St. Seraphim | they/xe

Ever since I learned about other modes of critique and reparative criticism, I've formed the opinion that the key obstacle to creating a forceful, pluralist movement is that we're taught combative critique as the only form.

How can we hold complexity if we're constantly picking holes in each other?

Thank you! I'm very excited about it. Very much a culmination of all my academic interests formed throughout my undergrad.

...by looking again at the skin as a porous boundary, rather that focusing on a nebulous "nervous system" interior.

Very phenomenology, medical anthropology, affect and aesthetics with racial difference as a key theme. Currently tinkering with the research scope and methodology.

Ah. We shall learn to love the grey days then.

Thank you! My dissertation is slowly taking shape out of the fug. Broadly, I'm looking at discourses of the self under capitalism, and attempting to reimagine other ways of feeling/sensing outside of the neoliberal discourses of "emotional regulation"

That sounds like a lovely day already! I hope you enjoy the sweet treats especially. I may treat myself to a loose leaf black tea while I make some art. I have a presentation due Monday for my dissertation, and I have dance training later today.

Hope the weather is brighter where you are ☁️

Oh that's so shit! Who knew the pole arm fandom could be so severe!! Listen, I don't know what's going on for them, maybe they need that fight right now.

And also, how's your day going? I'm gonna make myself a tea

You know, I kinda wish I didn't block them for this absolute bar but also my personal rule is I don't argue with strangers on the internet, especially not literal wasps.

You're fighting mirrors at a carnival.

Invoking notions of health/insanity because someone doesn't share the same attitude towards critique is super patronising and insulting, friend. You're being very abrasive to a stranger for no good reason.

Deep red cover with two photos of hands reaching toward red theater seats against a dark background

"Fair Use," a special issue of the open access journal liquid blackness, is now available. View the TOC and read the full issue, freely available: buff.ly/szfvoyr

Doing things to reinforce the sense of your own goodness is a piss poor reason to do anything.

This is the most common flavour of my own mistakes.

One of my pettiest bugbears is the sentence structure "It's not (X). It's (Y)."

It's become so fucking common to summarise a paragraph like this, it drives me absolutely nuts as soon as a sentence starts with anything resembling "It's not about...."

I feel like my hobby will be making a list called "which male academics, contemporary and historical, can be adequately considered a 'girl's girl'"

Gender Criticalism:

“Hurrah for Trump! He’s ‘protecting’ women and children.”

It's hard being a reflective, emotional person out here. People mistake openness of emotional expression for illness or frailty and say shit to you like "I wish you strength/resilience"

What if this is what wellness looks like for me? Damn, let a bitch be a feeler.

Excuse me as I wet myself

The Great Snake of my life is pulling me away from caretaking roles right now.

It's not up to me when or whether it pulls me back, or how long that takes.

Let go.

I like to think Craig's follow up question might be:

"And why stop at just putting pigment on oral openings anyway?"

Binging with Babish got too complicated. The world moves too fast and I feel alone and scared.

There's something really delicious about being disobedient to other people's expectations.

I had an experience where I failed at something, that many thought I was capable of doing. But it wasn't right for me.

On a deep level it feels like refusing a mould that was made for me but not good for me.

Being "good" meant being neglected, being "bad" meant being punished. I see this split as the base building blocks of power structures that keep people in their place, deeply racialised and alive in the family situation.

What if I don't have to be good or bad, but loved?

I've been told all my life "it's not about you," and pushed into a caretaking role where I'm not allowed a sense of self for myself, before it was "developmentally appropriate" for me.

Who do I get to be if it also gets to be about me too?

I have been saying we live in deeply Oedipal Times.

Someone said "stollen valour" and my ancestry felt that.

Trans scholars being ‘pushed out of academia’, researchers warn Universities ‘afraid to be trans inclusive’ after Supreme Court ruling and OfS Sussex fine, leaving staff fearing ‘hostile environment’

The exclusion of trans people from public and academic spaces, removal of protections by human rights institutions, dehumanising language used by state news media, judicial tolerance of trans directed hate crime, withdrawal of medical care: all of this is very familiar to genocide scholars.

I can feel myself turning into a battleaxe in real time.

Government mental health strategy:

Dear Mental Health Professionals (and unqualified interested parties with valid concerns),

We need you to stop telling people that it isn't their fault that the world is so awful right now and, instead, tell them that it is.

Yours,
HM Government

Depends on the jurisdiction. Some areas promote you to from a medium, to a psychic well done.

All breasts are good breasts – but not to babies according to Melanie Klein. The absence of good breast is experienced as the presence of bad breast.

I mean... I guess "the only bad breast is one you don't have access to" is pretty fundamental to patriarchal power.