travel reflections (may 8, 2025)
For whatever reason, it feels like folks often write reflections when they return from traveling. Admittedly, far too many thoughts swirl around my mind whenever I leave the country, and I'm constantly longing to write them down as well... but I never seem to actually do it. It's a chore, I think of writing sometimes, even though for all intents and purposes, my day job (as a PhD student) is pretty heavily centered on writing. Or well, it's moreso centered on conducting research and then writing about it, and even though I've received positive feedback for the latter, I still struggle with the former. To be fair, that's kind of why I decided to go back to school in the first place, since I honestly had (and still have) no idea how to do rigorous, meaningful research.
This feeling has been amplified the last few times I've travelled abroad, since these were for academic conferences. Last year I went to Brazil for the first time to attend my "home" conference (which I've attended every year since its inception in 2018 and in its more informal workshop form since 2016). I don't want to spend too much time talking about that experience here, other than the fact that I will not be returning to that conference in the future. Maybe I'll write all about it in another post, but I've also been reticent just because of the possible harassment I might face as a result.
This brings me to my trip to Japan (to Yokohama, to be exact) at the start of this month. This conference has always been slightly adjacent to the things I care about, and I'd say it's one of the most attended conferences by folks in my department (though this is anecdotal and might not be true at all), but I don't see my own work in it. (Do I really see my own work anywhere in academia? I'm not sure.) I did submit papers to two workshops, both of which were accepted, and the workshop sessions were decently enjoyable. Met some other academics, talked about interesting things, and got some ideas and feedback for some ongoing projects. Great! Right? But somehow it all felt so... empty to me. Vacuous. Like I was role-playing in some fantasy world based on Severance where our work selves and our personal selves are somehow distinct entities (hint: they're not). I'm still struggling with "professionalism" (with all its loaded meanings), and I just didn't feel like I belonged at this conference. Not that I didn't feel welcome — no, people were very kind to me, and there were a surprising number of people who also didn't buy the sort of technosolutionism that the conference was well known for. But at the end of the day, it felt like this isn't what I want to do, and it's nice to cross paths with these folks, but I don't feel like I want to walk the same path as them. And that's ok.
I'm not knocking on academia here (though I have many qualms with it that I've expressed elsewhere), just that these recent conferences have made it clearer to me that I want to do something different. Not necessarily something better, because honestly I couldn't say that it would be. In this sense, this travel has helped me figure out what I don't want to do.
As I was thinking about my travels this past week, my friend Hibby, who led one of our workshop papers on VTubing and embodiment, posted her own blog post.
Hibby Thach
In some of my recent research, I noticed that some of the academics I despise gain prominence and notoriety(?) because they respond to each other. Even if I find their work frustrating, I do admit that this is something they do that more critical researchers don't tend to do as much. A lot of us either work in isolation, work in anonymity, and/or don't have the capacity to work on the branding/marketing/narrative-setting aspects of what we do. And that's for good reason — we're doing so much, and at times, it's dangerous to speak up. That's why I have so much reverence for the folks who do write, or do tweet, or do weekly podcasts, because it does a certain task of communicating to the world what matters. Not everyone needs to do this, nor should it be everyone's role, since every role matters, not just the visible ones but the invisible ones as well. We need to value work on all fronts. In that sense, I feel like even though I've been particularly sensitive to all the critiques of "the people who are loud," sometimes we need that. And sometimes, I think I'm OK at it.
Hibby's blog post very much inspired me to write my own. For one, it reminded me that I shouldn't hold myself back from writing out all these thoughts that I have. For another, I want to get into the habit of citing each other even beyond academic papers. One thing that I used to love about Twitter was the ability to quote-retweet, because you could be in dialogue with others in a way that started your own thread of ideas. It wasn't simply a reply, but it could serve as a reference or a starting point. What a lot of the effective communicators I've read up on do (again, even if I don't like what they're communicating) is that they refer to each other. They are not just in conversation, but they actively get people to know about and see/hear/read the things others have contributed.
So here's Hibby's blog post again:
Hibby Thach
There's a theme of belonging that resonates with me, especially as another trans Asian person visiting Japan, a country that isn't my own. But Hibby's experiences and relations with others are fundamentally different from mine as well. I do recommend reading their post because it brings up her specific perspective in a way that can't be replicated. It makes me think about where I feel like I belong — the theme of my post in general.
I'm currently writing this post while sitting in a cafe in Taipei, and I agree that Japan simply didn't feel like home for me (why would it?). And yet, the United States, where I was born, grew up, and lived in all my life, doesn't feel like a place I want to be. But we need to stay and fight! Work collectively with our community! Make a difference from where we are! These are all true things, and it's an absolute privilege to even be able to leave the country like this. I don't take it for granted. Oppression doesn't end just because we leave — we have to fight it, at its root. And that involves staying and organizing and making a difference on the ground (and not just on paper). I don't think I've been doing a good job at that. But I also don't want to abandon my community — one that deserves far better than what the current administration is doing.
It is a privilege to be able to travel abroad. It still feels like a lot of people take it for granted. It feels like a lot of US citizens are more scared than non-citizens, and there's a sense that it's because something that Americans have always taken for granted (that others have known to be precarious) is now under threat. It's a bit frustrating to see citizens speak about returning to the country and speaking over or excluding international students from those conversations. This isn't the case across the board, but I have seen instances of it. At the same time, I don't think the solution is to artificially suffer. I don't think that helps anyone. For years I felt like it was a virtuous thing, but then folks told me I was just squandering the resources and opportunities I had access to. Who does that help?
Instead of getting rid of these privileges, we should ensure that they're accessible to everyone. I do think everyone should have the ability to travel abroad, whether that's to be able to leave an oppressive country to protect themselves, or return to their homeland their ancestors have been taken from. But instead, travel has become a luxury, a thing that only a select few people can do, and they assume everyone else can do it. I hope that we change the systems and structures that lock us into place. That make us feel like we can only be in one place, as if our connection to the world is static rather than relational and dynamic. But maybe that's my lack of a sense of "home" speaking here. I've often felt at odds with the places I've been, and it's been difficult to find a place to put down my roots. I don't know where I belong. And for that, I feel like I've done something wrong.