Posted by Dr. Amrit Chadwallah 
Even now, the question, "What is or was Wealth Bondage?" haunts us. Scruggs has posted a video remix of TV's trenchant commentary. In truth, I know I don't fit in in Wealth Bondage. I was destined for greater things. I have an application in at Skidmore to teach Subaltern Studies, but I think it is going to go to a hunchback from Notre Dame.
Posted by The Happy Tutor
Scruggs on the Wealth Bondage project as a whole. He gets it about right.
I think the Dumpster crowd are people who chafe at institutional constraint, at the deep damage that institutions and collectives generally do to people. They’re the ones who refuse to properly introject the institution’s demanded self-conception.
Let's put it more strongly: The Dumpster is where you end up when you get tossed out, as trash, from academics, from polite society, from boutique services for the affluent, from philanthropy, from whatever elite or inside group you might have some claim to belonging to. The Spectral Dumpster is what drove you in college, or grad school, or from year to year in your job, and may still drive you. The Dumpster is where you have been tossed, fear being tossed, or will be tossed, if you do not internalize and reproduce the norms of Deconstruction, Wealth Planning, Episcoplianism, Journalism, or whatever way of making a living and a life, whatever way of going along to get along, whatever way of fitting in rather than fucking off, sustains you and makes your resume read like a success story, however, sad and dingy. "Reading formations," "Life Worlds," "Language Games," "Epistemes," "Schools of Thought." To inhabit those happily, with a certain smug pride, a sense of belonging, a proprietary interest, is Wealth Bondage broadly considered. To the extent that we on the inside, or on the recent "outs" with key components of Wealth Bondage (finance, economic theory, philanthropy, journalism, politics, lobbying, think tank thinking, critical theory) can be conscious of our "habitus," of the game we play, of the rules of decorum that we observe and enforce, we can render that game visible, by shaking the frame of that discourse, we have done a service to our fellow citizens. Shaking the frame is art, the work of it, as a monkey driven mad by optimization of its behavior in the lab, shakes its iron cage in insane frustration, not because it changes anything, but because he simply cannot push the button again for another food pellet.
Scruggs is right that I been appalled not just at the inability of academics in the liberal arts who have wandered by here to come to terms, fit language, with Wealth Bondage, but also the inability of even close friends in other walks of life, to break a smile, or break stride as they pass the Dumpster. Are they unable to think themselves out of their own disciplinary membrane, the amniotic sac of their professional life world, or are they afraid that if they punctured that sac, they might be forced out into the cold hard world, that of the Dumpster, where we have nothing but our wits, bum wine, and one another to console us?
The Dumpster is a place where when you are left for dead by your own tribe you go to make light of what agonizes you. The Dumpster is the coffin, they let you sleep in, before your hanging. It is where garbage is temporarily stored after being discarded, before it is compacted and burned or buried. The Dumpster is where society puts its human trash, lest it stink up the place. The Dumpster is for failures, broken people, those for whom another chance would just be squandered like all the prior chances and the last chance, delivered as an ultimatum.
I live here, the other guy, the successful one with his pathetically earnest resume, does not. But he knows, like anyone else in Wealth Bondage, that he lives in comfort on borrowed time, with the proviso that he keeps his mouth shut and nose clean, and that any day, when his affinity for Wealth Bondage is discovered that he too will drink the sorrow share for conduct unbecoming an Officer of Wealth Bondage and thereby calling the institution of Wealth Bondage into disrepute. We are all fungible assets, useful today, useless tomorrow. Producer or consumer, educator or executive, clergyman, beggarman, celebrity, or thief: The Dumpster is our fate. Best not to talk about it. I am sorry I brought it up.
Chastity Powers Does the News
Ooooh, it makes me so mad! Bruce at the River is eavesdropping on the Wealth Bondage Break Room. He makes me look stoopid.
Posted by The Happy Tutor
Debbie, "When the world crowds me and my concerns overwhelm me, the dumpster has been a comforting place."
Posted by Jack and Jill, Satisfied WB Consumers 
Thivai says, "I will miss the Happy Tutor and Wealth Bondage--capitalism never had such an honest voice!" I don't really get it, Jack. The Happy Tutor is a bum, right? I don't miss him. I am glad he's gone and I hope he never comes back. He makes me uncomfortable. It is like he's always laughing at me or something.
Posted by The Happy Tutor
To what porpoise? Ah, Mr. Mole, under.wealthbondage we can only dream of the sea.
Posted by The Happy Tutor
"I have been a life-long idealist, and the Tutor has cured me. I am now happy....," writes Jon. And I am miserable. Where did all my idealistic, misfit friends go?
Posted by Dr. Amrit Chadwallah
A fine, literate contribution to Tutor's Festschrift from Jazon Z. Still, it makes me sad. Everyone is standing around like people watching a man climb out on a ledge over a city street. What are they crying? "Jump! Jump!"
Posted by The Happy Tutor
"If you are dead, screams the man, say so, you have only to say so." From a poem, Dead Fish, by Russell Edson, cited in a contribution by No Blood for Hubris to the Festscrift in my honor. People are concerned, touchingly so, that I might pass away or pass on. Say I did or do. How old do you think I am? Was my Author Function Erasmus, then, or Holbein? Or was I taken from Lucian? Do you really think so? Or was I old even then? "My poor fool is hanged," says Lear, gone mad again, and near to death himself, whether speaking of the daughter, Cordelia, he holds in his arms or of his Fool, who has simply disappeared from the play, critics cannot tell us. We think that authors create characters. I think we characters create a people. The Fool, Falstaff, The Happy Tutor, Reynard the Fox, B'rer Rabbit, Loki, their stories may be told well or badly, and new actors and writers and tale-spinners come and go; they may prosper or die in any given tale, but the character belongs to a people who become a people insofar as they know and tell the same tales. That is why the only Brand whose story I tell is Wealth Bondage, and only then because it is the Brand of all Brands and I have no choice, today, among these people, in the Mall of America. So the Author Function falls silent, or I, the Author, so what? Think how many have died since, even Erasmus or Lucian. And look at me. Still kicking. Do you remember the names of every Roman Emperor? Yet you know Midas.
They say Bigfoot stalks the North woods. Now, the Author Function, has, allegedly, been sited staggering about drunk, at a focus group for the Democratic National Committee. To clarify, I am not the Author Function; he died some time ago, an apparent suicide hacked to his death while in the protective custody of Homeland Security. I, The Author, am the real deal. I am author of the Author Function, and all the characters in Wealth Bondage. I read their minds. I am Omnisicient, and, being Godlike, I expect to run for Decider when the President steps down. It is true I like to drink, now and again, and the only Elephant I think about is pink. My bio is still a work in progress and will be released soon, once we find a replacement for the Author Function. My problem is I can't write for shit. I am strictly an idea man, a big picture thinker. I know I am Omnisicient, and I believe I am Omnipresent and Triune, but beyond that my memory is vague. As for the Author Function cited by Scruggs and et alia, I only wish he were real. The chances of his having risen from the dead are pretty slim. There are a lot of Author Function types out there, what with the amount of literature in existence, but they are mostly phantasms, by-products of the Text, thrown up by the reader's imagination. Scrugg's and et alia's sighting is probably just another case in point.
Recent Comments