On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons

Great Queer Provocation

Queer, recognition-based envy is a pendulum swinging between one’s own wish to unfold freely as an individual, and the overwhelming greed/need to be valued for conforming.

I can feel this quote.

The desire to be completely normal remains unfulfillable in queer existence, and yet it’s a concept that some want to chase after forever—or feel they have to.

The chapter refers to the individual striving to be normal as in conforming to current societal norms, i.e. cis-hetero-allo-normativity. It's an individual urge/need as opposed to being different and striving for a collective normalization of queerness.

The model of a queer, recognition-based envy is the theoretical attempt to explain why certain queer individuals refuse an apparently logical queer solidarity.

Think of those queers who ostracize other queers in an attempt to conform to the society as it is today, instead of striving for normalization for all queers. That's what this chapter is trying to explain.

Recognizing queer others means reducing one’s own capacity to conform to the norm, and reduces the appreciation shown for the subjugation presented.

Goessl, M. J. (2024). Great Queer Provocation: The Seriously Playful Recognition Game. transcript Verlag. https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-7385-2/great-queer-provocation/

The slow professor

Academic work is by its nature never done; while flexibility of hours is one of the privileges of our work, it can easily translate into working all the time or feeling that one should.

This is just too true.

We need to take the time to read things that we don’t "have to" read. Just because reading cannot be easily quantified does not undermine its worth. In response to "what did you work on today?" many of us adopt an apologetic tone when we reply, "just some reading."

That pretty much sums up why I've started reading again, what I find personally interesting, and not just what is related to a paper I need to write or a lecture I need to prepare. That's why I'm sharing such a wide range of quotes and literature here.

We do need time to think. We do need time to digest.

Some of the things you read take time to sink in, to become relevant at some point in the future. Or not.

Connected to the imposition of neoliberal ideology on research culture is a dramatic decrease in collegial culture [...]. As academics become more isolated from each other, we are also becoming more compliant as resistance to the corporatization of the academy seems futile.

Both loneliness and belonging are contagious.

Resistance is not futile.

Berg, M., & Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.

Consensus and Privilege

Consensus is produced by privileging particular perspectives.

Haslam, S. A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S. D. (2024). Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), 101770. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2023.101770

Researching the Code of Laws in Civ7 feels so ironic at the moment.

Hope and hopelessness

Feeling Revolutionary is feeling that our current situation is not enough [...]. Feeling revolutionary opens up the space to imagine a collective escape [...]. Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, [...] is the enactment of a critique function. It is not about announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be.

Duggan, L., & Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Hope and hopelessness: A dialogue. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 19(2), 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/07407700903064946

visit your local library!

they need your support <3

A Call for Constructive Engagement

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding. [...]

Signed by so many leaders of colleges and universities, even by some high profile ones such as Yale, Princeton and Brown.

https://www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-call-for-constructive-engagement

Grieving, grieving, constantly grieving. I mourn what could have been, what should have been, what will not be, what I cannot save.

Online-Veranstaltung zu Banned Books am Welttag des Buches

Gemeinsam mit der Kommission für Queere Hochschulpolitik der bukof (Bundeskonferenz der Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragten an Hochschulen) organisieren die Queerbrarians (eine Netzwerk queerer Librarians) ein queeres Online-Event zum World Book Day.

Nach einem einführenden Vortrag auf Deutsch von mir sprechen Eve & Lucie auf Englisch. Sie kämpfen gegen die Book Bans in ihrem County in Tennessee.

Das Event ist kostenfrei und braucht keine Anmeldung. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich willkommen.

Titel: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Datum: 23. April 2025

Uhrzeit: 16:30 bis 18:00 Uhr

Flyer & Infos

Mimicry of Marginality in Soft Authoritarian Identity Politics

In the past few decades, far-right parties have successfully implemented their authoritarian and nativist ideologies in the center of public discourse (...) In this process of normalization, the lines between far-right and mainstream discourse have been blurred (...) to the point that »ideas and viewpoints once considered deviant and morally repugnant« are »confidently asserted as the new common sense« (...).

Everything has shifted. With every word, with every tweet, with every provocation, the things that can be said and considered moderate shift further to the far-right.

Steinhauer, H. (2023). Mimicry of Marginality in Soft Authoritarian Identity Politics. Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung, 2. https://doi.org/10.3262/ZFD2302143