1st week...

Right. I suppose it is about time that I wrote something here...time has been flowing around my thoughts and I was left a bit behind the present. I am almost caught up I think and getting more of a grip on what I am doing and where I am, which is useful for living a somewhat organised life. Hmmm. Not that I am organised enough to do my laundry on time or make sure that I don't just eat porridge and cheese sandwiches for 90% of my meals.

Yes, so I find myself back in the town of "gaping spires and dreaming tourists", though I see few of either, being mainly in the northern suburbs. It's good to be back, good to be thinking again -- best of all to be thrown back into a situation where I feel different every week and with every conversation I have.

Ooh, the shower is free. Exciting.

Anyway, now I am clean. Yes, so we have had one week of the course so far -- which means we've done the first unit of our first two courses. The first is a research methods course -- we discussed the invention of Africa and the insights that postcolonial literature and critical theory (and post-structuralism) gives us in discussing the way people have conceptualised the continent, different groups of people, and the way that people choose to organise and react to power and knowledge structures. The second course is very broad-- for the first week, we discussed the colonial state until 1940!

This week in particular I started to concentrate on one question that has started to occupy my thoughts whenever they are not thinking about whether I should eat another chocolate biscuit (four already today and they are the serious kind of chocolate biscuits, more chocolate than biscuit) or how to ride my bike with a bus about two inches away from my ear.

And that is -- how are scholarship and activism connected? What implications does the quest for social justice have for my studies? How can you keep your viewpoint and not betray your ideals....how do you have ideals after you've deconstructed them? Do they stand the test?

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