I’m On the REES Mailing List Because I Love Deleting Unread Emails

I subscribe to the mailing list of the department of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Every week I receive emails in my inbox with subject lines like “Fwd: Albanian Society Event This Week” or “The Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Studies Association Call for Papers” or even “Russian Tea Tomorrow.” Each time, I click “delete” immediately upon sighting one such email. Needless to say, I do not read these emails.

Why? You may ask me.

We reside in a post-hermeneutical world. Every action we take is a step towards the neoliberal social order at best, and completely devoid of meaning at worst. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. 

Deleting unread emails from the department of Russian and East European Studies, therefore, is the ultimate act of defiance. This is the destruction of an entity already nugatory: it voids the void.