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Investigation # 5: Palangana

As an academic, the only cultural wars I staged were in my head. Now, they happen in my bathroom. With both hands. Where I kneel at the bathtub like an irreverent capitalist. For, what capitalist gets down on her knees when there are buttons that can be pushed and dials that can be turned? And so I preached to my mother, who washed our clothes with her hands: “The washing machine is easier! The dryer is faster! You’re wasting your time!” Yet, she was not as meek as I thought. She was, in fact, quite impious. She offered sly, yet gentle smiles in response to my tedious diatribes. Kill ‘em with kindness. You can’t consume, alienate and produce incessantly when there are brown folks smiling knowingly. 

Everyday for one week, I washed clothes by hand. I return to a past contested act, and investigate questions of conservation, sustainability, motherly care, and femininity through a detailed phenomenology of knowing.

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