Random comments made to me today in and around the seminar on Badiou’s Being and Event:
Someone: “I liked your comments yesterday. Are you a mathematician?”
Me: “No, no – not at all.”
Someone: “Huh… Well… You sound like a mathematician.”
Someone #2 (in a separate interaction): “So… what do you teach?”
Me: “Research methods mainly.”
Someone #2: “Research methods?”
Me: “You know, ethnography, statistics…”
Someone #2: “Did you say statistics? You?! Statistics?!”
I gather from these interactions that random impressions of my mathematical acumen vary greatly…
Someone #3: “So why are you coming to this?”
Me: “Oh, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing on Hegel and Marx for the past couple of months. I had a big presentation last week. I just wanted to take a week off to read something completely different.”
Someone #3 (long pause): “You know… there is fiction…”