Just spent a few minutes dipping into old blog posts from on or around my birthday, over the last few years. The voice is still there, but I'm thinking the person may have shifted, a little.
This year's birthday (as dutifully tweeted and Facebooked):
Class, Giorgio Agamben lecture in Kingston, pub after, instant noodles when I got home – all more fun than it sounds!Listening to an Italian philosopher may not be everyone's idea of birthday fun, but mostly I study the writings of dead white men, and I do intend to dip into Agamben for my dissertation --- so I got a kick out of seeing and hearing the man himself. He put on a very dapper blue hat as he was getting ready to leave afterwards.
It was also very nice to get face-to-face birthday wishes from people whom I've gotten to know in my course, and to hang out with them in Kingston (about 30 minutes' train ride south of London). Sometimes it's nice to have Facebook break the ice about such things. No pressies, just drinks in the pub -- I quite like the British way.
Other nice things: warm and sunny weather all of last week when my cousin was in town, and a little on my birthday yesterday too. I've started carrying sunglasses around in my bag again, and I can't wait to wear skirts without having to put on tights underneath. Come on, spring, you can do it!
Meanwhile, there is some nonsense going on in Singapore with various people (including cabinet ministers) saying silly or downright offensive things. But all you need to read is Siew Kum Hong and mr brown (here and here).
Labels: London bound, Singapore stories
2 Comments:
It must be a stimulating thing to be in London to get to attend lectures by these well-known critical theorists and philosophers. I read somewhere that Agamben refused to travel to lecture in USA when fingerprinting became a condition of entry. The reason is supposedly related to his writings on biopolitics.
Did you get to attend any lectures by Slavoj Zizek?
Yeah, I've heard that story about Agamben too. Zizek is on the faculty at Birkbeck, but I haven't attended any of his public lectures. Those tend to be really, really crowded, I hear.
You can listen online to recordings of quite a few of these lectures (including the Agamben I attended) at: Backdoor Broadcasting Company.
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