I love this MLA. Not only because I chose the best sessions to attend but also because people are intelligent. I get asked the best questions about Klara, like “What is her personality like?” She has a fascinating personality but all I usually get asked is if she sleeps through the night (yes) and if she has teeth (yes.)

It’s snowing in Philadelphia, so I decided to look Russian. 

After the two movies with the blond fellow, I caught the second part of the film Joy with Jennifer Lawrence. It’s incredible how horrible this movie is, and not only because of the egregiously untalented Lawrence. Everything is so fake and ridiculous that it’s impossible to believe this was based on a true story.

Well, at least it’s not a good movie that Lawrence slaughtered. I still can’t get over how the horrible Natalie Portman slaughtered I Black Swan. That movie had everything to be an actual work of art until that robot crapped all over it. 

Oh God, I’m really tired. As I was watching the movie I wondered where I could have possibly seen the leading actor who looked vaguely familiar. So I Googled him and discovered that he was the male lead in another movie I watched immediately before this one. After staring at this guy for 2 hours, I didn’t recognize him. 

In my defense, I have to mention that he’s blond, and I always tended to blot out blond guys.

I’m so tired that I watched the movie I Love You, Man from start to finish and I cried. Because it was touching. 

I listened to a Stanford professor of French literature go on and on about the amazingness of digital Humanities and I wondered at how oblivious he can afford to be to what this ridiculous concept really is about. 

The goal of digital Humanities is to rob scholars of literature of any residual independence from capital that we still enjoy. To do my research, all I need is a book, a pen, and a notepad. Google is helpful, too. But I don’t need grants, I don’t need to compete for funding, I don’t need any institutional support, I don’t need to beg capital to fund my existence. It’s good to have grants, funding and support but they are not necessary. 

Once we allow ourselves to be trapped in the belief that we are nothing without databases, JSTOR, NEH, Project Muse, and all these expensive devices of exclusion, we lose our freedom from chasing money. We are letting ourselves be convinced that a scholar who works without all this – and I repeat, expensive – shit is somehow deficient. My university can’t even afford Project Muse anymore, so I guess that excludes all of us who work there from creating great research accessible to rich folks from Stanford.

And do you know what profound conclusions the Stanford fellow managed to draw on the basis of his tables, graphs and the rest of the digital crap? That the concept of human rights was invented in the 18th century. Gosh, at this pace, he will soon discover the shocking news that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Right now, I can shut up any administrator who points out that I don’t “bring in any external funding” with a dismissive “I don’t need any funding.” It’s true and it feels damn good to be able to do that. But once we are forced to defend ourselves as digital humanists, that’s it for this kind of freedom. We’ll enter the dumb rat race for the funding that we don’t even need.

Reject the tyranny of capital! Reject digital Humanities! Occupy literature. 

Since my book is about to be published, I need a new project. I’m walking around the MLA exhibit, looking at book titles, and making note of which words in them attract me. For now it looks like the word “citizenship” draws me in a lot.

Of course, I never know where my project will take me. The current book was supposed to be about the Spanish Civil War but it turned into Spain’s Engagement with Liquid Capital. 

I love being at the start of a new project. It’s like I’m about to start unwrapping an amazing gift. The project I just finished brought me an understanding of the erosion of the nation-state, the liquid economy, and the fascinating stuff we’ve been discussing on this blog for the past 3 years. 

This will be fun!

Hey, folks, if you are at the MLA, head over to the exhibit. Viet Thanh Nguyen is giving out signed copies of his novel and short stories for free. I was going to buy but they refused to sell them because it’s all free right now. 

The exhibit rocks, by the way. I left because I need a break but I’ll go again later. Many opportunities for free books if you sign up for newsletters. 

I hate the MLA exhibit. There are so many amazing books, and I only have a tiny overnight suitcase. 

I’m suffering. 

Viet Thanh Nguyen, the author of the best-selling Pulitzer Prize winner The Sympathizer, is a very special snowflake and very full of himself (“Of course, I can’t write in a way that my mother would understand because she’s a peasant and I’m an English professor” – a literal quote.) 

But I’m glad I kept listening because in spite of the insufferable pompousness he’s a pretty profound fellow. He poked vicious fun at the Liberal American mantra of, “We Americans are so evil, we have victimized everybody in the world, we are totally the worst.” Nguyen pointed out that it’s exceptionalism, pure and simple, and it’s annoying as all hell. 

I wasn’t going to read his book but now I will.