[The statement of purpose I'm using for my MA Review at UCI. Please leave comments and suggestions, especially before my exam (on 15 Feb)!] My main interest is in political economy. I am interested in the ways in which material scarcity (real and imagined) leads to some kind of system or regime, a certain way…
Category Archives: Nomad
adventurous, unhomely, anarchist
[The introduction to a current project:] There is something nomadic about Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006). While the novel, so far Pynchon’s longest, takes place in a specific context—the Progressive Era in America up to the chaos of World War I—it nonetheless moves back and forth across space—across America, the globe, and beyond, including…
[Some of the PhD programs I applied to wanted to know more about my person and how it has shaped the kind of work that I do. This is the statement of “personal history and philosophy” I wrote in addition to the “purpose of study.”] I was born in cosmopolitan Manila, capital of the Philippines,…
Fellows, Friends, and Others, I am sending another one of my reports from the field. As stipulated, I am using the species’ own mode of transmission, their own semiology—what is referred to in these parts as “language” (though, technically speaking, they use many “languages” organized in a similar way as a system (i.e. as “language”),…
I’ve been hiding in the forest, in the woods. Up in the mountains. In the wild. I hadn’t gone back to town for some time now. Ryan, as I see, has taken care of this place. He proves, as always, responsible and competent. Ever mindful of the many unhomes that, fortunately or otherwise, we share.…
[Image from the movie version of Everything is Illuminated] [A review of the psychoanalytic ontology of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, the Real would be helpful in reading this post.] There’s this passage in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated that, in the midst of the romanticism that permeates the book, stands out perhaps as so…
A new group called Radical Thought has been created on Facebook. If you don’t have an account, you can create one there, and then go directly to the group’s site. If that doesn’t work, once you’re already logged-in, go to Groups, and then on the search field, type in “Radical Thought.” (In my experience, there’s…
["Cross-pollination" from Cartoonstock] I don’t know if it was once again the feel of the big city in Berlin, or the weekend in Amsterdam that did it, but, if I’ve been worried about becoming-lone-wolf, I think it is safe to say for now that I can put those worries to rest. I am not completely…
[Lone Wolf by Alfred von Kowalski-Wierusz] I guess one can say that there’s a strong, independent streak in me. I hate the schedule that social life forces me to take. I work on my own time, judge my output based on my own standards. I (try to) do the things I want (despite the overwhelming…
[Image from Cartoonstock] There is a certain way of life that makes the house a private fortress. I don’t mean medieval fortresses defended by soldiers to prevent the entrance of others. Then again, maybe it is that. Only our fortresses are not only safe havens or a simple mark of territory. They contain not only…
