Confessions from Annotation Hell

I have to make a few confessions. Confession #1: Although I am only two annotations away from completing this stage of my second comprehensive exam, I am overwhelmed to the point that I fear I may never finish. This morning I sat down on my couch to do a re-write of one of my two remaining annotations. I reached for my copy of ‘The Location of Culture’, by Homi Bhabha, and realized that I had packed it into my purse so I could review it over lunch yesterday. The fact that my book was not as readily accessible as I had anticipated sent me spiraling towards a state of anxiety and borderline panic (despite the fact that my purse was on the other end of the couch and therefore in easy reach). But, you will be proud to know that I did in fact reach over and grab my purse, haul out the much anticipated copy of Bhabha’s book and begin to read and write. And then I felt the tightening in my stomach again as the words started to blur on the page.

Confession #2: Homi Bhabha makes me want to throw up. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t think that he has a lot of great things to say. I’m just saying that his greatness is sometimes lost on me. I start to read his text and I feel the excitement build, because I KNOW that he is saying something profound. My heart starts to beat faster as my mind runs at full speed trying to keep up with his profundity. I’m doing mental gymnastics, twisting my brain into shapes that I’m only grateful that no one has asked my body to replicate. And then it happens. Someone has opened a trap door and I am falling into a dark abyss, reaching out to grab the familiar words that fall with me. I know that the more obscure words will slip through my fingers and my only hope is to grab for the safe and solid words, hope that they can break my fall before I hit rock bottom and have to climb my way upwards again.

By the time I grab hold of those familiar words and halt my flailing descent into the darkness, I realize that just ahead of me, Bhabha is spewing out “rhetorical strategies of hybridity” and demonstrating that “forces of social authority and subversion or subalternity may emerge in displaced, even decentred strategies of signification.” I want to throw up again. I let go and fall and it feels great. No flailing. No reaching. No mental gymnastics. Just quiet, dark freefall.

Confession #3: When I freefall, this is where I land. So, if I don’t stop writing, and you don’t stop reading, I may never finish this damned annotation. Oh, but if anyone has a copy of Bhabha for Dummies, please, please, please send it my way!