{"id":6902,"date":"2015-11-01T21:36:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T02:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=6902"},"modified":"2015-11-01T21:36:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T02:36:15","slug":"jessica-hoppers-william-r-kenan-lecture-on-ethics-and-resistance-writing-from-the-margins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2015\/11\/01\/jessica-hoppers-william-r-kenan-lecture-on-ethics-and-resistance-writing-from-the-margins\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Hopper’s William R. Kenan Lecture on Ethics and Resistance: Writing from the Margins"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jessica<\/a>
Jessica Hopper, rock critic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the rainy night of October 1, Macaulay Honors College hosted the award winning rock critic, Jessica Hopper. To a room full of primarily Macaulay students,\u00a0she delivered\u00a0the most\u00a0recent\u00a0William R. Kenan Lecture on Ethics and Resistance. By the end of her incredibly quotable talk, the table in the back stacked with copies of her new\u00a0book,\u00a0The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic <\/em>(May, 2015),\u00a0<\/em>appeared\u00a0even more\u00a0enticing than it had at the start.<\/span><\/p>\n

“When was the first time you were told you didn’t count?” was one of the first questions Hopper posed to her captivated audience. As a woman in the male-dominated field of rock criticism, just being there<\/em>\u00a0and voicing her\u00a0opinion was, as she emphasized throughout the talk, “an act of resistance.”\u00a0 Judging by the nodding heads of the members of the audience, her sentiments rang all too true for a lot of us.<\/p>\n

While the lecture lasted just over a half-hour, the question-and-answer session seemed to comprise the bulk of the event; everyone had something to respond to. In a room full of writers, activists, music lovers, or combinations of the three, hands flew up to ask Hopper her opinion of call-out culture, or to corroborate the feeling of being unwelcome in certain spaces. Hopper spoke on safe spaces for women, queer women, and women of color in the punk rock scene. She related\u00a0personal anecdotes about how, 17 years into her career, a male colleague advised her to stop getting into trouble with her superiors and “kiss ass” instead. And she talked about her personal experiences with violently misogynistic internet trolls who would “doxx”\u2014reveal private information, such as the address of a person\u2014women who dared to critique equally misogynistic media online. “When you’re anything but a straight white male, opinions cost you,” she declared, and the room erupted in another wave of eager head-nodding.<\/p>\n

She had quite a bit of resonating advice for writers, especially those\u00a0who “write from the margins.” For her, writing is a way to assert that she is not complicit; the simple refusal to be silent is actually not simple at all. Writing exacts power. Doing the work you’ve been called to do is an act of resistance. For any writers\u00a0challenging norms and critiquing status quo, we know the pit-of-stomach knot of anxiety that comes along with putting out any work, but especially work that may stir the pot. \u00a0Regardless, we feel compelled to do this work and to keep doing it. But we do not feel compelled to ask for permission before taking steps forward. As Hopper put it, “It’s not about seeking permission. I don’t really want to be allowed in the club house.”<\/p>\n

Finally, she imparted advice that every writer likes to hear: \u00a0“The only way we learn is by fucking up. Self-doubt is poisonous. Writing from the margins sucks. Dig down to your truth, and do not stop in the face of haters.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the rainy night of October 1, Macaulay Honors College hosted the award winning rock critic, Jessica Hopper. To a room full of primarily Macaulay students,\u00a0she delivered\u00a0the most\u00a0recent\u00a0William R. Kenan Lecture on Ethics and Resistance. By the end of her incredibly quotable talk, the table in the back stacked with copies of her new\u00a0book,\u00a0The First…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":7019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1119,1296,1875,2205],"class_list":["post-6902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mhc-central","tag-jessica-hopper","tag-macaulay-honors-college","tag-rock-critic","tag-the-first-collection-of-criticism-by-a-living-female-rock-critic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}