When we were old

When I was older I decided that manacles are not in fashion. I tried to slough off the chains of the hegemony of union politics. This history saw streets of disgruntled graduate students begging for change, drinking caramel macciatos, wearing designer knowledge and prada flip-flops. They sobbed, in staccato stutters, that they wanted everyone to know just how much their sprightly thoughts are worth. When I was older I made a nest of discarded philosophies, insulating my home with the pages of my favorite leftists. It sure was cold that winter with only radical, fractured philosophies, arguing dissenters, and dunce caps to provide shelter from the storms.

When I was old I knew that knowledge was commodified: the neoliberal, knowledge economy was a political wet dream from which we cannot seem to wake up. But yet, within it we could slice and slip into the institution through the (relative) autonomy of teaching: talk day after day on the state of the educational nation. It sure was difficult to teach, talk, experiment with thought separated from the space that makes it possible. When I was older I smashed my soap-box and became a riverbank preacher/teacher. When is it time to wake up from these histories? If I were younger would I ask Gramsci, Foucault and Bourdieu to dance round my unionist fire? Would I think that the revolution is coming? For now, the union chains seem far too tight.