Mushin-Sho

The Daily Show on US funding practices in the Middle East:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=91998 

I stand at the crossroads of theory and practice, between a universalizable conception and its particular instantiations, between utopian hopes and tragic visions. Yes, and I arrived at this singular (albeit repeating) moment through…

…a haircut…

Ever since moving down (south) to Detroit proper a few years ago, I’ve been going to the same barber (hair stylist). I never quite know what she will do to my hair, despite the repetition of the same requests, which adds unneeded excitement to an already unstable life. Off-center, uneven, too much thinning out–––I have very thick hair–––water down my back when washing and the most irritating thing, which happened again today: dull tools. Come on! Get the scissors sharpened, oil the clippers before customers come so that you won’t accidentally spray them into solidarity with sea lions after a tanker spill–––and give them alliterative fodder for their blogs. The clippers bit today; actually, they gnawed on my neck until even she saw the need for an alcohol wipe and aloe vera.

I’m done. Fuck it. I tried, I lived with the discomfort of excessive force and recurring nightmares for haircuts, but damn it, I’m done.

Here, however, an ethical angel lands on my shoulder (just a few inches from my sensitively red neck) and reminds me of a few things. Slight discomfort and vanity, the idealistic angel says, are small prices to pay for helping a local neighborhood business stay alive. The prices shrink even further when one thinks of her (my barber’s) circumstances, knowing that she has few if any regulars whom she can rely on. I, of course, am under no delusion that I am this woman’s guardian angel–––sitting in an adjustable chair rather than on her shoulder–––nor do I want to posit (loyalty to) local endeavors as the panacea to globalization.

However, life in a post-industrial city has a significant impact on one’s politics. So, if I simply stop going to this barber, which is precisely what I am going to do, am I being disloyal? If not, how did such affective ties to a business build so that I still feel disloyal? Are such affective ties, especially when they dictate one’s purchasing, necessary for larger political projects such as revitalizing a neighborhood, a state’s economy, or the redistribution of a nation’s wealth? What are the global consequences of thinking along, and feeling within, these affective relationships?

Is being an academic conducive to generating such questions out of a bad haircut?

Bruce Robbins has an interesting insight into the ethical implications of protesting capital’s flight form a particular space, precisely the phenomena I am participating in by leaving my current barber. I paraphrase, “a job lost here is a job gained elsewhere.” True. ("and the job that was here was also a job that came from somewhere else")

So, I am literally in search of a compromise, a new barber in Detroit.