CONSPIRACY THEORY #20050308

life is just SO fuckin’ fantabulous! t-rex’s gf is coming for the weekend again. that’s just PEACY! i’m SO excited, more shit on the toilet, great.

once again, buuuuuuuuuuuurn! my poco class was TOO bizarre today. ok. the French girl let’s call her f is somewhat flightly, on a basic level i’m cool with her, any sort of in depth discussion won’t happen because she’s too stubborn to see other people’s opinions. we were discussing at the beginning when would be a good day to re-cap on term papers before we hand them in. we were trying to figure out a good date, and most people preferred a week before they were due. so he said, ‘alright, the 12^th is good then?’ and she sorta burst out incredulously, ‘one week before they’re due!’ but just the way she said it, and the fact that she was involved in the discussion was kinda funny so we all sorta had a little giggle about it. but she seems to do this often.

anyhow, so we were discussing a reading and the question was: ‘is postcolonialism utopian?’ and i said it sort of was. just because there is no longer any occupation, the structures are usually still in place, the racism is still there, and people are still traumatized blah blah blah. so there never really is an end because it’s a part of both the (coloniz)er/ed histories. so my prof turned to others and asked what they thought. F said, ‘no no no. of course postcolonialism is a possibility, look at china.’ which i didn’t understand so i asked her to explain.

            ‘china is a communist country, because it’s not participating in western capitalist imperialism.’

most of the other people disagreed with her, because how can china not be a colonizer when in a sense… look at tibet, taiwan, and hong kong.  she’s not racist, in fact she’s fascinated with chinese culture. because tibet, taiwan, hong kong have the same cultural past, they’re all chinese. that FLOORED me. and i sort of murmured, ‘well if you ask a taiwanese person, i’m sure they’ll disagree with you.’ but her argument was that it wasn’t ‘colonialism’ like the west. ok. if you define colonialism that narrowly then yes, it could be seen that way, but you’ll have a lot of people disagreeing with you. it basically ended up as more of a verbal catfight. this got VERY uncomfortable, and to make things worse he sort of added fuel to the fire by asking her how she could say that when you look at tibet? regardless of what someone thinks, you’re not supposed to take sides, you’re not supposed to allow ‘discussions’ to get that far to the point of umm… 5 v. 1. so i shut up and was waiting/hoping that my prof would stop this mudslinging. no. he let it continue. i was going to say something, but i don’t think it’s up to me to undermine his class, since he’s already socially inadept (see conspiracy #20050203) likewise, i’m afraid of what that might do to my essay mark. and he asked person x who was silent and getting angrier by the minute what she thought. and she rightly said, ‘well if it’s a discussion where people’s opinions aren’t being respected then i don’t want to be involved.’ go her! and he sorta jokingly said, ‘well what kind of a discussion would you like to have x?’ DUH. get the picture yet?!?!?!

it was REALLY tense. and rather than having a lil breather he went along his merry little way and asked someone to do her presentation. some people were kinda laughing that nervous laugh when you-don’t-know-what-to-do laugh. and of course it didn’t really go well for her because everyone was still tense/mystified/wowed. so we had another discussion after her presentation, which was kind of difficult given the situation we just encountered.

we finally had a break and re-convened. my friend michelle had her next presentation. apparently f has a real beef with her. she sat through michelle’s WHOLE presentation looking through a book, reading it, commenting on it, and trying to get 1^st presenter’s attention away from michelle’s topic. eh? are you in high school? no matter what your beef is, that’s just plain RUDE. michelle had nothing bad to say to you when you were being attacked, what are you doing? so after her presentation, michelle was answering a question about portuguese colonization and f seemed to be disagreeing with her. so michelle asked her, ‘is there something you disagree with? i’d like to know your opinion.’

‘no no. i’m just reading this book.’

‘i’m sorry if my presentation is boring you and this topic can’t keep your interest.’

‘no no, i have nothing to say.’

riiiiiiiiiiight! ok. michelle handled it quite well, and didn’t pursue it any further.

after class the prof asked F if she was at all hurt or put off by people attacking her, and she said no, she had no problems with it. and he asked her and x to stay so they could ‘discuss’ this further.

1. you’re a prof. you FACILITATE discussions. you’re allowed to have an opinion too, but if it’s just going to add fuel to the fire, then don’t say it because it’ll just make the situation worse.
2. if it’s no longer a case of a discussion, but mudslinging then you damn well better intervene!
3. it wasn’t fair to 1^st presenter to have to present after that, give us a lil breather.

needless to say, it was a VERY VERY awkward class.

agent orange