Oblivescence

So I get the word of the day from both Dictionary.com and urbandictionary.com. It's a good spread, usually, although the Trump ones are getting tiresome. Dictionary's word of the day is oblivescence--the process of forgetting. It's a gorgeous word, and it sounds like what it is, and I want to eat it with my mouth. We'll come back to oblivescence. You'll see.

The last time I posted was in October of last year, when I was talking about hot dog vendors and the Rhetorical Canon. This semester, I am teaching Persuasion and Public Memory. Teaching Persuasion has become habitus for me--which is good and bad, I think. For example, yesterday we talked about the persuasion in Simulation and narrative rationality. They looked like either they totally get it, or they are so far from getting it that they look like they get it. I cannot tell, and, being who I am of course I assume that they don't get it. Perhaps this not-getting is because I have taught Persuasion in the same way for so many years. I just read About That Posting Every Day Gimmick. O PEITHO, AM I GIMMICKY?!?!??! is now a thought I cannot get out of my head. I think I might be a little--there are certain stories and images to which I return when teaching this class. Does repetition breed gimmick?

But seriously whence the non-gimmick. Classroom itself is a gimmick, and my clown university is filled with them (both classrooms and gimmicks, I mean). Since we've been reading Baudrillard, it's difficult for me to see outside a gimmick-verse. For example, yesterday there was a sort of spontaneous protest on campus. Our students are so brave and angry, and they want it to be 1968. I am too young to remember 1968, but I've seen the outcome. Not good. Still. Some of my closest friends are protesters, you see. So who am I to see the protest as gimmick--and/or our university president's response to the protest as gimmick--and/or the Instagram posts? Speaking of oblivescence--the protest works to eat itself, sliding back into hegemony every time. Or am I gimmickifying something that is actual?

So Public Memory. And oblivescence. I think Public Memory is going much better than Persuasion. We've just finished reading my friend, Maurice. On Monday, the students are presenting their own articles for us to read. They have found some wonderful, thoughtful things, these students. One is about Japanese shrines to war criminals, one is about a Thanatopolitics, and the third is about Alexander Wood. Yesterday, we talked about the relationships between an Ethics of Memory and a Politics of Memory. I imagine we'll be talking about that throughout the semester, so I'll try to keep you updated.

Here is my oblivescence for Groundhog Day: Daddy's deathversary is approaching, and I have been dreaming of him. Last night the dream was so real that I woke up planning to tell him about it. I dig that hazy space between waking and dreaming, the delicious absence of edges, the material vacancy in which my father is still alive, and I live next door to my sisters.