Dissertation frustration

[sebastienne]

Six weeks 'til the dissertation is due in, and I have 5,000 words. In retrospect, this was a foolish topic to choose; full of the insidious little bits of oppression that make people say, "aren't you making a fuss over nothing?" until you can see the effects of all the little bits together. So it's hard to disentangle it into any actual findings, and I'm particularly having trouble finding academic literature to back up certain points which my supervisor finds contentious, but which I just think of as obvious parts of oppression theory; things like "editorial boards made up entirely of people from the US and UK will have an idea of "global significance" which is skewed by their own cultural situations". Anyone got any tips for "Kyriarchy 101" which I can throw around to give these points a bit more legitimacy?

Why did I pick something which will make me feel so angry and powerless? Where the eventual conclusion will be, in part, "well the world is just fucked up and it's Imperialism's fault but the colonisers and settler colonies like their "developed" position too much to do anything beyond help "developing" countries become more like their obviously superior nation states. Can we fix it? No, it's fucked." Ick ick ick.

And my nice holiday - intended to give me a bit of distance from the project so that I can come back refreshed and with a bit more distance for editing and perfecting - will have to be full of panicking and writing and frustration instead.

But - positivity! I may just have a new favourite band.. David Devant & His Spirit Wife. In case you needed telling, they're a glam-rock outfit with synths, an androgynous frontman in eyeliner, and a vaudevillian / audience-participation bent. (Why yes, I have a type. But it's always served me well in the past.) These guys have an additional 90s indie-rock twist to things, that inexplicably makes me think of girls with very matte lipstick..

I saw them last night, and it was one of the most emotionally involving gigs I've ever been to - on a par with the first Borderville gigs when I understood for the first time what this "live music" malarkey is all about. Recordings cannot do justice to the energy, joy, freedom-beauty-truth-and-love of seeing this band live. But I'm going to embed a song for you anyway.

And I even went to Camden with crouchinglynx and bought an evil villainess collar to complete my costume. The world is good to me, I have so many lovely things, and the very worst that can happen is that I screw up the dissertation and leave with a Postgraduate Certificate instead of an MSc. This is hardly, to borrow an excellent phrase from my flist, bloody Basra.

Comments

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Oh, general is absolutely fine - all I'm looking for is evidence for statements like "We must be aware of the fact that all our science – like all our statements about the world – take place in a context, and that this context is defined by our life experience."