My monographs or single-author books in reverse temporal order (sorry about the Amazonishness; if you object, I see why).
Entanglements: A System of Philosophy (SUNY)
How to Escape: Magic, Madness, Beauty, and Cynicism (SUNY)
Political Aesthetics (Cornell)
Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory (SUNY)
Six Names of Beauty (Routledge)
Extreme Virtue: Truth and Leadership in Five Great American Lives (SUNY)
End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History (SUNY)
Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity (Chicago)
Obscenity, Anarchy, Reality (SUNY)
The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions (SUNY)
Now, I came into this thing with quite the sense of mission: I had to do this, rolling toward Entanglements. Like, I would do this for its own sake, whether it nabbed me a high-end academic career and a bunch of recognition or not. What I've found on the other side of my oeuvre, which might well be complete, is that the lack of recognition really makes me mental (I did have a sort of psychological/professional 'episode' right at the moment I finished Entanglements, the moment I finished my life project), or makes me feel like I wasted my energy, or that I should have stuck to journalism or something. I chew on it all the time and want to lash out; I am pretty bitter, somewhere underneath. And then the next layer: Is that why you were really doing this all along, because of that fantasy of a MacArthur and the title "major philosopher" and a job at Princeton? And if so, how in the world did you (i.e. me) delude yourself so entirely about your own motivations? And how does that real motivation and self-delusion compromise these books? And is it too late to get to someplace else? And how would I do that?
In a sense I did exactly what I set out to do: I realized my dream. But when I had, I saw that it was not actually my dream, or not without everybody expressing their adoration, or laboring to refute gigantical me. Like my life has been a success by the standard I gave myself explicitly, but it's a failure by the standard I actually had. Or in the back of my mind, I always pictured the confetti along with the ideas. That seems pitiful to me, but I can't seem to inch to the next phase. Somehow I don't think trying to generate a fantasy of posthumous recognition is going to do it, though I fantasize anyway that some grad student - soon to be a giant - finds Entanglements on a library shelf in 2070 and I get to be a philosophical Van Gogh. It's not doing me any good to try to convince myself; it's just more betrayal of what I took myself to be.
I mean, it's not entirely incomprehensible, and you can't change philosophy or flip it over, or set it right, if no one reads what you write. And then again, why haven't they, really? It occurs to me in the dead of an insomniac night, that I'm not nearly as good as I thought I was, that the mediocrity of my reception is a true index of the quality of my work. Man there are few darker thoughts available to me, as I experience them. Obviously, though, there could be factors other than sheer quality at work, or even just a series of unfortunate coincidences etc. I am often delighted and impressed with my own cleverness and wisdom as I read my own stuff; but then I would be. What is the proper gauge, for me, of the quality of my own work? This is a very hard thing to know. And can I really be that much at the mercy of an academic philosophy world that I also purport to despise? Who am I, then? Definitely not who I thought I was. Evidently, I'm status-obsessed, which is just gross.
Partly, I've been living this whole time in a fantasy of vengeance/vindication, when all those academic people who dissed or ditched me or tried to ignore me into silence or made my career as I understood it a mere series of insults or gauntlet of humiliations would be filled with shame and regret. Now they're mostly retired, anyway, at best. So again: is this who I wanted myself to be? Is this what I want to be the directing force of the positions I take and the arguments I give? Not at fucking all. But can I stop thinking about it or grinding axes in my head? Not at fucking all either, though if I keep it up long enough I start laughing grimly at the futility of myself and other people's power over my head.
The whole thing throws into question my vision of myself (I've been onstage this whole time, with no audience but an imagined one), and also sort of what I want to believe about human beings: like, I am swamped by the social in a way that I've used all sorts of figures and arguments to deny that I am, slave to a narrative in a way that I denied in these books that I was. It compromises the philosophy too, or looking at it in the most positive possible light, the philosophy expresses an aspiration rather than a reality, though it's always purporting to describe reality.
This part is difficult, but then again it is a beautiful Spring day out there; the fruit trees are coming into blossom. I really need to cultivate that attitude of gratitude and I try. I have a job. I have a beautiful lover. I live in a beautiful place. My kids are well. I'm not actually at war with anyone, even if I feel geared up. It's okay.
I set out to engage in self-promotion with all its urgency and futility, then started reflecting and/or emoting. PS You need to read Political Aesthetics, you doinks!
