I remember an interview that Derrida gave (I think it was in the film, Ghost-Dance​), where Derrida was asked whether or not he believed in ghosts. And, naturally, in his very "Derrida" sort of way, he wrestled with the question along multiple axes, (subjectivity, cinema, etc.) and ultimately said yes. This is not surprising given his project of the deconstruction of "presence" and his many, many texts and comments on concepts such as "the trace" and "cinders" and ultimately, "specters." 

Yesterday, January 21, 2023, marks the second anniversary of the death of my father. For reasons I can't quite comprehend, losing my father has been infinitely more impactful than losing my mother. "Impactful" is likely not the appropriate term, because the night I learned that my mother had died, I fell to the floor and let out a cry the likes of which I've never heard from a human being before or since. "Enduring" is probably the better term. The death of my mother hit me hard, but the brunt of the impact had diminished a great deal within six months or so. By that time, the dreams of my mother, once so frequent, had lessened to a few times a month. ...

With my father, however, while the impact was less severe, the duration of it has far exceeded what I would have expected. I would have expected it to have diminished fairly quickly, perhaps even more quickly than it did with my mother. After all, this was my second loss of a parent. But more importantly, my parents split when I was a baby, right around my first birthday, in fact. By the time I was old enough to begin forming lasting memories, both my parents were married to other people, and my father had already started on his other family. I didn't grow up with my father. His visitation schedule was limited to every other weekend, and because he lived in a tiny town about 45 minutes from my mother's home, there were no weeknight visits or sleepovers. I literally saw my dad every other weekend, besides when he would swing by my house on the off-Fridays to pay his child support, (which my father paid faithfully every week).

By the time I was five years old, I had two younger brothers in my dad's home, brothers whom I loved very much but who, in a sense, were my "other" family. Visiting him was terribly rough for me. It was always abundantly clear that I was a visitor, that there was an entire family dynamic that operated in full for the 26 days of the month that I wasn't there, that I was an encroacher, an intruder into this world. The toys that I would get for Christmas, which I was required to leave at my dad's house "so that I'd have things to play with while I was there," would be broken, misplaced, left outside... in short, gone... by the next time I'd go to visit. On two occasions when I was growing up, (age 10 and age 12) I was the only person at the extended family Christmas Eve gathering who didn't have any Christmas presents to open. (Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins... everyone but me). Moreover, when I was about four, my father had a monumentally impactful religious conversion experience, after which our entertainment options in the house were severely limited. At my mom's I listened to hard rock music and watched violent television (yes, even as a young kid). At my dad's, we were only allowed to listen to gospel music, and we weren't allowed to watch movies or television with any swear words. We were forbidden to watch the Saturday morning cartoon, "Alvin and the Chipmunks," along with "Mighty Mouse." I had to dress completely differently when I went to my dad's. I remember being told that "Jesus doesn't like little boys with long hair" when I grew out a rat tail (back when those were a thing). I remember having to change my t-shirt around age 7 or 8 because it had a skull on it, as we were going to see my grandpa, and my dad didn't want my grandpa to see me in a skull t-shirt. Eventually, my mom refused to send clothes with me to my dad's house. And to a kid whose entire world was music, feeling like an outsider in this world without my music was truly excruciating. And being forced to spend every other weekend there, where I had no friends, no music, no television, draconian rules, and felt constant shame, felt like punishment. As I grew into adulthood, my father drifted further to the right, and I further to the left. 

The thing about my dad, though, was this: if I voiced a need, my dad would come through. He might be late, very late, even. But he would come through. When I was a young adult (and still lived under the delusion that all men should work on their vehicles themselves - a delusion I inherited from my dad), if I had car issues, I'd call him, and he'd be over within a day to help me fix it. On a few occasions when I was particularly strapped for cash in grad school (and once after grad school), he would give me a chunk of cash - a thousand here, five hundred there - without questions, without even the slightest hint of judgment or criticism. Every single time I've ever moved as an adult (and given our travels through graduate school and beyond, I've moved a lot), my dad has helped. Without question or reservation. I didn't even have to ask. The second I told him I was moving, he'd ask me when, citing that he needed to ask for the time off. 

Needless to say, my relationship with my father was incomprehensibly complicated, (as most are, I guess). 

My father died from complications arising from COVID in 2021. His illness and death were extremely abrupt. Basically, within two weeks' time, he was sick, then gone. Since my father's passing, I've been visited by him at least three times a week in my dreams. Sometimes more, but never less. Basically, almost every time I remember my dreams, my dad is in them. I've spent more than a little time pondering why it is that the loss of this man, whose presence in my life was so minimal compared to that of my mother, has had such an intense and persistent endurance. I've wondered if it's precisely because he was my last parent, especially given that he was so healthy, and that his father (and most of his brothers) lived well into their eighties. His death was the moment I became an orphan in the world. I've also wondered if it's not the case that my father became, for me, something of a metaphor, for all the absent father figures I would encounter through the rest of my life - all the step-fathers (five, by the time my mother died), all the boyfriends, many of whom were abusive, sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically. And while it's true that I could call my father as an adult and he would be there to help, at the same time, it's also true that I was the visitor in his house the entire time I was growing up, with no space of my own. I remember the time that my dad got a license plate for the family van, and personalized it to include the first-name initials of his wife and all his children, except for me; and the time that he showed a photo of my younger brother to a group of people, me standing right next to him, and referred to my younger brother as "my oldest son." 

There was so much that I wanted to say to my dad. I think that I thought I had another twenty or so years with him, and that maybe, when we were both old men, I could sit down with him and say them. But I never got that chance. Then, given the timing of his death (at the height of the virus, prior to any vaccinations), and my own respiratory conditions, I didn't physically go to his funeral, either. Moreover, as he was cremated, not buried, there is no physical "site" where I can go and sit "with" him. In my dreams of him, I'm having to say goodbye, over and over. Sometimes, it's because he's suffering from a terminal illness, and others, it's that he's getting ready to leave for an indefinite journey. But in almost every dream, I'm struggling to say goodbye. This week, almost serendipitously, I reread this magnificent line in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: "Is it not true that the only dead who return are those whom one has buried too quickly and too deeply, without paying them the necessary respects, and that remorse testifies less to an excess of memory than to a powerlessness or to a failure in the working through of memory?" I suspect this is the reason for my father's persistent nighttime visits. I'm still struggling to say goodbye. 

It's been a while since I've done one of these things, and since I'm still technically on break, and not completely overwhelmed with other things to do, I decided to elaborate a little bit on my Twitter post from yesterday. The tweet you see here appeared on my timeline somehow, though I don't follow the person who posted it. I posted a response to this tweet, with the following words... 

"I genuinely, with every fiber of my existence, detest posts like this. If you, as a philosophy prof, truly feel this way about what you do, get the fuck out. There are plenty of talented teachers who would love to have the opportunities that you’re shitting all over."

I stand by every word of my response, even if it was initially posted in anger and disgust. I foolishly allowed myself to get drawn into a few pointless "reply guy" exchanges, which are always fruitless wastes of time. But all the same, I decided to take up here some of the questions and reactions in order to explain my position in a little more depth. 

There's a certain breed of philosopher like, I assume, the person who posted this tweet. For whatever reason, this person feels they must "apologize" for what they do, in the classical sense of providing some kind of defense and explanation. Now, admittedly, I plan to say a little bit in defense of what I do in this post as well, but that's not really what I'm talking about. It's almost as if this breed of philosopher feels guilty for what they do. As if they buy the culturally pervasive narrative that informs a number of American (and Western) assumptions about the "purpose" of an education, and the general worthlessness of the humanities in this task. But this philosopher, instead of holding down the fort and defending the importance of teaching philosophy, tacitly accepts the cultural narrative. "You're right," they say, "it is worthless, it is pointless, it is a 'grift,' and I'm just lucky enough to have gotten a ride on this train, so I'm gonna ride it out to retirement, milking it for everything I can get." Notice the way the person proudly advertises their bona fides: "And I'm saying this as someone from inside academia and philosophy." In other words, "You can believe me when I tell you that the cultural narrative is spot on." 

One of the reply guys sarcastically responded to me by suggesting that this post was simply saying that intellectuals have a responsibility to the public, and that we should operate with certain standards. There is absolutely no evidence to that effect anywhere in the original post. None. In fact, the post seems to be reveling in the lack of any such standards or sense of responsibility.

Another person challenged me by asking whether the person's remarks were wrong, or merely offensive. My response to that question is, they are both. As I see it, there are two possible ways this post can be understood:

1) "Most academic philosophers are grifters, (but not me... I'm special)." 
or
2) "I'm a grifter; therefore, most academic philosophers are grifters." 

Both are self-serving. #1 is self-serving in that it is sanctimonious: "Sure, they all suck, but I'm one of the few good ones." #2 is self-serving in that it provides cover for the person to be, by their own admission, a lazy and shitty teacher: "Sure, I'm a grifter, but hey, what can I say... most philosophers are." 

But however one takes it, the crux of their point rests on the claim that "most academic philosophers are grifters," which is to say, petty swindlers, acting as though what they do matters so as to dupe students into taking our meaningless classes, riding that fat cash cow all the way to the bank, while knowing deep down that we're really just engaged in a giant circlejerk. 

I entered the discipline of philosophy for, I assume, the same reason that most people do: I took a class that blew my mind. I met professors who challenged me to think in ways that I had never thought before, and it sparked an evolution that, I would argue, continues to this day. It upended everything I had ever believed and drew me along with it. I tell students that once we embark upon the path of philosophy, we find ourselves faced with question upon question about who we are, and at any stage on that path, we can make the choice to turn back around and plant our heads back in the sand, but that if we continue on the path, it's as though we will eventually find ourselves looking over a precipice where we're not sure who we will be if we take the plunge. That it is scary, exhilarating, and positively transformative. That our views about right and wrong, justice, race, sex, gender, beauty, love, faith, etc., are not just epistemic propositions to which we passively give our assent, and they are certainly not a "circlejerk" to be dismissed by even its practitioners. But that they make us who we are and inform every other thing we do and every choice we make in life, and will almost certainly stick with us long beyond even a single intro course. That that is the stuff of philosophy. And I reacted so angrily to the grifter's post because most of the philosophers I know believe this too, down to their bones. That includes, by the way, scores of people, far too many, talented, passionate teachers, life-changing teachers, who adjunct several courses at multiple institutions in order to make ends meet, for no other reason than that they believe deeply in what they do, and cannot imagine themselves doing anything else in life. And for what it's worth, this is true of most of the teachers I know, whatever their discipline. 

I cannot speak for the grifter, though I take him at his word that he is such. But I care too deeply about this profession to abide his blanket statement that it is true of all or most of us. Moreover, if a person wants to run a grift and make an easy buck, I could effortlessly list a hundred grifts that would be easier to run than to pursue a career in academic philosophy. I spent fifteen years of my life in college at four different institutions, went tens of thousands of dollars into debt, spent eight years on a soul-crushingly brutal job market, uprooted my family multiple times, and barely, and I mean barely, got a tenure-track job by the skin of my teeth. And now that I have it, my salary is comparable to that of my brother who is a shift supervisor in a factory. Over this holiday "break," I have taken maybe three days off, three days where I wasn't dealing with student issues, responding to departmental needs, grading, or doing research. And as I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. There are countless others, amazing teachers, doing high-quality, impactful research, inspiring students, but languishing on an unforgiving job market, because they've so dedicated themselves to their craft and believe so deeply in what they do that they simply cannot imagine doing anything else. The idea that these people are all grifters is grotesquely offensive.

One final remark: I responded as angrily and aggressively as I did because the reality is that the humanities in higher education, philosophy in particular, are facing wrathful cultural headwinds. As a culture, we've so broadly accepted for the past four decades the neoliberal political narrative of austerity - cut, cut, cut - that anything that doesn't show immediate, "practical" results is considered expendable, especially where education is concerned. But in truth, there's a very good reason why these disciplines (history, race theory, religion, philosophy, literature, gender studies, etc.) draw the ire of the politicians so aggressively. It is precisely because they foster critical thinking in the students who pursue them, and challenge them to see the world differently. Students become enamored of justice, and unwilling to accept the world in its current shittiness. They begin asking questions and refuse the status quo. Capitalism far prefers its subjects to be docile and unreflective, and to choose a major that might ultimately feed the imperial war machine. At its best, education fights the interminable uphill battle against the machine. So I'm going to quote The Madwoman in the Classroom, and leave you with this other, most beautiful tweet: "I don't want my class to prepare students for 'the real world.' I want my class to help students dream of a better world." I cannot speak for the grifter. I can only say that his blanket statement about academic philosophy more generally is wrong, and reveals far more about him than it does about the discipline of philosophy. 

If I am not mistaken, this is the first new work of Deleuze to be released since 2007's Two Regimes of Madness. I can hardly contain my excitement at its release. 320 pages of previously unreleased material! In addition to a selection of Deleuze's letters, the work contains a number of interviews, notes for a course on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ​that he apparently intended to publish, some of Deleuze's drawings, and the essays from Deleuze's youth.