anxiety in the suburb of southern california. counting palm trees.

sitting in the hotel in riverside, california, wondering why i even came to this place in the first place. "critical ethnic studies: the future of genocide" is the title of the conference. it sounded like a pretty neat idea last year, but the whole field perpetuating with academic jargons totally drove me crazy. homocolonalism? this one is new. we are telling the young minds to follow the master's languages and keep reproducing differently decorated but inherently the same ideas. i like how at least at this conference people generally have a sense of discomfort of being in academia--but i wonder if this discomfort has transformed to a hipster logic that "it's cool to criticize it but not cool to admit you can't avoid being part of it, too." every panel has little deconstructionist aesthetics of ( ) and other weird symbols in it, such as (de)colonizing queer or (re)imaging, etc, etc. i don't get the significances of the symbols. so what can we really achieve after knowing the inherent anti-blackness in mainstream gay and lesbian movement, or the neoliberalism in queer category?! then what?! or what do we get from know that homonationalism is not a post-911 thing but occurred back in roosevelt's days? i'm looking for a methodology in not only thinking, but doing something about this. calling out for "alliances" is definitely not enough anymore. nor is (re)inventing flashy terminology, pardon me.