(no subject)

This morning, JC and I took the bus to campus. It's rare for me to want to take the bus because to me campus is so close I might as well leave whatever time I want, and just walk.

I've been thinking through really carefully primary texts for my dissertation like Dr. HBZ has been telling me. Mostly I've been looking at graphic design, but maybe there's something to be said about having some particular primary texts that discuss the things I'm looking at.

In my dissertation first chapter, I'm looking at some steampunk motifs, in pairs, and right now it looks like this:
Gears - rayguns (evoke adventure)
Goggles - airship (evokes mad science)
Corsets - tea (evokes Englishness, and sense of self-display, which I call promenade)

I thought about it further in relation to the theories I'd like to think of them with:

Gears - ray guns - evokes adventure - expansive capitalism that comes from unrootedness (gears as units can be moved from machine to machine, rayguns as weapons displace)

Goggles - airship - evokes mad science - globalization that comes from scientific inquiry stemming from post-Enlightenment desire to demystify and conquer the unknown (wear goggles in the lab, use the airship to explore, then create the train system to grid and manage known lands)

and here's where it got interesting, because I wasn't sure I cared very much for the tea thing... I was gonna use it to symbolize how steampunks indulge in "Englishness" by drinking tea (which would give me an excuse to talk about tea-dueling) and ignore the globalizing violence that comes from the tea (and sugar) trades but I found it more compelling to think about corsets through the theory of anatomo-politics... Foucault's lesser-known concept; biopolitics is more important.

What are anatomo-politics? they are basically forms of disciplining the body, on an individual level. Anatomo-politics then feed biopolitics, which are forms of disciplining populations, determining wider-scale life-and-death patterns based on which bodies are more desirable to maintain.

Corsets - prosthetics - evokes promenade - both are forms of anatomo-politics, and I want think through Michel de Certeau's theory of movement and space since when in costume, there will be some negotiation of such (corsets bind the body's silhouette, prosthetics signify, in crip drag, a desire to compensate for lack, or, out of crip drag, a desire to break biological limitations and be more efficient)

Unfortunately, the only primary text that definitively talk about the feelings that these things evoke, is Hugo, in relation to gears. I'm still cobbling together other possible texts, and will have to read widely for it.

Interestingly, when I looked over my string of notes from very early on, I found that I'd already paired corsets with prosthetics, so I'm really going back to an original idea, just with a better theoretical approach.

I had a great chat with Foz Meadows about how the corset would have become a fashion thing, and we figure that it's due to the burlesque pinups. I have a theory about the Makers in steampunk who're inspired by the old Wild Wild West series, and the Disney Victorian science fiction movies, and how they would have returned to that aesthetic when they were affluent enough to do so. And I figure something similar happened with corsets--a generation after they phased out as underwear, popularized in the burlesque scene (where it's common to subvert norms), girls turn to the corset when they become women and gain the affluence to wear them as a highly-sexualised fashion style.

All this, while freaking out over having to make phone calls to AT&T and just about breaking down into tears because I absolutely could not handle being on the phone, not at all, and not being able to move is so stressful to think about, I cannot deal.

I left campus around 2pm, because I was finally way too hungry, and calmed down while eating fried rice. So I felt slightly better, and went downtown to the Utilities and ask them to delay my service at the new place. When I got home, I called AT&T and managed to not die on the phone. (I freaked out a bit and thought they'd canceled my service because my internet was not connecting. Halfway thru the phone call, I unplugged the modem and replugged it in and it was fine. Oh well.)

JC and I went to Busy Cafe (where I had eaten earlier) and we hammered out some basic details, agreements on tidiness and chores, what we wanted to clean and how often. Sorted out maximum number of parties per month (1), houseguesting, volume. So... yeah apparently I am capable of adulting on the roommate challenge.

We walked to campus because I saw some boxes in my department and wanted to grab any left (there was just one) and JC had to return books to the library. It was a really nice cool night out! And he showed me the route he used when walking home to his apartment, which is closer to where the new place will be than mine is. It's weirdly convoluted, but he assures me that it's an extremely direct and takes less time to get to campus than sticking to the main roads.

A few friends have volunteered to help me out on Friday, but in the morning instead. That makes me a bit nervous because I have an afternoon appointment at 2pm, but it looks like with as many people as we have, we might be able to be done in just a few hours? As long as I have my crap together, and have things ready for folks to grab and go, it will be relatively painless and efficient. Irene's letting me borrow her dolly too. And I'll cook lunch for them.

I hope it works out okay.