well I once had a dream of doing a job similar to yours, wanted to get a doctorate on topic of male and female bodies in British literature & even had two places at good universities to do it, but no cash. (Over here in UK seems to me there isn't any funding to be had in arts subjects unless you're the best student in the country with a double First from Oxbridge!!! )
Anyway I had a change of heart and realised I'd rather be attempting my own creative writing however appallingly lame it was.
I realised that I wanted to be a fiction writer rather than an academic.
I adore literature and I feel a bit of regret every day that I can't spend my whole day doing what I love which is reading and writing stories! I still have that as a dream though!
Also at that time in my life I didn't think I'd be able to cope with the stress of the doctorate and the infamous attack of the blues it gives most people, three years working pretty much alone on a crucial project is damn tough.
For a job I ended up programming computers, am self-taught and doing ok. Am a visual thinker which helps.
Excellent so Haraway is on the staff at your university, that's very interesting!
Yes couldn't agree more about falling down the theory minehole.... it did happen to me when doing my MPhil I think! You do get incredibly drawn in to it. I have to admit I do see it now looking back as a kind of massive three dimensional intellectual chessgame with the same kind of hypnotic absorbing effect. I started to realise it may not have been healthy when I went to see a film at the cinema for some downtime and couldn't relax because my mind was performing a critical theoretical running commentary of the film's themes and imagery on autopilot like a little machine
As long as you can switch it off when you want and put it back in the box and go out and have a laugh and a joke and forget all about it then you're doing alright
A few years later I did adore doing an evening class on psychoanalytic theory as a lens for viewing modern art at Tate Modern though, have still got the notes and they're damn good
Ah now what is Technocapitalism and how do animals fit into it?
Do they mean capitalism that's made possible in new ways by new technologies?
To me Haraway's writing seems incredibly pro-technology, I think she sees technology as giving people more freedom not less?
