Friendship Is an Openness to Death* |
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Ilya Merlin, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
I read these words in October 2011, in this same venue, weeks after my mother died. Joe shared some of his experience with mourning and loss, and I want to keep that spirit of trust and vulnerability alive. I want to do this because I believe in the polemic purchase of acknowledging humanity. My humanity; our humanity; mortality. As I write today, less than one year has elapsed since I received the phone call. I knew that there could only be one reason why my uncle and grandparents would call at midnight: it happened. Though I can’t say for certain, I believe that the thematic immediacy of my mother’s death was perhaps a more prevalent idea in my youth than it was for Still, I don’t want sympathy — she never did. My mother was intelligent, passionate, and hardworking; organ failure or major surgery never stopped her from working multiple jobs. In a sense beyond good and evil, my mother taught me how to persevere. She loved her children, and she was engaged with a battle against order that I was in no place to stop. Rather, we all tried to help, to listen…
I will say of my circuitous path to the academy that I had a phenomenological appreciation of the “carceral archipelago” years before I knew what postmodernism was. My brief career with professional athleticism also differs drastically from my new vocation: reading, thinking, writing, and teaching. Transitions are difficult, and I have been extremely fortunate in having the sort of human teachers — and colleagues — that Joe Wiinikka-Lydon called for. Because Joe laudably started this conversation with his call for a certain sort of pedagogy, thus demonstrating what it looks like in his article, I want to honor his — our — project by describing several other examples of what this looks like. My justification also comes from the AAR homepage, wherein a banner on the left reads "Connect with scholars." I had been living in Charlotte for just weeks when I got the phone call. I had one friend there; she was a member of my graduate cohort — and my neighbor by chance. She and her husband were there for me the night I got the phone call; they listened and cared. Twelve hours later, a former classmate arrived from her Tibetan-immersion program located a five-hour drive away. She missed her classes in order to cook for me, read with me, and offer me kind ears while I waited for my sister to fly in from Los Angeles. After the funeral, I came home to an inbox full of thoughtful messages from my future professors and from my undergraduate advisors. I never really questioned how they knew; I didn’t tell them. Sometimes, an acknowledgment of not knowing what to say is much better than nothing. When I simply wasn’t feeling up to a seminar discussion on the thematic of “dead mothers returned” in post-Marxist-Frankenstein scholarship two weeks after my mom died, I knew that my friend down in Chapel Hill would help me laugh, and he would listen. I know that my comrade from Virginia will free-style rap with me whenever I need to let it out. I know that my entire thesis committee consists of caring, brilliant scholars who allow me a certain comfort within my own skin, and within my project. Rather than compromise the integrity of scholastic endeavors, I believe that these human interactions foster meaningful work of embodied consequence within the academy and beyond. The concern that I received from my intellectual community kept me together during my moments of vertigo. For this I am very grateful, and I hope to demonstrate a similar style of empathy towards my students, colleagues, and mentors. As Joe said, this isn’t a call for professors to be therapists. Though what is wrong with loaning a struggling student your copy of Camera Lucida, telling them to take a break, and/or listening? It isn’t hard to cry over separation when one is navel-gazing. I love you, Mom. Your son is a scholar now — or something close. |