The Fun and the Fury of Transforming American Studies

Abstract

The Fun and the Fury of Transforming American Studies Lisa Duggan (bio) On December 4, 2014, two overwhelming events shaped the year to come, for me and many other members of the American Studies Association. At 9 a.m. Anna McCarthy called to tell me that José Muñoz (one of the cochairs and a chief architect of this year’s ASA conference) had died suddenly in the early hours of the morning. At about 12 noon, the ASA announced publicly that the resolution supporting the academic boycott of Israel, approved by our National Council, would be sent to the membership for a vote. These events together generated a complex field of joy and misery, mourning and conflict. Together they produced pressures that tested the stamina of everyone involved in keeping the ASA going and in planning this conference. In recognition of that fact, I would like to take a moment to thank some of the people who bore up under the pressures to keep the ASA strong (with increased membership, individual and institutional, and strong fund-raising) and whose efforts bring us together here. Curtiz Marez, ASA president, 2013–14 John Stephens, ASA executive director T’sey-Haye Preaster, 2014 conference coordinator The National Council and Executive Council Fred Moten, Jack Halberstam, and Sandy Soto, program cochairs The Program Committee Jewish Voice for Peace and the Center for Constitutional Rights, especially Liz Jackson of Palestine Solidarity Legal Support Ryan Senser and Stephanie Willerton, Christina Hanhardt, Conor Reed, and Lex Taylor (research and map) J. DeLeon (for technical assistance with this presentation) These two events pulled in seemingly opposite directions: the death of a beloved friend and colleague toward somber withdrawal into the circle of mourners, the boycott vote announcement toward vigorous public engagement [End Page 281] in the worlds of media, politics, law. The planning of the theme “The Fun and the Fury” also seemed to pull us in one direction, to focus on new ways of thinking through and sharing our scholarship, with our collective mourning and our intense public engagement pushing and pulling us in other ways. But many of us began to see connections. The fun and the fury of mourning José, celebrating his work and each other as well as raging at mortality, did come to overlap with the fun and the fury of responding to both the enormous joy that created the boycott vote and the considerable dissent and rage over that vote in multiple arenas. To illustrate these overlaps, and in honor of José, I want to begin with what he might have considered an ephemeral archive, or what Jack Halberstam might call a “silly archive.” I want to start with the hate mail we collected on the website bdsloveletters.com. For me, the volume and tone of the hate mail I began to receive on December 4 was something of a revelation. Though others here have long experience with this kind of epistolary emoting, I had had little. After I recovered from my initial shock, I started to find it interesting. Aside from the messages that simply argued against the boycott, in a range of tones and linguistic styles, there was an avalanche of fascinatingly insulting messages. I started to ask my most vigorous and vivid correspondents to send me more! Some did. I began to trace the thematic patterns in the messages. I found it particularly noteworthy that so many of these e-mails featured sexual themes. This is my area of research interest, after all! I always find it enlightening to try to connect sexual themes to political economic forces and global events. So here was a surprisingly rich archive. As an example, here is one of several messages I received from one correspondent: From: XXXXX Date: December 16, 2013 at 3:35:12 PM EST Subject: congratulations congratulations on your election to the presidency of the American Study Association It is groups like the ASA who are exemplars in the proactive support of Islamo terrorists, suicide bombers, killers of Jewish babies & unarmed civilians. Your promotion & adherence to deviance from sexual norms makes your election especially noteworthy. We know how warmly the Islamos embrace dikes, homos, switch hitters, gender-confused...