Roughly twelve years ago, I wrote this post. The links are now broken. And the context is lost to me. One thing I do remember: I didn’t understand why the phrase “don’t call it a comeback” lodged itself so deeply in me. I still don’t. The post was about the television show, Revenge, which I loved. And was about resilience, advocacy, and the strange, uneasy work of staying engaged even when you know the real stakes of pain and injury are likely consequences.
Reading it now, I don’t experience it as a return.
This PhD work, this writing, this slow unfolding of remaining steadfast, seeing through the ethics of care lens, and the hard-stop of ethical refusal – none of this feels like a comeback. The through-line was already there. I was already here, working through questions of solidarity, endurance, and what it means to remain present when the work asks something costly of you.
At the summer residency of the PhD program last year, I talked about how my work and presence in that room is my ribenji. リベンジ. My son, a fluent Japanese speaker, a lover of languages and linguistic nuance, introduced me to this word. He told me that this time, my intellectual work is all about my ribenji.
リベンジ is often translated as “revenge,” but in Japanese, it carries another meaning – a second attempt, a re-entry, a doing-again that acknowledges change. Not restoration. Not triumph. Simply continuation with new clarity. It holds an undercurrent of persistence and determination. It points to depth.
So I’m linking this piece here not as an artifact of a past self, but as evidence of continuity. A reminder that sometimes the work precedes the language we eventually find to name it.
I’ve been here for years.
Some texts wait years before they reveal what they were already trying to say.
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