jetlag adventure

Applications from the following groups are strongly encouraged: persons with physical or psychological disabilities, Indigenous people, racialized people, people who identify as LGBTQ2+, and neurodiverse people.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements and policies – as long as they are actually implemented, that is. As a woman, I sometimes even partially profit from them. But while they might as well promote beautiful rainbow diversity, they are complicit in the individualism of late capitalism. The individualism which, mind you, is not necessarily terrible for everyone everywhere (I, for one, am quite comfortable in it, if only for lack of experience with anything else) but which is certainly problematic to say the least, and contradicts most of what might be subsumed under the broad term of left-wing politics (Marxist or not).

Let me explain.

I am sure that there are many lists of different types of discrimination but since this is not an academic paper, I have created my own:

1. Individualistic discrimination.

2. Societal/systemic discrimination.

3. Legal discrimination.

Individualistic Discrimination

DEI statements like the above only touch upon the first one. I have come across many such declarations so I can give you an example of the context I am talking about. I just finished my PhD in philosophy and I am looking for postdoc positions, any assistant professor positions and the like. Someone like me who has completed a PhD in philosophy is very likely privileged in being able to fit into three norms: 1. Their intellectual abilities (both innate and learned) are in the niche balance between conformity (to fit into the educational system) and exceptionality (to be able to earn their degree). 2. Even if they don’t have enough money to pay for their education right away, they have enough money to pay with their time. 3. They (and often their immediate environment) value education enough to pursue it at all and – specifically in the case of philosophy and related disciplines – value education not so much as a means to a good life but rather as an end in itself.

Now suppose a black transgender lesbian with high-functioning ADHD gets a PhD in philosophy and applies for a postdoc in the humanities. Of course she will get it because 1. the institution is excited to signal its own diversity and 2. the chances are that she is smarter than the average applicant because she probably did have to work harder than me for the degree. What will she get and what can she hope for? 1. She might like the statement because she is finally explicitly included. 2. She can hope to get into a safe environment, that is, an environment bereft of the individualistic discrimination listed above: she is likely to encounter colleagues whose racism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia are close to non-existent. This is not a small thing! But there is absolutely zero attention given to the other two types of discrimination.

Societal Discrimination

One doesn’t need to go far to see the absurdity of the DEI statements and policies in the context of societal oppression. A good example is the recent scandal of police forces destroying homeless encampents in Edmonton at -40° (Celsius or Fahrenheit, as the popular Albertan exercise in met(eo)rology goes): Not only is there no housing for homeless people out of whom 60% are of the Indigenous origin, but the authorities decided to dismantle their tent camps on the coldest day in fifty years (without enough space in shelters), destroyed their belongings, and arrested some of them, including Brandi Morin, an Indigenous journalist reporting on unhoused communities and police interventions against them. Some photos from the incident show show an Indigenous leader raising a ceremonial feather above his head, in a pitiful attempt to appeal to compassion within the “diversity” paradigm.

source: https://twitter.com/Songstress28

The more DEI policies are deployed, the more they are exposed as hopeless. And I am not just referring to university scholarships for Indigenous people, Indigenous Studies courses within any conceivable discipline or the need to have the Indigenous philosophy specialization on your resumé (whether you are Indigenous yourself or not), I mean also systemic measures that should actually be quite nice but end up being woefully inadequate, such as covered dental healthcare for the Indigenous population. Centuries of official legal discrimination in the past have led to some groups of people being on the other side of the law almost by default. Individuals not being racist will not change anything about that, even if it were theoretically the case of every single person.

Legal Discrimination

This is very unfortunate, you might say. We just need more time for the generational trauma to get resolved. Yet there is the third type of discrimination that is happening all over the world: discrimination on the ground of non-citizenship.* Of course, I cannot compare the situation of my fellow immigrants and myself – all of us university graduates – with refugees, people begging for refugee status or even people in the category described above. Still, it is comical how often (albeit not always) pretty DEI statements explicitly exclude foreign nationals without the permanent residency status. “We are unable to sponsor H1-B Visa’s at this time.” “Preference will be given to candidates who are Canadian and permanent residents.” I don’t have a solution. I understand that the system would collapse if anyone could work anywhere (maybe one more reason to try though). All I am saying is that at the end of the day, all the inclusive policies are extremely exclusive.

Legal discrimination gives rise to the societal one. Finally, this is not about me and my expat friends – we will figure something out. My closing thought goes to all refugees, displaced immigrants, and stateless people: How do we expect them and their children to abide by the same law that places them on its outside?

“Ooooh, what a cute acceeeeent! Where are you from?” Proboha, už zas! I heard it for the hundredth time, this time when I pointed out to someone that there was no toilet paper in the washroom (this word makes me a proper Canadian, doesn’t it?) stall they were heading to. It’s not racist, since I am passable as a White Canadian (that group of immigrants that have the privilege to be called simply “Canadian” without any additional adjective) but only after having lived in Edmonton for a few years did I realize how annoying that seemingly innocent question “Where are you from?” can be.

V češtině se ani neptáme, odkud člověk pochází. Neexistuje skoro nikdo, kdo by mluvil funkční češtinou a nebyl z Česka. Samozřejmě, zrovna já jsem jednoho takového člověka znala. Ale nikdo se ho neptal – jen v jiných jazycích, kterých uměl několik.

I am not singled out as soon as I enter the room, in which I am lucky. But I am as soon as I open my mouth. Europe is different. It is not true that everyone in Europe speaks more than one language, not even at universities. At my French university, many people only speak French and for foreigners, French plays the same role as English in Western Canada: another language is out of the question. The difference however is that in France, it is a meticulously maintained choice. Everyone knows that there is the language “That Must Not Be Named” out there which no-one is allowed to use.

« Est-ce qu'il serait possible que j'écrive mon essai en anglais ? » « Non. On est en France, on écrit en français ! »

That's why in France, even German I used more than English. All foreign guest speakers are expected to either speak broken French or be interpreted from their native language (and English speakers are not invited that often). No-one uses English, it’s not an option. But it is a cultural-political decision, not (only) ignorance.

In Germany, on the other hand, everyone uses English and most scholars are able to transform their speech or lecture from German to English at very short notice, when they learn that there may be someone – be it only one person – who is not fluent in German.

„Ich werde auf Englisch sprechen, damit es alle verstehen. Alle. Wenn es Englisch ist, verstehen es „alle“. Das heißt, in Deutschland.

The Czech academia is somewhere in between. In the humanities in general and in philosophy in particular, there is a certain prejudice against English. English is not a philosophical language, English is a tool. And there are many people who are not entirely comfortable using it.

„Proč tu máte na seznamu četby Marxe v angličtině?“ „Protože jsem o něm psala závěrečnou práci anglicky.“ „Na doktorátu se ovšem očekává, že budete číst v originále.“ „Jistě, já čtu německy.“

(Špatně, a rozhodně ne filosofii. Ale že se nikdo neptal, proč mám na seznamu Heideggera česky …)

But what all these three countries – and by extrapolation all of Europe – have in common is that multiple languages are always there as an option. They are there actually or virtually. Even if many people don’t know a language other than their own, everyone knows someone who can speak at least two. There are foreign movies everywhere – either subtitled or dubbed –, there are books that are debated whether they have been translated yet, there are relatives living abroad, studying at foreign universities, refugees from Ukraine, and exploited seasonal workers from Eastern Europe in Germany who need to learn at least a few words in German.

In Canada, it is different. I have never seen such a concentration of highly educated people who only speak English. The French they are supposed to learn is a joke – I speak my tenth language, which I waste my time with at Duolingo, better than many people who had French in school. 本当ですか？ As a (recent) immigrant, you become a source of admiration but also some kind of rare animal, that people want to see, hear, and touch. “Oh, Prague! I always wanted to visit!” What I find most interesting however, is not that so few people can speak another language (I know many in Europe as well) but the lack of what I call “linguistic imagination.” For example, after a lecture I gave at a philosophy club for seniors, a woman told me that she found it fascinating to watch me mentally translate. Or someone (a second-generation immigrant, btw) once asked me whether I translate in my head or if I form my thoughts in English right away. Well. As anyone who is at least partially fluent in a second language knows, “translating in one’s head” is a very specific and challenging skill that people study for years: it is called live interpreting. And as anyone who has ever tried to translate for their relatives or friends in a restaurant also knows, switching between languages is actually the hardest part of being bilingual. Typically, you don’t live in two (or three or four) languages at once. When you switch between languages, you switch between codes, worlds, lives, people, sometimes even emotions – and you don’t do it lightly or easily.

Immigrants often tend to group together, and not (only) because we may feel that we are not fully accepted in local communities. It is rather because we have a special wisdom, a special skill. When I told my Brazilian friend that my language doesn’t differentiate between the words “foot” and “leg” (nor between “hand” and “arm”), she found it amusing but fully acceptable. But when she later told her Canadian and American friends, they actually checked it on Google and then contacted me again to ask if it was true for real. English speaking people don’t know that the language grid that we put on the world is different. I, on the contrary, can estimate grammatical and lexical peculiarities of languages I don’t even know myself, just by the way their speakers speak English: Persian doesn’t have genders, which is why Iranians mix “she” and “he” so much; people can easily figure out that Czech doesn’t have articles because that’s my most common mistake; a very fluent English speaker originally from Austria confuses “borrow” and “lend,” so I know that the words are the same in German, just like in Czech; I can use “refuse,” “deny,” and “reject” correctly but I always have to think which odmítnout it is, the same with “apparently” and “obviously” which are the same in Czech and a couple of times I managed to offend some people when I meant the former but said the latter.

Yes, we do have a skill but also a handicap because even though we do not translate, we put the grid on our native language (if we only have one which is my case), not on the world itself, at least for many years. Like when I cook Czech meals and I cannot find all the ingredients in a grocery store, I simply leave them out, and instead of enriching the recipe with something local, it becomes poorer. As a bilingual friend of mine once told me, the bird always sits in the tree, not in the oak or birch, in both Czech and French, the languages she knows fluently.

Here is the story: A post from the other blog I have got me into the Philosophy and Non-Monogamies conference in Los Angeles. Not quite Los Angeles, but close to Los Angeles: Claremont, one of the many suburban towns glued to the huge city.

I don’t like traveling much. And now, that’s is a way less radical statement than it sounds because what I mean by that, is that I usually like the destination itself (like most people) but hate the process of getting there (again, like most people). Whether or not one likes traveling is usually simple math: Do they love being at the desired place more than they hate relocating? And I don’t. At least not usually. Traveling for me has been an imperative, a way to get money, basically a job, networking, CV points. Over the years of what I would call extensive traveling, my preferred idea of vacation has become hanging in and around Prague, laughing at people who complain about the 30+ degree weather. Anyway, what I hate even more than traveling is winter in Edmonton, and since we fully dived into minus 20 in early November, a week in (almost) L.A. seemed great. I was getting ready for my presentation, but then quite by accident I came across a special ESTA* rule. If you only need ESTA to enter the US, you can stay for 90 days but if you want to renew your 90 days, you are supposed to leave the continent. The rule actually kind of makes sense: they don’t want you to live in the US for three months and then “bounce” to Canada or Mexico to restart those 90 days. The problem however was that this applied to me as well. Because technically, I “bounced” to Canada for six months. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t let me in. After all the interrogation last time, I didn’t believe I could pull it off. If you are a resident of Canada, you can go to the US as you please but the visitor status (although perfectly legal) doesn’t count as residency. For crossing to the US and back, I needed to be in a sort of limbo because I actually had to be without a status to be allowed participation in International Experience Canada (my most recent attempt to stay in the country**) but at the same time, I needed a status to be allowed to enter the US. So I prepared two sets of documents: one to convince the US border officers that I was basically almost Canadian, the other one to show the Canadian border patrol agents that I had no ties in Canada and that my hanging out in their country for the last three years was merely accidental.

I was packing – not packing, because I was sure I would need to call MM to pick me up right after he turned on his computer at work. Oh well, thought I, as I tried to calm down (which I am notoriously bad at), they probably won’t deport me, good thing the border is already in Edmonton. We woke up around 4:00, it was pitch black, about -20C, and I was in the worst mood ever. We were also running a little late, which frankly I hardly cared about at that point. I went through all the annoying airport security (are really all Canadians alright with taking their shoes off, walking around in socks, and then putting the shoes back on???) and straight to the border. As I approached the border checkpoint, I put on my best smile (people think it doesn’t work, well, couldn’t hurt, thought I), and tried to figure out which border agent I was going to get, hoping for the smiling one. Didn’t happen – mine was more like I-have-to-protect-the-United-States-of-America kind of guy.

“Where do you live?”

“In Canada,” said I, getting ready for all the questioning.

“What are you going to do in the US?”

“Going to a conference,” said I, wondering to what extent a conference on non-monogamy was a good reason.

“Are you bringing any fruit?”

“No.” I had noting to eat and I was starving. Most of my friends know I don’t like fruit but at that moment, I would have killed for an apple.

“Have a great day.”

Wow. That’s it. I am going to L.A.

“گفتم,”said MM laconically, when I called him, still pumped on adrenaline.

* ESTA is the American visa waiver program for citizens of some privileged countries, European Union countries included. It means that you can stay in the US without a visa for 90 days in a row.

On the way back to Edmonton from L.A., we ran into the problem I described here. But that was nothing compared to the previous crossing, not only because American border guards are notoriously more painful than the Canadian ones, but also because of the general unfairness of the world. Let me tell you a story.

In Edmonton lives an odd couple1), a woman from the Czech Republic – a country no one knows much about2) – and a man from Iran – a country everyone knows too much about3) – who decided to take a short trip to L.A. Contrary to their usual habit, they arrived at the airport very early but while the woman MJ expected questions, the man MM didn't really. Still in Edmonton, they made their way to what was the actual US border and the border guard checked her fingerprints because of course, they had them, since she had been to the USA fourteen years before.

(A few years ago, I read an article about system identities, which means that despite the prevailing feeling of anonymity, it is virtually impossible to be anonymous these days, unless perhaps you stayed in the same town your whole life. Your unique bodily characteristics are imprinted into the world's body databases and you can only get a new identity if the system itself cooperates and allows you to do so. So those fingerprints that MJ had entered into the database at the American Embassy in Prague of course matched the ones she showed to a random officer in Edmonton. That worked well, a youngish white woman from the EU going to L.A. for the weekend is a very benign phenomenon after all.)4)

But then it was MM's turn. As the officer was studying his Canadian passport, MM was making a face. It is a very “manly” thing to do and it can also be his thing – being cocky, you know – but you shouldn't really blame him: after having lived with an Iranian passport he was tired of being treated like a terrorist and this shouldn't be happening.

“How old were you when you left Iran?”

“Umm … twenty three.”

“Where did you do your military service?”

“I didn't. I bought myself out.”

“So you had rich parents …”

“Not really …”

“And how can you prove that?”

“I have a card but it is at home.”

“I need to see the card.”

At that point MM knew where the questions were coming from but MJ was completely confused. Apparently it had something to do with the IRGC. She should probably know by now but she had been always so disinterested in politics … They were taken to the room of shame and deportations and told to wait. So they waited. She was trying to comfort MM who kept telling her he was fine (he would admit later he wasn't which she knew anyway) visibly not appreciating her concerns. “He just wants me to miss my flight, I know it.” He recalled a similar situation many years before when he hadn't yet had Canadian citizenship.

MJ was stressed as usual but at the same time wanted to understand so she started reading: Due to the collapse of the Iran Nuclear Deal under Trump's reign in 2019, further sanctions were imposed on Iran and as a bonus, the IRGC, a branch of the military that had been formed during the 1979 revolution, was declared a terrorist organization. If you are unlucky enough to be a male Iranian citizen, you have to serve in the military and are randomly conscripted into the Iranian Army (ارتش), Police Forces (فراجا), or IRGC (سپاه). If you're lucky enough to have served in either of the first two (or bought it as part of a special program) then you're usually okay, well as okay as an Iranian can be. But you have to prove it.

“I need to see the card. But I think a photo would be sufficient.”

MM searched in vain for the photo in his phone, then he remembered that his father might have it. So he started calling to Tehran.

“You guys know that conscription is completely random.”

“We know that but this is the rule. There are stories about a man face-timing with his dying father because he couldn't go to see him …” The officer became talkative and somewhat nice. He meant the stories like this. 

While MM was still trying to find a picture of the card in his phone and waiting for his father to call back, the officer began questioning MJ:

“What is your status in Canada? Why do you have a Canadian address in your ESTA application? Are you employed at the university?” But you know, this is not a story about her and she knew she would be fine. She may have made a few mistakes in her ESTA application but … these things are never a big deal. She was more worried about the prospect of spending three days in L.A. alone, without a car, at least this time MM had indicated her Airbnb account when booking …  

“So what is going to happen now? I won't make it home in time.”

“Well … I tend to believe you …”

At that moment MM's father called to say he had found the photo. A supposed “IRGC expert” from another desk came to look at it, you know, the card written entirely in Persian, and they let them both go. Just in time to catch the plane.

Happy end, right? Not for everyone. I have a friend who was punished by being drafted into the IRGC for being an artist and queer. He basically cleaned toilets for two years. Recently he was supposed to attend a conference in New Orleans but couldn't go. There were rumors that the rules for involuntarily draftees might get eased but it hasn't happened and doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

1) I heard that there is another Czech-Iranian couple in Edmonton but this has not been confirmed to date.

2) Whenever she hears from someone “Wow, what a cute acceeeent! Where are you froooom?” (which happens at least once a week) she asks them to guess. Because yeah, what the hell. They usually guess Russia or, for the last few months, Ukraine. In one of the next posts, I will tell you why you should never ask people where they are from, at least not during the first hour of conversation. No, not even in Canada. Not even white people.

3) Not really. But everyone thinks they know enough.

4) A chapter from A. Aneesh. Neutral Accent: How Language, Labor, and Life Become Global. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

When I was coming back from a short trip in the US, my partner and I decided to proceed through the customs separately because we didn't want to get too much attention like when crossing the opposite direction before (about that next time). It was the third time I had come to Canada for “tourism”, meaning six months of “tourism” in Edmonton and if you have any idea about the city, you know how completely nonsensical this is. But oddly enough, it was not until this third time that I ran into any problems. I mean, not problems exactly, but the border guards had some understandable suspicions. You have no legal right to enter any country unless you are its citizen so even though I am not not allowed into Edmonton for six months of “tourism”, the people at the border may just decide that it's too weird. That was exactly the case so after I admitted my real reason for coming to Canada (namely that I was waiting for permanent residency which I may never get anyway), they just wanted to double-check the information. But it was Sunday midnight and I really wanted to go home, so it was very annoying to say the least. I am forever grateful to the Canadian border guards in Edmonton for always being quite nice which makes everything less stressful. They don't make you feel that you are at their mercy (which you are though) and I think they even apologized for keeping me longer.

Interestingly, it never occurred to me, not even for a second, that they might actually deny me entry into the country. And yet I was stressed, resentful, angry even (albeit only privately). How could I ever imagine the fear of people who are forced to sacrifice everything for a chance to save their lives and then are harassed, incarcerated, and sent “home” by a random border guard?

After many years, I finally realized that I actually don't like traveling very much. What a relief! Sure, I do get feelings of having rotten through my home and the urge to leave the city – for a climbing or hiking trip in the mountains most often but even a long walk in a park usually does the job. The “big holidays” however, I am not a big fan. There are many reasons: as I wrote here several lives ago, traveling has long been a means for me to study, not the other way round. Therefore I used to enjoy my summer holiday the most when I was in Prague, enjoying tropical weather (yes, I like it, yes, I currently live in Edmonton), going climbing, and drinking in outside pubs; with as few conferences to attend as possible. Another reason is that I don't work in the strict sense: I can freely go anywhere any time, so my craving for the sun in winter months is not as painful, since I can go for a walk at the second the sun is out. The downside is that I don't have a very high budget which is another reason I am not overly excited about, say, a-week-in-NYC-in-high-season-in-an-all-inclusive-hotel-type of holiday. And as many students/academics know, we have a free time anytime, but actually never: it's very hard to “switch off”.

If I travel, I travel for studying, I constantly live in an amalgam of work and … what exactly? My work is not really work, especially lately, since all my fundings came to an end. And I don't believe in “work and life” balance since there is nothing I enjoy more than my “work”. My life is a constant fight for doing what I love the most, which is writing. I fight with myself, tiredness, the urge to be the perfect self in all possible aspects, my friends, my family.

So here I am now, on a real vacation, in my beautiful home city, with human temperatures, yet anxious to be back. When my journey was approaching, I was stressed and I was looking forward to it being over. How bad my jet-lag would be? Am I going to manage buying all the gifts? Will I be able to go at all and more even: will I be able to come back? When is my period? Is it going to shift? How am I going to survive eating bread all the time in my parents' house? Am I going to gain weight? How am I going to finish the translation I was supposed be done with by the end of the year? (I am not.)

My obsession with my own perfection (the problem is that I actually feel close enough sometimes, that is – to my own perfection standards) obliges me to take up any challenge lying in front of me so there was no way I wouldn't come to see my family when the opportunity showed up. And I am not that kind of person that would be afraid of an easy Europe trip. Or am I?

On my way to Prague, I met a dear friend of mine. She came to the airport in Warsaw to have a coffee with me. We saw each other after a year.

– “They seem to have forgotten to take our orders,” said me, tensed and as always trying to control my surrounding.

I wrote this post on the plane three weeks ago when I was feeling really down. I was tired and scared. I am publishing it now as a tribute to the feelings I no longer have.

october 9

I cannot believe I did this: I am on my way to live in Edmonton. A little more than two years ago when I had been in Edmonton for two weeks, I wrote down some ideas about how I envisioned my future, that is my return to Prague. It still hurts now when I remember how much I was looking forward to it. I was very happy in Edmonton but my thoughts kept going to the reunion with my partner. He was the source of my life to the point that I couldn't see that we were both probably already happier when physically separated. But I didn't realize it back then, so I was happy but I also looked forward to coming back. And then exactly a year later in Edmonton, within a second, I was not happy anymore. And staying in Edmonton for another seven months suddenly became a matter of survival.

The last time I went to Edmonton, about two years ago, my partner didn't go to the airport with me. Somehow I am still upset about it. And he promised me that he would come to the airport when I would come back which obviously didn't happen. I lived with that promise for a year and then tried to forget it, tried to imagine how to tell my parents that my life plans had failed, that my attempts to live an alternative relationship with a genius had failed. I had become so accustomed to my Canadian life, clinging to it so desperately that all the scenarios of my “talk with mt parents” were in my head in English. I kept starting over, but I always switched back into English.

It's been around two years since I got an e-mail that informed me that I won the Wirth Institute Fellowship Award to study in Edmonton and become a part of the Institute as well as the Czechoslovakian expat community. As many of my readers know (because it is my favorite joke), when I first read about the opportunity on my home university website, my immediate thought was “there is no way I am going to the US.” The person who was the source of all of myself and who later became the cause of my painful rebirth and enlightenment, explained to me that no, Edmonton is not a city in the US. So I decided to apply.

Most of the studies abroad are important and exciting, especially if they last a year or longer. Women in particular tend to profit from a less sexist environment and they often find out that their questions and interests are valid even if it is not the third sentence of Timaeus. However not all the stays abroad contain a global pandemic, an unexpected break-up over Skype after almost nine years of relationship, the first bone fracture, two other committed polyamorous relationships, a seven month extension thanks to the pandemic, and a decision to try to change my life and come back to the city of six months of winter and temperatures that can go down to minus 40 degrees. A decision that was taken about two weeks before my return flight.

To what extent can a person change? I have been used to put my studies before everything else because I thought that was the only way to be loved. Therefore when I later lost my love precisely because of my studies, I never regretted any of my decisions: the idea of protestant martyrdom had taught me so. When I was very young, like a sponge I would absorb all the influences around me and freely let them go when I moved on. After so many years and with increasing age, I have become stiff. The sponge got grown through with a plant that became a stone and I cannot flush it away anymore even if I wanted to. And I don't.

I might go to Montréal in January. I found out today.

While writing this, I am sitting on a plane on my way back. It has been more than a year and a half ago since I boarded on the flight in the opposite direction. The 19 months were full of fun, sadness, wasted time, and some work. During 2020, what had been the most precious to me, was taken from me. But even now as I am writing it, I am realizing the inadequacy of the statement: unlike so many others, I didn't lose it because of an illness, murder, or accident but because of carelessness and negligence. Through emotional, physical, and social rebirth I found myself again – less proud, more vulnerable, and stronger. In Edmonton, there is my heart. I will come back to reunite with it.

As most of you know, I study in Toulouse. I mean, I also study in Prague and now I have been for a year and a half in Edmonton … it's complicated, never mind. But let's talk about France.

My French adventure started in 2016 when I was frustrated with my never-ending master's studies in literature, bored by a pointless part-time job, and disillusioned about my intellectual capacity because of an unsuccessful attempt to get a BA degree in philosophy in Prague (it used to be a legendarily difficult program, btw.). My partner and I were randomly scrolling through Erasmus student exchange options, not knowing that this would become my very usual activity in the next five years. We found Toulouse – a nice city in Southern France … what could possibly go wrong? That time, there was only one available place for Czech students but thanks to the effort of an amazing professor from my home institution, they opened two more places so that not only the two of us could go but also another classmate could, a guy who later became a dear friend of ours. The long e-mail communication between the Czech professor who helped us and l'Université Jean-Jaurès (written in perfect French, of course) was another sign of what was going to come.

The Erasmus stay was alright except for our squat-like accommodations in all possible Toulousean suburbs between which we were nomadizing every month. I started being able to write at last: I wrote five papers in one month and after I came back to Prague, I was finally able to write my master's thesis. I defended, passed the state exam, attended a French summer school with a presentation on Marquis de Sade, and I also made a big change: I convinced a friend of mine to become my supervisor, switched from literature to philosophy, changed faculties, and also applied for philosophy studies in Toulouse. It's called “cotutelle”: you study in two different countries, you have two supervisors, and you'll get two degrees for one thesis. Looks great.

However, anything in France is a bureaucratic nightmare, especially if your French is as poor as mine is. There are endless documents to sign, the most painful being the cotutelle contract, that has five pages, is made in two or three language versions, and requires seven signatures from seven different people from two countries (as a friend commented: “Are you creating a new state?”). The contract got finished ans signed in about a year and a half after many negotiations, such as “could you please stand up and bring that paper to the next door office to get it signed by another person so that I don't need to fly to Toulouse and do this for you?”

I more or less made it through two and a half years after which I got a message that my cotutelle agreement needs a supplement that would extend the contract. I was sent a scanned piece of paper in French that was supposed to be signed by the rector of the Czech university. When I was trying to get back to the people in France, they were on holiday and one secretary was not replying even though I knew that she was looking at the e-mail several times. The angels in my Czech faculty, on the contrary, were extremely responsive and helpful but they could not help with making the rector signing a legal document in a language he doesn't speak (what a surprise!). So while the Czech university didn't need the document, if they were going to sign something, it had to be done properly, i.e. in seven copies with original signatures, sent across three countries this time (back and forth over Atlantic during the Covid paralysis).

As I was trying to make it work, translating e-mails between Prague and Toulouse, and arguing with a French secretary whether she had sent me an e-mail during summer or not (she hadn't), I started doing other stuff to make it to the next year that was even more difficult than in other years despite a proud statement that “tout est en ligne !” on the French university website. It required me diving in about five different online systems deep in the French bureaucracy, some of which included the need of my Czech supervisor to log in somewhere and write reports in French. At some point, I created the supplement in English, I gave up on my French skills, and started communicating with both cities in English. And then one of the amazing Czech secretaries actually looked into the cotutelle agreement and found out that according to its wording, there is no need for a supplement. I got an e-mail from France (that I printed in gold) saying “yes, I agree with your interpretation – we don't need it”.

During the night of the American presidential election, I got an e-mail from my French supervisor that he needed a document proving that I had passed the exam that I was taking online during summer. When I tried to download and open the document and found out that it was blank, I completely lost it: I was crying for thirty minutes and sent him a very rude answer expressing all my frustration. Later I hunted the document down, sent it over, filled in other documents on other websites and thought that this was over.

In December 2020, I received another e-mail asking for the supplement again. I argued with the e-mail from the past that there was no need for it. Then I was asked for another document proving that I payed Czech tuition – there is no such thing so I said so, stopped caring, and hoped for the best.

This is the strange thing about France: you have to argue, then being rude, then argue again, then being nice, then over and over again. You don't need to keep deadlines and everything usually solves itself after hours and hours of negotiations. In January 2021, I picked up all my courage and looked into the main system of the Toulouse university: I was in, I was in the fourth year of my cotutelle Phd. I have never had such a strong motivation to finish my Phd – to never have to deal with France again in my life.

About two months ago, I went camping in the Rockies, yes! Neither Jasper nor Banff had available camping spots and … actually, no spots were available. Except for a weird camp named Little Elbow Equestrian Campground. So the reservation was made, with evening beers – the Austrian fellow and I, laughing about all those horses mentioned everywhere on the website. Will they allow us there without horses? Will they force us to ride a horse? We didn't have a tent yet so … maybe we could sleep in the stables at least?

Finally, there were three of us: me, the Austrian, and a Brazilian from philosophy department. Everything around me always starts as a joke: “A Brazilian, Austrian, and Czech go camping together …” We got two tents: one from a couple from the Czech community, one from a friend of mine. The friend comes from Senegal and so does his tent apparently because it was literally designed to “keep you cool” which is not that practical when the night temperatures in the Rockies fall to 4°C. Also our tent building abilities didn't prove to be very good and the combination of small soft aluminum pegs and the rocky ground (who would expect that?) made us use trees and benches to tie the tents down.

Hiking the next day was great which you know anyway because you have seen the pictures. Nevertheless, after we came back, we saw our tents properly attached to the floor by some badass pegs and we were greeted by a real cowboy and cowgirl who were staying on the spot next to ours.

“Hello, we are your neighbors!”

[an awkward moment when you want to shake hands but you are not supposed to]

“We also fixed your tents. Where are you all from?”

…

“How did you end up together?”

“We are all from university in Edmonton …”

“Oh, University of Alberta! It's hopeless! You surely wanted to go to the university of Calgary first but didn't get there, haha!”

[an awkward laugh]

“Would you like to see the horses?”

Horses were beautiful, and the old cowboy was praising her wife as a better horse rider and talking with appreciation about Native Americans having been the first who introduced the breed his horses came from.

He called them Indians.

And he also had a baseball cap with the label THE WEST WANTS OUT.

When I first heard about (and unfortunately also saw) the murder of George Floyd, my first reaction was probably similar to most of my friends and Facebook friends: the powerless rage. I also realized that racism is something I hate the most. I am not going to start an absurd discussion about which discriminatory (and in its essence fascist) hate is the worst. But let's just say that racism triggers me the most. It's probably because people of color are most usually not “passable” as white even if they tried their best and unlike for example sexism, it absolutely lacks any quasi positive or benevolent sides (except for the white male fantasy about black men's dicks but … let's face it, this myth only makes black men lives more difficult). Another thing is that since I grew up in a very white environment, neither race, nor racism was ever a topic around me. So (unlike sexism which I needed to fight) it probably never really took root inside of me and the very idea that a person should be different if their skin has a different color has always seemed utterly absurd.

Recently I was asked by one colleague who also comes from the “white” part of Europe whether I perceive myself as white and whether I (like him) felt offended by some angry claims and demands during the Edmontonian BLM protest. To answer the first question is very easy: not perceiving yourself as anything is exactly the point. That's the privilege we have.*

As for the second question, first I have to mention that in general, I don't like protests. They are just events I sometimes participate in because I think it's the right to do. I am often very bored and I feel inadequate when I am supposed to shout slogans. Not because I don't agree with them (actually I usually do, except for the far too centrist Czech protests) but it's just that my voice sounds weird, I usually stand somewhere in the back so it doesn't feel very powerful anymore and as an academic who is used to living extremely individualistically (not saying it's a good thing), I feel awkward when being a part of any crowd.

But otherwise … no, I am not upset when BLM activists make me feel uncomfortable. For the first time in my life, I had been in a space where I was not a part of ethnic majority (and it's not only the matter of number). If they say at their protest something like “if you are not kneeling now, you have hate in your heart but we love you anyway” and if this were enough to make me upset, I would not feel even worthy of standing there. Being uncomfortable is people's of color everyday life. As a white person,** I am transparent whereas their skin is a (bad) sign which they cannot escape. This is the fact that should make all of us uncomfortable.

* White privilege doesn't mean that your life is easy, it means that your skin color doesn't make it worse. Just a reminder.

Last time when my submission was declined (actually any time my submissions get declined), among all the justifiable criticism there is one part that really pisses me off.

“Or perhaps English is not first language of author? Certainly there is an awkwardness to the prose, odd word choice and frequent misuse or omittance of definite articles.”

I am aware of the fact that this is not the main reason for the decline but why do reviewers have to point it out? I am making progress: I got from “obviously” to “perhaps” but I can only hope that one day my texts will be so good that no one would care about their non-native-speakerness. Because that is more likely than being able to surmount the magical border into the perfect English speaking world.

I have been learning English since I remembered but I haven't had the (ambiguous) advantage of multilingual upbringing and this is the first time I have been in an English speaking country for longer than a month. I have had the advantage of financial and emotional support from my family, very good language teachers, my own (not very good actually) talent for languages, enough time, curiosity, and diligence.

Is it my fault that English speaking people have conquered the world?

I hated English when I was a child. It was extremely difficult, especially to understand spoken language. I was learning every single day to be able to keep up with the best English group in my year at high school. It's only now that I am starting to understand movies without subtitles.

Then I started hating French. I was also learning every day. I still don't like the language but I am at peace with it now and I even miss it sometimes. Then it was Russian, Latin, Biblical Hebrew. Finally I started learning German at university and I loved it since the very beginning. Now every day I read in English, French, and German.

I lost track … I understand Italian now, I am still trying to somewhat keep basic knowledge of Japanese I took courses in. Because I wanted to support my friend and … yes, show him that I can do anything. I started learning Ancient Greek at some point because there were people at religious studies who kept telling me that if I had never studied Greek, I would not have known what religious studies are about. And I was good at it because the language is fantastically logical (at least the way it was taught to us). Then Thai. I don't know now why. Maybe solely because there was the opportunity. I was briefly learning Norwegian and Romanian before visiting those countries (in case of Romania it actually did help), I was learning modern Greek for some time because I enjoyed similarities and differences between the modern and old versions. I had been starting to understand Polish when our institute closed. I understand Slovak of course but I might also be able to speak it after a while of being exposed to it.

Every new language is a new adventure and I remember the excitement of one of my professors (who to my knowledge translates from English, French, German, Italian, and Latin, knows Ancient Greek and probably Russian and feels ashamed of his not very good Biblical Hebrew), with which he was looking at my Thai language textbook when we were having a coffee together.

“Perhaps English is not first language of author.”* But if it were, I would have deprived myself of all the grammatical discoveries, surprising associations, and yes, incorrect but often funny constructions.

“Oh, this beetle is so cute! Be careful not to harm him!”

“So beetle is a he in Czech? Are all insects masculine?”

“Haha, no way! A fly is female, a ladybird is female (but a bird is male, an animal is neutral), an ant is male but he is a she in French, …”

“…”

There is a grant opportunity at our university called GAUK. It is notorious for being quite mysterious: nobody really knows how to write your proposal properly so that your project can succeed. I tried it in my first year of PhD when I didn't know yet that you are in fact supposed to have accomplished your project already when you write your “proposal”. No uncertainties are allowed. Anyway, I made it better the second year, but some reviewers didn't like my Japanese interests. Fair enough, it's true that it would have been somewhat difficult to do a research concerning Japanese phenomenology on top of everything.

So in my third year, I played it safe: sure no-one would question my ability to write about literature (I have a master's degree in it), nor my ability to write in English (I write present and write in English all the time and I have my personal editor*) and publish in international journals – not the most prestigious ones but you know … at least it's in English.

Long story short, I didn't get the grant (obviously, that's why I am writing this). Because there is one thing I had not expected: an idiotic reviewer from the Middle Ages who rose from the dead to make my life more difficult. I don't know his** identity and there is no chance he would read this so I translated his review for you. Just try to read it till the end: the conclusion is the best.

“The incompatibility of phenomenological approach to corporeity and Actor-Network Theory consists in the fact, that any phenomenology (including Patočka's “asubjective” phenomenology) is being developed from personal perspective, whereas in ANT, not only people and living beings, but also nonliving things and even ideas and theories play the roles of “actors”; this programmatic nivelization provides abstract models (yet based on metaphors), which radically move away from the meaningfulness of lived world that is the domain of phenomenological investigation. In other words, phenomenology belongs to human sciences whereas ANT, like all the sociology for that matter, is the outcome of scientism [omfg]. The proposer herself is aware of the problematic nature of the connection of phenomenology and ANT but her argument that “both methods try to break out from usual accepted hierarchies that determine which objects and their qualities should be endowed with importance” is hardly valid because phenomenology builds (or rather finds) its own hierarchy whereas ANT dwells on its ontological nivelization. The proposed connection of both methods would be presumably limited to vague analogies and metaphors because the results of ANT could hardly play any empirical basis for the intended enrichment of phenomenology of corporeity. We can guess how the proposer's realized connection of ANT and phenomenology could look like, for example from the text of her main inspirer, prof. Annemarie Mol “Moderation or Satisfaction? Food Ethics and Food Facts”, in which we find hardly anything else than almost nonsystematic statements that surprise by their banality (even though there are expressions like “bodily beings or “embodied ethics”). Also the author's plan to perform deconstruction is highly dubious since the illusions that postmodern (in their essence relativist-sophistic) deconstructions would be of any benefit for spiritual culture of humanity have now been already for a very long time lost illusions.”

You know, I was not really angry actually. You simply cannot fight this.

* He doesn't correct the texts on this blog in case you ask.

Fortunately still before this whole pandemic outbreak, my ear got clogged. It was the first time in my life so I didn't know that the treatment is actually very easy and you know … you would just get your ear cleaned, it's kind of gross but it's over within a minute …

Anyway, since I didn't know how easy it is to get rid of it, I was living effectively partially deaf for three days. In reality I should have had more than a half of my hearing ability preserved but it felt like much less. As long as I was at home, I didn't even notice how bad my hearing was and it was also easy to talk to one person when the surrounding was quiet, no matter whether online or in person. But spending two days in the office was quite painful, and especially when I went to our every-Friday beer with philosophers (my most favorite part of the week), I was feeling almost handicapped. Of course, there is also the foreign language issue and who knows me, knows that my ability to understand spoken words is by far my weakest point in all the foreign languages I have ever tried to learn. But this inability to hear properly was much more uncomfortable than any evening in company of drunk German guys talking in slang and not caring any more that I didn't understand a single word.

It is extremely exhausting: you try moving your head so that you hear better but then you miss someone else. You try to take part in the conversation but you don't react on the whole of someone's talk, only to some parts you have heard. So it's weird. You are always a bit late with your reaction because you didn't catch what a person on the other side of the table had said. You cannot hear yourself properly so you sometimes talk too loud, sometimes too low.

I suddenly learnt – and sort of the hard way – how isolated my grandparents must have felt, why they preferred when their grandchildren visited them one at a time and we didn't change those visits into friendly meetings within our generation during which we were happily talking over each other.

“It cuts you off, doesn't it?” remarked one colleague with a smile. Oh hell yeah …

But then the morning after visiting a clinic I was feeling reborn. No music, no bars … I was enjoying the rustle of the campus, perfectly happy.

In our philosophical reading group (my most favorite activity of the week), we were reading Jacques Rancière's Ignorant Schoolmaster. It's been a while but there is something I cannot get from my head. Yes, we tried to learn German a few weeks later the Rancièrian way, that is, we were listening to our professor's voice reading Heidegger in original. I have some basics in German so I was enjoying it but as far as I know, it didn't help much to those who met the language for the first time … So this doesn't work. Or it may work but you would need more time maybe, I don't know.

What does work however is Rancière's claim that an illiterate father can teach his son read. Because that's what happened to me and my sister. Sure, our parents are educated people but they cannot really speak any foreign language, they studied in a technical field, and they were not musically educated. One of them never did any sport either and they did not have an opportunity to develop any artistic skills. Yet my sister and I (especially me to be honest but both of us) have always received any financial and moral support we needed to achieve what we were able to achieve. It is no way about letting us do what we want, not at ll, quite the opposite actually: we were pushed to stick to our leisure activities and we were given to understand that our ambitions were important and taken seriously. It started with painting, dancing, singing, playing the recorder, continued with basketball, English, French, then suddenly German (I only found out later that my parents had been disappointed that I was not continuing with French but they didn't want to discourage me from a new language), aikido, climbing, … they (actually personally) taught me to ski, skate, swim, drive a car. They helped me to prepare for the interview for my stay in Canada even though it was in a way against their interest.

Nevertheless, the most important moment was couple years earlier when I was struggling with writing my master's thesis. I have people around me who can help me with texts I write: my partner, my supervisor, some other friends. They can help me once I have something. But they cannot yell at me that I have to start fucking writing and they cannot order me to send them a chapter every week. That's what I agreed to do after a big argument I had with my parents about three years ago and it is one of the best things they have ever done for me. Not that they think that life without a master's degree is inferior but they rightly knew that it was very important for me and that I would have regretted it for my whole life if I hadn't finished it.

I can hardly imagine better parents. If I ever became a parent, I would like to be a lot like them.