This Is Beautiful: Recovering from Being Sick

 Last week I was down for the count with a real bad cold. It started on Tuesday and went all the way until the weekend. Thankfully not that much was going on, but it sure sucks having to spend my free time being sick. But I'm over it now! And nothing quite makes you appreciate a non-stuffy nose than not being able to breathe for a few days.

“Psychopolitics” by Byung-Chul Han

I grabbed this book from a partnership a philosophy YouTube channel was doing with Verso books. The host had talked about it before, and from what I heard this book talks a lot about what people are feeling right now. Oh boy was I right! This is such a prescient summary of how people are feeling in our hellscape of a world right now.

Han starts by talking a lot about this idea of the “entrepreneur” and how that is different from the proletariat of old. As entrepreneurs, we are both our own boss and worker, and what that allows us to do is subjugate ourselves. We feel like we owe ourselves to do work constantly. This becomes a far more effective way of monitoring everyone, similar to the idea of the panopticon. Now everyone is their own security guard. This intersects with the rise of social media where we all use likes, friends, upvotes, etc to measure out our worth. And all that data goes straight to giant algorithms that know things about us that we do not even know. And yet we still have a drive to collect more and more data! He discusses the limitations of this a bit, how data can’t tell a human story, and that reminds me a lot of STS books I’ve written about previously.

He also uses this to bring in a critique of Foucault, and what he didn’t get. Foucault talked a lot about biopolitics and how the body becomes political. Han takes this farther into our psychology and mental state. He talks about how we are now anxious and depressed by default because entrepreneurs we are constantly forcing ourselves to work and be productive. This keeps us in our shackles as we seek to be ever more productive and positive. I really liked a passage early on that talks about how life can’t be only positive, you have to have negativity as well or it gets bland.

I think I really needed to read this this morning, I am sure that the above summary is flawed and oversimplifying, but the main ideas were so big and bold that it really gripped me instantly. This really does capture so much of the moment with the focus on productivity and grind mindset. Particularly in my grad school burnout right now, I just needed to hear that this is not a normal way to feel or live, but also that I’m not alone. Even if you aren’t into philosophy, this is only like 80 pages so it’s a quick read and you will find something in these pages.

This Is Beautiful: End of Semester

 The semester ended yesterday and my goodness have I needed a break. The passage of time is still freaking me out, but I need more free time and more capacity than I've had the past few weeks. I am dropping a lot of responsibilities with the end of the semester, so this is a great feeling to be having! Summer here we are.

“Royal Assassin” by Robin Hobb

This is the sequel to Assassin’s Apprentice that I wrote about a while ago. I feel pretty much the same about the series, which is that it’s good, but it is a big of a slump. And while the magic system is clearer I still find the politics a little confusing.

The book starts where the last one left off, Fitz has been poisoned and nearly killed a few times and as a result is pretty much disabled by his injuries. He has frequent seizures and is really weak. He heads home with Burrich and tries to heal. Once back he finds that Molly, his childhood crush, is now a maid at the castle. They eventually start up a romance, against the guidance of pretty much every adult around them. The new Queen Kettricken is getting used to the castle and Fitz starts helping her out and providing guidance, while also continuing to help King-in-Waiting Verity. Fitz has been forbidden by the ailing King Shrewd to do anything against Prince Regal, despite how Regal is responsible for the attempt on his life and for trying to derail the kingdom most of the time. Fitz also finds a wolf puppy and raises it, they share a strong bond through Fitz’s ability to Will, or telepathically communicate with animals.

Verity eventually decides to go on a quest to find this mysterious race of beings and leaves Regal in charge. Meanwhile the Forged ones (people kidnapped by raiders and made into like zombies that feel nothing and just attack people) continue to terrorize the area. Kettricken and Fitz head out to fight them, while Kettricken is pregnant. Her bravery earns her the heart of the people. When news comes back that Verity is dead, Fitz doesn’t believe it. He hatches a plot with Kettricken, Burrich, the Fool, and Chade to try and get the King to Skill (telepathically communicate with people) to Verity. The Fool thinks this will kill the weak King, and it does, but primarily because two other Skill-users have been draining him. Fitz manages to both get in touch with Verity and realize what they are doing. He takes the King’s knife and kills both of them.

The book ends with Fitz in jail being tortured into admitting he used the Will (a taboo ability) to kill the King. Fitz stays strong, and Burrich ends up getting him out by convincing him to abandon his body to inhabit the wolf’s body. They then pretend his human body is dead before digging it back up and putting him into it.

Alright well there’s a whole lot going on here. A lot of characters, each with their own motivations and abilities. I think I grasped this book much better than the first one since I had that familiarity with the characters, but there were still points that I mixed up names or affiliations. It both helps the book feel very realistic and a little overwhelming. I definitely grasped the Will versus Skill distinction better this time, it helps that Fitz knows what they are and can give them a name. And I just really enjoyed all of the returning characters, Burrich is as gruff as ever and giving Molly a larger role was a nice touch.

The series ends up hitting a kind of happy medium with run-of-the-mill fantasy where wild things happen and you just accept it, and a type of George R. R. Martin hyper-realistic and gross fantasy. I am into it, you aren’t guaranteed that any characters will be safe but there are still rules that the genre is playing by. I particularly enjoy that it shares how traveling both takes time and is dangerous with Game of Thrones.

I’m interested to see how this wraps up, the characters are at a particularly low point right now. Hobb will have her work cut out for her to resolve everything.

This Is Beautiful: Dance Performance

 Last weekend my dance group had its annual performance. I was really stressed out leading up to it (gestures vaguely) and I wasn't really looking forward to it to be honest. I just had so much else going on. Plus the dress rehearsal wasn't great, I mucked up a bunch of things I normally wouldn't have. Of course, the performance was great and a ton of fun! Things came together, I hit the spots that I was messing up to fix them, and I had a great time. It was a fun affirmation that these artistic communities are so important, and that creating art is such a good time. I am hoping that this isn't my last with the group, but there is the possibility that it is, but I'm so glad that I had this terrific performance if it is.

“Babel” by R.F. Kuang

This is a book that my sister bought me for Christmas, and I’ve slowly been making my way through the stack of books I acquired around then, so I just finished it. And honestly it’s a book that just hit right for me, felt like it was the right time in my life, the correct topics and ideas, and really well done writing. I cannot say enough good things about it, I’ve recommended it already to a bunch of people I know. 

The story follows Robin from when he’s a child in China watching his mother die while he is rescued by Professor Lovell. Lovell takes Robin to England where he is taught Latin and Greek and is funneled into the Babel school at Oxford. There Robin meets Ramy, a similar student who hails from India, and Victorie and Lottie, the other two students in his class. Victorie is a Black woman from Haiti while Lottie is English. Both have to jump through several hoops to be there, the rest of the university doesn’t take women.

Over the course of their studies the four become incredibly close, but Robin harbors a secret that he doesn’t dare share with the others. He met his half brother in town, turns out that his brother (Griffin) was also a student there. He faked his death and now works with the Hermes society to bring Babel down from its colonial purpose. Robin helps him for a while, but they break when Robin demands more information on what he’s doing. Later on Robin learns that Ramy and Victorie were separately recruited and things get tense in their group. They head off to their fourth year trip with Lovell to China, where Robin is devastated to learn that England, and specifically Babel/Lovell are behind it. Robin accidentally kills Lovell, and the coverup that ensues results in all four of them returning to school and reuniting with the Hermes Society.

While at their hideout, they discuss how to stop this war. Anthony, an older student in the Society, serves as a polar opposite to Griffin with his advocacy for swaying public opinion. However, Lottie betrays them and brings the police to the hideout. She shoots Ramy, and the other students are killed as Robin and Victorie are captured. They endure some torture before Griffin breaks them out. Griffin is then shot by a former classmate of his, and Robin and Victorie head back to campus. They hatch a plan to take the tower and call for a strike. As they stop all language work, London starts to grind to a halt. The army is sent in, but unions in the area show up to help them. When it becomes clear that the army cannot be held off any longer, Victorie escapes and heads to America while Robin stays behind to bring the building Babel is in down on his head.

The focus on language in this book I think hit the perfect amount of meta within the story. Of course it is a book, and it’s a written work about the power of language, so there’s a sense of a writer talking about writing and translating. But since language is more so a tool of writing, it doesn’t feel like a direct connection and it allows the story space to make its point. And that’s largely that language is a tool of colonialism that is directly driven by academia. The scholars in Babel are responsible for exploitation of other cultures indirectly and directly as students like Robin, Ramy, and Victorie are brought in from elsewhere. The main magic framework has to do with the power of translation where silver is engraved with 2 words in different languages with imperfect translations. When those two words are spoken, the difference in the words is manifested. London runs on silver, as the strike drags on carriages stop, sewage is stuck, and Westminster Bridge eventually falls.

I found the discussion of academia here really interesting. As someone trying to organize academics right now, so many of these issues are true to life. It is hard to get people to organize when they are told how lucky they are to be there, and how grateful they should be to the school. Lottie betraying the group demonstrates this perfectly where she is discriminated against as a woman, but she also firmly believes in their mission as an English citizen. Leading to her killing Ramy and selling them out. That point of view was such a great inclusion to show that not all marginalized experiences are the same.

The tension between Anthony and Griffin is also interesting as Victorie and Robin take up those places. Robin becomes more convinced that violence is the only way to persuade people, while Victorie wants to succeed but also wants to survive. And I love that it’s the Black woman who manages to make it out and continue the work going forward. I don’t think either stance is totally right, it does require violence but also swaying hearts and minds. It requires thinking about how to act fast and break things and how to plan for the long term.

This is almost certainly going to be one of my favorite books going forward. Tragically it isn’t a series with most of the characters dead, but I do want to read other things by Kuang as well, this is a writer who can speak to the current moment so well that I want to see her capture it again.

This Is Beautiful: In an Unknown Hand

 Last weekend I went to see my friend perform with her early music group. It was in a gorgeous little church and the 5 of them all sang songs that are uncredited but are associated with women's institutions (nuns primarily). They talked about the history and how they transcribed the music as they went so it was fascinating to hear about the work they did as well. And it was a lovely time, the music wasn't overly long like a mass and it just sounded so pretty with the resonance in the church. Plus they got an organist to help out! Great time and great to see a friend do what she studies!

“Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Justice” by Judith Butler

It may surprise you, but I haven’t read much of Judith Butler’s work. And I wanted to change that, so I picked up this book. It’s from the early 2000s and mostly is in reaction to 9/11 and the Iraq War, but it is so stunningly prescient today. The work consists of a few essays by Butler. The first essay talks about how stories shape our politics and who is allowed to have a voice in those stories. The second starts off about mourning and from there discusses how mourning can impact politics and community. The third is a scathing indictment of Guantanamo Bay. The fourth talks about the charge of anti-Semitism when criticizing Israel, and the final essay is the most traditionally philosophical as it discusses Levinas and how that impacts personhood.

Now a lot of these are heavily based in a certain time for sure, but a few really moved me. The essay on mourning I thought was really beautifully written, in that it captured a lot of what I feel I went through with regards to grief and pain. And even the first one I think captured something essential about politics and how people think about global events. But I really wanted to focus on the anti-Semitism essay since that resonates so strongly with the current climate. Butler talks about how people are charged with “essentially” being anti-Semetic, meaning that they don’t intend to be anti-Semetic but the listener charges them with it anyways. And this is a dangerous thing to do as that means that there is no way to prevent the charge and therefore you can say that literally anything is anti-Semetic. And the result is that people are discouraged from criticizing Israel for starters, but also that it detracts from very real and very dangerous actual anti-Semitism going on. Through this, she calls for respect and self-determination for Palestinian people, and for free and open discussion around this topic so that people can contribute without the threat of being called anti-Semetic.

Now this is so important in this day and age as literally nothing has changed! Everything against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gets labeled anti-Semetic or Hamas or whatever, and people are still terrified of taking a stand because they don’t want to offend Jewish people. Which is so frustrating and ridiculous as people are being bombed and killed. Going through this, it feels as though Butler is talking about 2023 and not 2003. And that is so so sad that nothing has changed in that amount of time.

I also didn’t love all of them, the essay on Guantanamo is good but it’s overly specific to that situation for me to talk about it now. And the final essay has a few too many ideas in it to make sense. But it is simply amazing how much of this was directly applicable to things we are still discussing and thinking about today. I picked this book at random, I didn’t research it or anything, but getting this one glimpse of Butler’s work really makes me want to read the rest of it. I bet they are just as insightful on any number of other topics.

This Is Beautiful: Solidarity

 Well not to dox myself, but the university I attend as a graduate student just ended all DEI programs before anyone asked them to. This is definitely an attempt to spin it as something the current administration is pressuring them into, but there's been talks about this since the fall and it's not fooling me. The administration just wants to consolidate more power in their end and do what they wanted to do all along.

In response, there's been a lot of heartening things taking place. More faculty are trying to learn from the graduate students who have been organizing for ages. And when faculty get fired up, that's when you know it's bad. So the solidarity and determination from everyone has been really encouraging and hopeful. I think this next year(s) is going to be rough, but we will have each others backs throughout it!