On (Not) Dissertating

I defended my prospectus (dissertation proposal) last Tuesday and it felt great. I have been in a very dire situation — physically & mentally — for the last eight months, so this felt like a redemption. A lot of problems still lingers around, but whatever. All I need to feel a bit better is my adviser emailing my department that I have “very successfully” defended my work.

That being said, I don’t think I have ever seriously introduced what exactly that I have been researching for the last… six years?

1. I want to expand the theoretical and empirical understanding of dispossession
2. I want to produce a thought-provoking theory about state interest and sovereignty through plantations
3. I seriously want to end Indonesia’s plantation dependence, guys

Since 2016, I have been obsessed with states: working in a non-profit that deals with conflicts will do that to you. But even so, I think the genesis had started in 2014, when I for the first time researched a land conflict in West Java. Before, I understand what dispossession means, but I have no idea how it feels and looks like materially speaking. Which is a little bit obnoxious because I spent years living in plantations whose very definition is… dispossession.

Either way, I have two months before going to my fieldwork. And the next step is… a shit tons of meeting about what’s next with a lot of people. But I decided that I just want to dwell in theories. I know probably it’s a bit late to be invested in theory when you’re a 4th year graduate students. But if Ben Anderson studied Thai in his 50s and wrote a magnificient work out of that, I guess I have to just go with my preserverence. I kid you not, I annoyingly only wanted to read Wittgenstein in the following weeks before my defense. I stubbornly refused to read anything about my work after I submitted my proposal and finished designing my presentation by the end of May. All I need to know has been how casual Wittgenstein mentioned that he masturbated in the war and wanted to do philosophy #mood (please see his awesome private notebooks— recently published).

So I guess I will just (re)read these people: Marx, Weber (only his agriculture work, & uncommittedly will read Econ & Soc), Lefebvre (State & Space, The Prod of Space) , Arendt (yes — OT, PP), Wittgenstein, Wynter, Weil, & R. Williams. I have gone through 20% of them, but let’s see what I will become by August (definitely an annoying person).

A lot of novels and some lit theory books to catch up too. But I’m less ecstatic about them.

Or my reading act is just a pretext of me not wanting to finish the actual work of my PhD.