Introduction

This may turn out to be just another blog filled with resentment and ressentiment, that serves as a feeble attempt to find an outlet for the anger and frustration that comes with working in a university during an age where fascism is spreading like herpes. I do not intend to post many pictures, since these might cause problems with copyrights, but I am going to publish texts that probably will not make it into books and articles because the deployment of peer reviews in academic publishing is primarily governed by the twins of fear and mediocrity. The other, more important, side of academic publishing is a neo-feudalist economic model, in which both supply and demand are completely controlled by a handful of companies. Indeed, academic publishing could easily serve as the archetype of what Yanis Varoufakis once (2021 is indeed a long time ago) referred to as “technofeudalism“.

I have also decided not to write under my own name, as I do not want my employer and their sponsors to be embarrassed by my use of the freedom of expression, just as I do not want my friends and family to be held accountable for potentially controversial statements. Of course, it will always be possible to find out who typed these words and who uploaded them. I am not naive enough to feel safe behind a pseudonym.

Is it still important to identify oneself if one uses a pseudonym? Are gender, nationality, skin colour, age or the colour of one’s eyes relevant? Do you need to know my preferred pronouns? Do I have to be identified as human? After the death of the author had been proclaimed by Roland Barthes, does it really matter? Can I not just be some “voice” (of course I am writing, not speaking) from somewhere? Is “I” the right word as “I” certainly cannot prove “myself” to be an autonomous entity? For “me” is is not even clear that “I” want to be an autonomous entity. The same goes for the use of the single person plural “we”, as “I” cannot really know on whose behalf I can claim to be speaking, since in most cases, I have not been given an explicit mandate. Hence, when I write I, or me, or we or us, the reader should always be thinking of those quotation marks.