being good girls

Day One of our new productive life: azadeh and I are actually in the library at the FU - the so-called 'brain' due to its shape and already really productive. We are planning on doing that now 3 days a week for 5 hours each at least ...
so far I started into a book I got only this morning: Walter Benn Michaels "the Trouble with Diversity" - not only is he perfect for my argument and very interesting and thought provoking and useful, but the introduction at least was also hilariously funny written - as far as academic texts go. He is witty, ironic and has his thumb right on the problem of society - which is that we love ethnicities and talking about identities because we are so afraid of talking about class and actual social inequality - because that would mean we need to act and redistribute and restructure while on diversity we so nicely managed to agree and just have to accept difference but not redistribute real wealth. His argument, of course, is a lot more complex already in the introduction, but that is the major issue he then discusses on several levels and problems.
Fitting into how I want to use Michaels for my thesis is Butler's arguments on the precariousness of lifes which she outlined in her talk earlier this month and which I am now also reading up on in her 2004 published collection of five post 9/11 essays on the topic.
So I think that I will come up with an argument where I think society and cultural studies should be going / or are already heading at - away from identity towards universal humanism - and then look at my texts again and how or whether they already show a turn in that direction and how such negotiations are presented with a focus on the aesthetic rather than on politics. Which I should form into a 15 page nutshell essay by the end of the week as it is beyond overdue for my contribution to a conference publication in Göttingen....
But my hopes are flying high, as we are already being such good girls and enthusiastic about it .... and then again, blogging is of course also just a form of procrastination...