (Moi-même, je préfere Edith Butler, la reigne acadienne).

But I digress....

So I come home from work, having succesfully distracted myself from the focus writing and editing requires of me--thank you Sarah McLachlan, B-Sides & Other Rarities--and begin to putter around the flat. Which leads me to the kettle and the tea bags. And I start to think about tea, how fab it is, but how enmeshed it is in that pestilence upon humanity, the colonial project.

And then I figure, either go there or don’t go there.

I didn’t go there. *slurp*

;)

Slan