Writer’s Diary #57: A Room, A Purse, and No Phone?

Daniel Tubb

I seem to have spent a few days reading and reacting to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It’s my third reading now. First thing. Four fifty-minute chunks. As I re-read it and my notes, I respond to it, and my notes, and I (re)write.

What to make of her description of a rather unsuccessful morning in the British Library, where all she finds is men writing about women? Obsessed it seems. She’s angry.

But then she goes for lunch.

A nice lunch. She has coffee too. And find a newspaper. To pay, she reaches into her purse. Five shillings and ninepence. Her purse produces 10 shilling notes. Her Aunt died, giving her 500 pounds a year. In perpetuity. (It was only 2500 pounds, in total, in reality.)

That’s 39.10 CAD for a lunch! A good lunch. Expensive, I imagine? How can she afford it?

Her aunt’s money. She doesn’t have to work.

It hits me in a flash.

When I was a student, I had no money, but I did have some. Not like my students today. I had scholarships and loans and easy student jobs.

First year, I lived with friends.

Later, I parlayed them into cheap rent and cheap food through global arbitrage. (I was a librarian, making minimum wage, in Ontario, working in Ecuador.)

I lived frugally, but rent and wine and food in Spain 2002 and Ecuador in 2005 were far cheaper than in Ontario.

Rent in Colombia as a graduate student doing ethnographic fieldwork, when I spent my days walking, thinking, eating good food, and reading, was something else. Less still, when I went the gold mines.

That fieldwork was funded by the Canadian taxpayer and Carleton University. To great expense. It was decent money. And, my accidental exercise in global arbitrage, made my purchasing power much higher.

Not deliberately, but accidentally. I moved where my money went further, and the scholarship and grants allowed me to spend two years wandering around Bogotá and the Chocó and letting my mind wander and writing.

(When the purse ended, I experienced the opposite. Moving to Yale, with a shrinking scholarship as the Canadian dollar collapsed.) I walked, and wrote, but was far more stressed about money. Anxious. I spent those three years trying to find a job. Which I did. Then, a decade worrying about money as one salary only goes so far.

But then, and maybe now again as Mercedes works, I have the equivalent for lunches.

(I used to go to the library, then walk and spend 40,000 pesos on a lunch in Bogotá now. That is one day’s minimum wage.)

But, for the last decade, my phone would have been in the way. Making the mind wandering impossible.

But, not as as student. As a student, I had no phone. So, many times, I did what Woolf describes—the thinking and daydreaming and writing and letting the mind wander and making connections. It’s this that Woolf’s famous essay is an exercise in. (It does it by showing, not telling.)

It’s fiction, to be sure. But there is an element of autobiography. What about calling it a fictionalized auto-ethnographic account of writing? The day dreaming by the river, the flash of insight lost by walking on turf, the lunch, and a walking into the evening thinking about the gold that went into the college, and a walk to the library and then the next day at the British Museum and then lunch paid for by her Aunt’s inheritance.

I think it is.

But, of course, she had no iPhone, computer, or Internet. Has all of this connection robbed us of our ability to let our mind wander and make connections?

Yes.

But, need it?

No.

Zadie Smith, an other famous English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer, doesn’t have a phone.

These two facts might be connected.

Writer’s Diary #56: A room of One’s Own

Daniel Tubb

In the draft, I had an aside about the importance of a room of one’s own with a lock. My thought? A room of one’s own, with a lock, and without a computer, phone, or interruptions. But, yesterday morning, and again this morning, I re-read Virginia Woolf’s famous essay. Not only is it a feminist critique of the materiality of artistic creation and the ways in which women have been excluded for centuries. But in Woolf’s words, and in the story she weaves, you can also begin to see the glimmers of a method to fiction.

The walking and daydreaming, the trespassing on lawns, the lunches, the attempts to go to libraries, the walks before dinner and the remembering of snippets of ideas, of poems. The walks and strolls across in Oxbridge.

But it’s also the next day, and other days, of being in the room and taking books down and putting them back on the shelves, of going to the library and reading with a notebook, and of misremembered lines and lost quotations, and the concentration that goes into the work.

Even as I was doing that, I had my daughter behind me, asleep on the couch at 4 o’clock in the morning because she couldn’t sleep. She woke up early. I cuddled her. She fell back into bed.

And as I was writing, there were four or five messages. Running partners. Dentist appointments. Concentration.

But there’s also a bricolage in there.

Pulling down books. Looking at shelves. Going to the library for ideas.

Pulling down books. Looking at shelves. Going to the library to get ideas.

I read in the introduction to the 2000 Penguin edition that on the day she gave the lecture she wrote:

“My ambition is, from this very moment—eight minutes to six, on Saturday evening—to attain complete concentration again.”

Total concentration! It takes a room and money (CAD$70,000 in Canadian money, I’m guessing), and I know it helps to be white.

Total concentration! It takes a room and money (CAD$70,000 in Canadian money, I’m guessing), and I know it helps to be white and a man.

But a walk, and lunch, and time, and concentration are best achieved without the technology in my pocket. Which is its own difficulty.

Writer’s Diary #55: Just do it

Daniel Tubb

Today’s update:

I met a drummer friend yesterday, along with another artist—a goldsmith. My drummer friend has been trying to work steadily every day. Four hours. He writes it down. He inspired me to try again. If he can drum for four hours a day, maybe I can find time to write? Just do it. “Do it” He said

He works at night; I am a morning person. So, I did my four hours in four 50 minute chunks this morning. It’s nice to be done by 9:30.

The other friend, the goldsmith, said, “I only let myself start on something new once I’ve finished something.”

That is my challenge—always starting something new. Perhaps I can finish something, before starting on another big project..

Anyway, a nice morning on the bricolage chapter. Re-read the whole draft. Lots to do.

I ended on a side tangent re-reading Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She’s talking about women and fiction; I think I’m talking about distraction and anthropology.

But anyway, I have to finish reading it again tomorrow.

For now, I’m done and of to a maple syrup sugar shack with the kids.

In Praise of Makeshift Finishing

Daniel Tubb

Tubb, Daniel. “In Praise of Makeshift Finishing.” Anthropologica 66, no. 2 (2025): 1–8. DOI / Mirror

This article reflects on the challenges of writing and finishing. Using experience of sorting ethnographic field notes, I explores how the desire for a perfect structure and method hinders progress. It is an argument for imperfection in the writing. An argument for finishing, even imperfectly, as essential to transforming ideas into tangible work. It advocates an iterative, hands-on approach to writing.

University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation

Daniel Tubb

Dressler, H., Pleshet, N. & Tubb, D. (2025). “University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation.” Critical Education, 16(1), 125–154. https://doi.org/10.14288/ce.v16i1.186926. PDF / Mirror

The bureaucratic precepts engendered by modern universities produce a slew of negative effects inimical to educational justice. Drawing on historiographical evidence from the 1968 Strax Affair, a little-known protest held at the University of New Brunswick, we identify the arts of discombobulation as a novel approach to challenge the intellectual constraints imposed by university bureaucracies. By theorizing the arts of discombobulation, we aim to counteract bureaucracy’s most alienating affective residues, equipping scholars with an administrative arsenal capable of transforming the corporate academy into a playful, joyful environment. Inspired by cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s theory of the “play-function,” we introduce five interrelated tactics—burlesque versions of both formal and informal administrative practices—that amplify the contradictions inherent to the corporate academy’s contemporary bureaucratic structure: personalization, befuddlement, signal jamming, mapping, and abeyance. Even during moments of Kafkaesque bureaucratic defeat, discombobulation can generate a sense of heightened play necessary to fuel democratic resistance.

University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation

Daniel Tubb

I’m excited to share my short article, with Noah Pleshet and Harrison Dressler, just published in Critical Education!

Our article, University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation, examines how modern university bureaucracies stifle intellectual freedom and creativity. Through the lens of the 1968 Strax Affair—a little-known student protest at the University of New Brunswick—we explore how administrative structures constrain academic life in ways that are often inimical to educational justice.

But rather than simply critiquing bureaucracy, we propose a playful response: the arts of discombobulation. Inspired by Johan Huizinga’s theory of the “play-function,” we outline five interrelated tactics—personalization, befuddlement, signal jamming, mapping, and abeyance—that scholars can use to disrupt the intellectual and emotional alienation imposed by university administration. By embracing these burlesque tactics, we argue, academics can carve out spaces of joy, resistance, and creative play within the corporate academy.

Even when faced with Kafkaesque bureaucratic absurdities, discombobulation can provide the playful energy necessary for democratic resistance. We hope this piece contributes to ongoing conversations about reclaiming the university as a site of intellectual curiosity and radical possibility.

Read the full article, and let us know what you think on mastodon.

Download it here.

Dismantling the Post-War Liberal World Order

Daniel Tubb

Trump’s second presidency is reshaping global trade and security. With tariffs rising and military aid shifting, the post-war liberal order faces an uncertain future. Read my analysis on the three theories driving this transformation.

Tubb, Daniel. “Dismantling the Post-War Liberal World Order.” NB Media Co-op, March 4, 2025. https://nbmediacoop.org/2025/03/04/dismantling-the-post-war-liberal-world-order/.

Tariffs are in, Ukraine is out. Which leaves a question: What to think about Trump’s foreign and economic policy?

Alain Deneault is right. Trump’s working-class supporters, disappointed by elites in Washington and New York for years, are in for a surprise. As tariffs bite, inflation will grip, recession loom, and Europe and Canada will forge new trade and defence alliances. At least, this is one way to think about the dismantling of the post-war liberal world order.

It is a struggle to make sense of today’s tariffs.

It’s a struggle to make sense of what happened in the Oval Office on February 29, when Donald Trump and J.D. Vance berated Volodymyr Zelensky as a pretext to withdraw militarily aid. More broadly, what can we make of the second Trump presidency and the reaction in Europe? One thing is clear, there is a disagreement on how the world has worked for the last 80 years.

Trump’s doctrine is to dismantle the postwar liberal consensus that tied European (and Canadian) security to the United States. A consensus that allowed post-war institutions of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and later, the World Trade Organization (WTO), to shape global security, trade, and economy.

Understanding the consequences of Trump’s endeavour to dismantle this is a theoretical and empirical question. It’s a theoretical question because there are various ways to think about global political economy. It’s an empirical one because Trump and his presidency are hell bent on putting their theory to the test.

In broad strokes, there are three ways to understand the post-war liberal consensus. The first is a mainstream theory. It argues that after the Second World War, American hegemony, the Washington consensus leading to free trade, globalization, and tight security integration have contributed to economic growth around the world. This rising tide has lifted all boats, and despite the externalities of capitalism and globalization, the World Order is the best we could have done. It has been a net benefit for everyone on the planet, so this theory’s proponents put it. In their view, the post-war consensus is worth defending because liberal democracies are the ones holding the line against autocracy and expansionist power in Russia and China. Without it, an unprecedented era of relative stability will end, making lives harder for everyone, including Americans.

The second is a critique from the left. Left critics argue that the United States imposed the post-war consensus after World War II and then expanded it in the 1980s and 1990s through globalization and free trade as part of an imperial project. It argues American empire has having been terrible for working people. It has hollowed out communities, increased inequality, fueled financial speculation, and crony capitalism to the detriment of everyone, especially working classes and the people in global south. It’s the critique that saw the Battle of Seattle against the WTO in 1999, and in the protests in Quebec against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001. It’s the critique that led to protests in 2002 against the war in Iraq, and it is the critique that fuels ongoing protesters against climate change and ongoing wars. The basic thesis: the U.S. became a hegemonic power, globalization has benefited the U.S. and its allies through the exponential accumulation and growth of their assets across the globe, at the expense of the world. Not least because we have come to see clearly that decades of U.S. capitalism have fueled economic growth, with material consequences for a finite planet.

The third theory, which Trump and J. D. Vance have adopted, is a new critique from the right. (Prior to Trump, most mainstream Democrats and Republicans were united in believing the first theory described above.) The right critique goes something like this: post-war American foreign and economic policy was ‘bad’ for the United States, and especially for working people in the rust belt states, in rural areas, and in areas outside of the cities dominated by liberal elites. Their argument is that the post-war liberal economic and security order has been good for the world but bad for Americans. Globalization, free trade, NATO, and all the rest was financed by the U.S., to its own detriment. The world has played the United States for a sucker, they think. It is working Americans, U.S. corporations, and Washington that have given Europe, Canada, and Latin America an economic and security free ride. After all, when the United States opened its economy to free trade with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Europe, China and the world, it devastated manufacturing in its hinterland. Trump’s proposed solution is a muscular, masculine, hegemonic United States. An imperial power willing to throw its muscle around and get what it wants. One willing to use tariffs and re-engage in a Munro doctrine of outward territorial expansion, be that in Panama, Greenland, and, if Trump is to be believed, Canada.

The mainstream theory is that US-led globalization has been beneficial for the world and the United States. The left sees a system that has not worked for the world and working people, even as it has worked for the U.S. and U.S capital. The right sees a system that has been the terrible for the U.S, especially working-class Americans in rural areas.

What to make of all this? The answer is an empirical question—whose theory is right?

From a mainstream perspective, unwinding the role of the United States as the backstop of a global economic and security order will unravel the whole complex system, with devastating consequences. Like all complex systems, when parts start to break, things can go sideways quickly. It’s unclear what will bring down the house of cards. It might be today’s first salvo of a tariff war, or war, a Bird flu pandemic, an economic crisis, or the environmental crisis, but the mainstream sees a bleak future.

From a left perspective, undoing the post-war consensus will make things worse for American consumers, while creating opportunities for the world to get along without the United States. In this analysis, Trump’s tariffs might do some good by undoing US hegemony. If the skyrocketing price of imports match the skyrocketing price of eggs, perhaps what Karl Polanyi once called a double movement of organized social movements will begin to act as a self-limiting force to Trump’s agenda.

But what if the left and the mainstream are wrong? What if Trump is on to something? What if the right critique has merit? What if American protectionism and American expansionism lead to colonial endeavours that benefit the U.S.? What if things get worse for Canada, Europe, and the World, yet better for Americans, especially its billionaire class? We’re about to find out.

Let’s hope the right is wrong, and the left is right. That is, by imposing tariffs, undoing security relations with Canada and Europe, and turning U.S. policy away from globalization, things might be worse for U.S. voters, working people, consumers, and capital, but better for everyone else. It might create opportunities for fairer trade and security relations. If all that happens, Trump’s strangle hold on U.S. democracy itself might be short-lived, as inflation and recession could focus the minds of voters in the United Sates, even as it might be too late for its hegemonic project.

But what if the right is right? Trump has imposed tariffs, and if they work the way his advisors think they will— being that the tariffs won’t hurt U.S. consumers as other countries will see their currencies devalue to compensate—then people in New Brunswick, Canada, and the rest of the world are in for big trouble. The last thing anyone needs right now is an emboldened and expansionist U.S. in search of territory, resources, and a strengthened Empire.

Writer’s Diary 51: In Praise of Mellel

Daniel Tubb

Mellel 6.3 just came out. I bought my first copy of Mellel as a student in 2006 or so; although there have been long periods when I haven’t used it and worked in Word. Every long‑form thesis, dissertation, or book I’ve ever written has been finished in Mellel. Yet, most of my daily writing is done in Markdown in Tinderbox.

Markdown is a text‑to‑HTML conversion tool for web writers. It allows you to write using an easy‑to‑read, easy‑to‑write plain text format, which can then be converted to HTML. Since John Gruber of Daring Fireball designed the spec in 2004, it has taken over the Internet. Perhaps it should be required learning for students?

Tinderbox is a tool for notes—a place to put down ideas, move them around, edit them, and revise them. It’s a personal information toolbox, a piece of software that I find indispensable for my scattered writing process.

But at some point, the messy notes and ideas have to turn into drafts and manuscripts. By the time a draft goes to a reviewer or publisher, it has to be perfect.

For the last half decade, I’ve long been enamoured with the idea of writing in Markdown in Tinderbox and then using tools like Pandoc and CiteProc to take that output and convert Markdown into blog posts, websites, and Word manuscripts. Indeed, I’ve even written a few scripts and a contextual menu in Finder that convert a Markdown file with citations into a DOCX file, and vice versa.

But as an academic writer, there is, of course, a challenge with citations. I’ve long used Bookends as a citation manager. I’ve used Bookends since the early 2000s. It’s a powerful app for keeping track of thousands of articles. It’s fast, unlike Zotero. It plays well with Mellel, but also lets you sync with a BibTeX file, which can be used by CiteProc.

So, I can write in Markdown in Tinderbox using MultiMarkdown formatting for footnotes, and then send it to Pandoc to convert to Word or wherever with citations. It works well. I love it.

Yet, for every truly long form article or project, I find myself turning back to Mellel for the final step because one thing that an academic writer knows is that by the time it goes to peer review, it must be perfect. What you send to the press, the editor, or the peer review will first be reviewed, and if you get the subtle things wrong in the writing or the formatting, you can be prejudged as sloppy.

Writing a book or article is, in part, an exercise in getting it right. Perhaps it’s premature perception. Yet, as I work on finishing a manuscript, I again turn back to Mellel, and it shines as a beautiful word processor designed for print and for writing documents.

There’s a cognitive relief in not writing in an abstraction, even an elegant simple one like Markdown.

Mellel bills itself as:

is a word processor designed from the ground up to be the ultimate writing tool for academics, technical writers, scholars, and students. Mellel is powerful, stable, and reliable; it is the ideal companion for writing documents that are long and complex, short and simple, and anything in between.

It’s all of these things. Worth a look.

I turned back to it, because the recent 6.3 version has a new notes feature that allows you to put notes at the end of a section or page range (that is, at the end of a chapter). This means I can write the way that my corner of anthropology likes to write, with notes at the end of chapters.

This new notes are notes done right.

While a subtle addition would be to have chapter‑end notes arbitrarily situated in a notes chapter at the end of a manuscript, as publishers in the humanities do it.

For now, I want to say that the thing with Mellel that I love is that, as opposed to Markdown, is that there is a much reduced cognitive load in getting it right, and then moving on.

As I move into it once again and get my book set‑up, I feel a relief that once I get it right in Mellel, it stays right. There are no further processing steps where errors can be introduced. It’s done. Tinderbox makes it easy to make radical changes. But, at some point, one has to stop, and get it done.

Rather than write in a markdown, Mellel lets you just work on the final form.

It’s nice.

I write by picking at things, tinkering, changing, and cobbling. At times, an Markdown’s abstraction and portability is best. At the end, Mellel is best.

Scheduling a syllabus

Daniel Tubb

It’s time to design a syllabus again. As each semester comes to an end and a new one begins, I always find myself redesigning and rethinking my syllabi. Why? A course is an opportunity to brush up on material, to think through new ideas, and to return to interests.

However, there is always the challenge of working out what to assign, what works, and what to think about. I often assign too much reading, for example. So, before I dive deep into designing my first-year course on economics and anthropology for this semester, I wanted to put down some thoughts on what I know works.

First, go slower. I look back at my syllabi from my first few years teaching, and they are far too ambitious. I know students don’t always read, but part of the trick is working out the structure and the framing of a course. The reading schedule matters, but because it won’t change, but because its rhythms and speed shape the experience of the semester, for myself and the students. There need to be moments of working hard, but also moments of slowing down and relaxing.

At the end of the last semester, it seemed that five four-class (M, W, F, M) modules, with a couple of classes between (W F) offers a way to frame the semester. Things in between might be an in-class exam, an in-class reading reflection, a few films, or an ethnography.

For an upper-level course, we could just read five books. Reading five books is too much for lower-level students. But, we can read, think, talk, and discuss bits of books.

I’m going to try this module framework this coming semester.