Kali Tal

February 27, 2006

R.I.P. Octavia Butler

I just heard about the untimely death of Octavia Butler from colleague Lester K. Spence on the afrofuturism listserve. Details can be found on sci-fi writer Steven Barnes' website. This is an enormous loss for the U.S. literary community and for the sci-fi community in particular. Those who aren't yet familiar with Butler's work should take the time to read it. Her latest works are, in my opinion, her best. Try starting with Parable of the Sower, followed by Parable of the Talents. I haven't yet read her latest work, Fledgling, but I'm going to pick it up right away. I've been reading Butler since I was a teenager and she was a young novelist--she's been a part of my literary life and a strong influence on my critical development for over 25 years. She'll be sorely missed. Sincere condolences to her family and friends.

Posted by kalital at 12:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 26, 2006

New ideas and a few intentions...

For the last couple of years I've been going through a general reevaluation of the directions my life has taken, and trying to plot a course for the next twenty years. I've spent most of the last twenty years as an educator, intellectual and author. About two years ago I became very serious about pursuing an artistic avocation, an interest that was reignited after I began to feel that my intellectual life wasn't as fufilling as it could be. The return to artistic interest came out of a several year battle with the disease of fibromyalgia, a battle I won in part by giving in and admitting that I could no longer do the work of a dozen women, and that I had to embrace a more relaxed lifestyle or wind up with essentially no life at all.

The result of realigning priorities in my life is that I've continued reseaching and writing, taken a temporary sabbatical from teaching, and made artistic creation a central part of my daily life. I hope to start teaching again later this year with a renewed sense of purpose in an environment in which intellectual work is appreciated rather than scorned. This means teaching somewhere outside of the U.S.

In light of the above, I've made the decision to emigrate from the United States to a place where the political climate is less hostile to leftist intellectuals. Like many other leftists in the U.S., I've found the country's turn to the right, the suspension of civil rights, the fascistic demand for blind obedience to authority and the outrageous and completely unselfconscious prioritization of capitalist interests to be intolerable. So I'm headed for greener pastures. There's no place that's perfect, of course, but dozens of nations are better by any quality of life measure, from personal and political freedom to religious tolerance to literacy rates and infant mortality.

Now that I'm more sure about my future plans and current priorities, I can devote the time and effort to upgrading this site in a couple of ways. I've intended to do some of this for a while, and now I finally can. My first project will be to write a few columns and share some of the insights I've gotten from the readings that shaped my intellectual development over the years. Of late, I've been returning to books that made a large impression on me as a younger reader and scholar and I have not been disappointed.

One of my general complaints about recent scholarship, especially in the field of Cultural and American Studies) is our failure, as a profession, to encourage our students to read those texts on which we were teethed--texts that might be called canonical, if "canon" had not become something of a rude word in contemporary scholarship. In particular, I direct your attention to my review of Lisa Nakamura's Cybertypes as an example of contemporary scholarship that relies almost exclusively on secondary and tertiary sources for the soul of its argument and the bulk of its evidence. I hope that by reintroducing some older texts and crying their virtues and validity to current analysis, to undo or mitigate some of the damage an overenthusiasm for postmodernism (poorly interpreted) has had on younger scholars. I hope as well to instigate scholars to rethink their roles and rediscover the path of the activist intellectual. In some cases I will be preaching to the choir, but the growth of the corporatist university and the effective death of tenure, especially in state institutions, means that the pressure to conform is ever greater for younger faculty in a tenuous economic position.

Further revisions to the site will include updated links to photos and recent artworks, as well as scholarly guides to subject areas in which I'm doing current research.

Posted by kalital at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack