queer-j brad | 19.08.2007 05:33

On July 11, 2005 Emily Hicks, Professor of Chican@ Studies and English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University appeared on Veer Towards Queer on radioActive sanDiego. She talked about the military-industrial-academic complex, the mechanics of the corporate university, open source software, creating community with music, the existence of bisexuality, a proposed open source lab for chicanas, and the ideology of borders and breaking them down.

From the Interview: Emily Hicks
Who is going to be the actor, the subject of history, and I don't think it is a male factory worker anymore. I think immigrants, people without papers, people all over the world who do not have the last name that matches the dominant culture, that matches the passport. Those are the people who are going to be fighting the state for all of us. As anarchists, concerned with overthrowing the state, we can see that whoever is trying to cross the border, whoever doesn't have papers, whatever musician is sitting on the cement embankment three months, trying to get across, can't get across and has no ID, except for a flyer that he had from a gig in Mexico City, an alternative art space.

Those people are not just US-Mexico border people, its not just this border, those people are speaking for, embodying the contradictions of people all over the world, that would be eastern Europe, that would be in any part of the world right now where people are without papers, and their papers were taken from them, and they aren't ever going to get to go back home.

The theoretical term for that is those people are de-territorialized, that is what Deleuze and Guattari call it.... It's now the person who is de-territorialized, speaking with an accent, speaking without rights. And whatever those people are up to, that's our leader, that's who we should be looking to...

Emily Hicks Interview: Part One | Part Two

A few more quotes from the interview. Emily Hicks:
It's very hard for youth today, committed to activism - the ones who do manage to become activists, against all odds and against the university - to see the kind of brutality they are facing in the city. The hardest thing for them when they go to school is to find teachers to listen to them. The hardest thing for teachers who are activists to keep from getting fired and to keep from being depressed ourselves... You will be amazed how when you are part of all the wonderful activities around the world right now, you don't have quite enough time to as depressed as you would otherwise.

The right is always going to come to the left...Some of the best philosophy I've ever learned... clubs, raves, sitting on a mattress, that's where ideas come from, from the street, from anarchist collectives, from Marxist-Leninist collectives, from feminist collectives, from Chicana-Lesbian collectives, any kind of collective where people are starting with somebody and they read it out loud and the next person says 'what do you think?' and it goes around the circle and everyone talks about it. That's where ideas come from. Is the university supporting that? No...

Emily Hicks Veer Towards Queer Interview Part One
0:00 Veer Towards Queer Intro
5:00 Events in San Diego and the World
12:45 Emily Hicks Intro
17:14 Emily Hicks Performance Piece
29:30 Problems We Are Facing
31:40 Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
37:10 Denial of Tenure to Pat Washington
41:20 What's Behind the Mechanics of the Corporate University? Bill Gates and Open Source Software
46:30 Overcome Alienation from Equipment/Technology
48:10 Power Structures in the University
51:25 The Right Coming to the Left for Ideas

Emily Hicks Veer Towards Queer Interview Part Two
0:00 Creating Community with Music
9:05 Bisexuality Doesn't Exist: The Study
17:00 The Altar in the Trailer
18:45 Open Source Lab for Chicanas
25:50 Open Source Software: For Geeks Only? For Anarchists!
40:00 The Ideology of The Border
45:20 Elites and The Border
49:00 Vision of the Open Source Lab for Chicanas