Hear me out: This "dancer" holds a PhD in one of those postmodernist disciplines. I BET you that she will write a few "academic" papers that have titles similar to these:
1) An autoethnography of my dancing in Paris: A deconstruction of the praxis of my movements
2) Olympic break dance as a form of breaking of the patriarchy: The logos of my sub dialectic fusion
3) I dance: An exploration of my Queer identity through the surrealism of feminist glaciology
4) Lesbian dance as a rejection of the ableism of the Olympic podium: I reject my whiteness by break dancing
She will receive tenure, and will be hailed as a genius of the praxis of dancing.
So I looked into this. I thought maybe I should feel sorry for the woman, athletes can choke, and maybe it was cruel for people to be making fun of her. Alternatively, I thought it may be possible she was led up the garden path, told she was good break dancer when she wasn’t, and I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than realising you are in fact not a talented athlete on the world stage.
Turns out Rachael Gunn here has a PhD in cultural studies, with a speciality in the gender politics of movement and breakdance. She has written about how including break dance in the Olympics changes it from a practice within an alternative subculture, to a hegemonic one that incorporates the dance into what she sees as Australia’s settler colonialist project. I am 100% certain what she is doing here, in wearing the Australia kit even, is trying to make some subversive point she can later write journal articles about.
This whole episode is demonstrative of the supreme selfishness of woke identity politics studies. Her little stunt diminishes Australia on the world stage. Hundreds of Australian athletes who will have dedicated their entire lives to athletic excellence will be forgotten, because Rachael wanted to bulk up her ResearchGate profile. Rather than their medals and efforts, this is what Australia will be remembered for.
Not to mention the disastrous effect this will have on break dancing as a sport. Its position in the Olympics is not secure, and surely won’t be taken seriously after this. Good job Rachael, you really showed those chauvinist nationalists, hundreds of women and girls will not get their Olympic opportunity now.
Rachael represents so much of what is totally lecherous about cultural studies academics. Pick a subject area that will be under-studied in your context, so you can rise through the ranks quickly (how many break dancing academics will there be in Australia?), and wreak absolute havoc in lives of the people you want to study. There is no limit to the sheer disrespect they will dole out, purely for self-advancement.
Writing is not telling stories. It is the opposite of storytelling. It's telling everything at once. It is telling a story and the absence of that story. It is a telling a story that takes place in its own absence.
- Duras, loosely
I've just learned that Dr. Refaat Alareer, along with several family members, has been murdered in an Israeli airstrike.
I'm in tears and sick to my stomach as I write this.
I had the great honor to spend time with Refaat during my time in Gaza, including harvesting olives with him in 2015 in his home neighborhood of Shujaiya.
I visited him in the Islamic University of Gaza, where he used English-language literature and poetry to teach his students the difference between Judaism and Zionism, equipping them with the mental tools to resist Zionist propaganda that seeks to conflate the two.
Refaat was a guiding light as a I documented life and death for my documentary, Killing Gaza. He helped me gain access to elders in his neighborhood who provided testimony of shocking Israeli war crimes.
In one of our last exchanges, I told him that, in my time in Gaza, I felt as though I were documenting the Warsaw Ghetto before its liquidation by Nazis. I promised him that his writings would be featured in a future Victims of Zionism museum. I didn't imagine that would be my last message to him.
Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine. He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come.
Rest in peace, Refaat.