Next weekend we're having Ms. P's birthday party at the house. We haven't yet christened the house with an event, because she felt like it wasn't really up to snuff. But lately she's feeling more confident and the house is more under control, and we're going for it.
When we moved here, I packed up all the academic books I didn't just leave in my office and didn't unpack them. I left them in small boxes piled against the walls of the dining room. What does one do with such things? I couldn't bear to throw them out--just too wasteful and somehow disrespectful of the work I did do to get that far. I didn't want to give them to Goodwill, because that was somehow one and the same. But I couldn't find a place/organization to donate them that wasn't for kids. And kids will not like Nietszche.
It occured to me that the friend we have visiting could take them to the Best Used Book Sale Ever, which takes place every spring in GradSchoolTown. So I opened every box and fondled every book. And you know what? I'm just as uninterested in composition scholarship as I ever was. But I'm also just as interested in disability and body scholarship as I ever was.
Academia was not the place for me, because in academia my research and work would be inextricably tied to teaching undergraduates, and my research interests do not meet the needs of the undergraduate curriculum. It's possible I could have applied for Women's Studies jobs, but that's a particular circle of hell I watched my best friend attempt to navigate, and I didn't and don't want to negotiate it.
But there's still a lot of room out here for research and scholarship and reading and public conversation about things that are important to a lot of people, about the intersection of individual choice and public accountability, about how we can as a society productively discuss difficult subjects, about the different institutions of expertise and how they inadvertantly support oppression. It's something no one talks about on the inside, the ways that conversations are richer and more interesting when interlocutors get to be people and not just talking heads, when we aren't stymied by the academic obligations to pretend we aren't invested.
I need to do some thinking about what this means for my actual life. I'm feeling some energy behind writing and civic engagement again, but I don't know that I'm up for the kind of freelance story pitching that would put me in the magazine world. I toy with the idea of getting involved with a disability rights organization, because that's something I'm passionate about. I don't think the path has appeared yet. But I'm excited to dive into my books again.