by Lucy S.
Last
week for my theory class, we read Frederic Jameson’s book, The Cultural Turn, an extremely interesting book, yet one I struggled with at times. It’s not that he uses a lot of jargon. But he writes long sentences with several ideas strung together, and at times makes references without explaining them, relying on readers to know them already. We write on the class blog site in connection to the reading each week, so I voiced my questions regarding what we are to do with what we learn – how we are to take readings that are sometimes difficult for us and talk about them beyond the university. I asked what it accomplishes for us to move in the world carrying these theories and various forms of knowledge in our minds. I always wonder about this. What do we have to contribute? This is especially on my mind as I get ready to graduate and face being out of academia again for now at least. Even if I am lucky enough to teach at a community college, we will not be reading Jameson in those classes. How do we keep what we learn circulating in the world?
When
we came together as a class last Wednesday, our professor brought up my post
and said it was a fair question to ask. He then picked out a sentence in the
book to demonstrate the way in which Jameson strings ideas together in long
sentences. Making us hold multiple ideas as we made our way through these long
sentences, said our professor, trains us to make more complex connections and
to hold off easy resolutions. Our mainstream ideologies give us a false sense
of ease with regard to summing up people, issues, and structures in our
society, and they give us a taste for further ease. We get used to not
stretching our minds too much. We decide that we don’t like to read, think
about, talk about, or write about what is hard. Jameson is resisting that false
ease, not only in the content of his book, but even in its very form.
For
some time, I’ve struggled with the question of how we can even hope to have an
actual democracy if people have little or no understanding of primary issues in
our society – no sense of history, no sense of the realities in other countries
in this world (or even other states in the U.S. or their own), no sense of the
positions and records of these politicians we are supposed to vote for (an
impediment in itself to any substantive democracy), no sense of the techniques
being used to manipulate us, no deeply developed thinking about complex
issues that affect us all so profoundly. We have had it so drilled into us that
these ‘choices’ between politicians and that these superficial 'choices' about 'issues' somehow fundamentally are the very meaning
of what democracy is. Why do so many people accept that conception of
democracy? In what way is that rule by the people?
But
that unquestioning acceptance of what we’ve always been taught is what comes
from simplistic thinking. These things feel like ‘common sense,’ as for so
long, and for so many people, it felt like common sense that if a man hit or
raped his wife (but the word ‘rape’ would not even be applied), it was ‘his
business,’ and not for any governments or other outside entities to be intervening.
But my professor was saying more than that we need to interrogate what passes
as ‘common sense’ and ‘normal’ to figure out what injustices and atrocities are
embedded in those ideas and practices. He was also noting that we live in a
time that glorifies stock phrases and simple expressions that deliver a fake,
cheap wisdom and a momentary bit of emotion without contributing to profound
insight.
When
I first went back to the university in 2009 to complete my BA, I sometimes
argued the case to my independent studies professor that using words that not
enough people outside of academia know is elitist and may keep many people out
of the conversation. I asked why things couldn’t be phrased simply. One of the
words I used in my example was ‘hegemony.’
Why couldn’t academic writers just say ‘political and social domination’
instead of ‘hegemony’? He did not agree.
He said it was important to try to choose words that most
precisely express the ideas we're reaching for.
Here
is something from a University of Michigan site explaining hegemony:
One of [Antonio]
Gramsci's ideas was the concept of "hegemony," or ideological
domination. When one ideology, or world
view, dominates, it suppresses or stamps out, often cruelly, any other ways of
explaining reality. Actually, hegemony
can contain a variety of ideologies.
Some are artificial -- theoretical explanations created by academics or
political activists or philosophers.
Other ideologies are "organic," which means they come from the
common people's lived experience. These consist of a culture's way of seeing
and believing, and the institutions that uphold these beliefs, like religion,
education, family, and the media. Through these beliefs and institutions,
society endorses the ethical beliefs and manners which "the powers that
be" agree are true, or right, or logical, or moral. The institutions and beliefs that the
dominant culture support are so powerful, and get hold of people when they are
so young, that alternative ways of envisioning reality are very hard to imagine. This is how hegemony is created and
maintained.
According to
Gramsci, hegemony locks up a society even more tightly because of the way ideas
are transmitted by language. The words
we use to speak and write have been constructed by social interactions through
history and shaped by the dominant ideology of the times. Thus they are loaded with cultural meanings
that condition us to think in particular ways, and to not be able to think very
well in other ways. [….]
Gramsci added
another dimension to the definition of hegemony: domination by consent. It seems impossible that anyone would consent
to be oppressed, or that we ourselves might be consenting to oppress
others. But no matter how outraged we
are at the poverty that exists in the richest country in the world, all most of
us do to fight it is tinker with the system.
We know that the rich are getting richer while the poor and the middle
class are feeling less and less secure.
We know, but we accept.
"What can one person do?" we say. "The poor have always been with
us." It's a fatalistic feeling we
have, but Gramsci doesn't blame us for it.
"Indeed," he says, "fatalism is nothing other than the
clothing worn by real and active will when in a weak position."(1)
It’s
an excellent, understandable, short piece, and I urge you to read it.
It's interesting that of all the words I
might have chosen that autumn day in 2009, I happened to choose ‘hegemony.’ Dominant
contemporary hegemony is what gives us this idea that we shouldn’t have to think
too hard, that anything difficult is just made unnecessarily that way, and that
the main thing we want to do is get anything hard over with so that we can get
back to ‘fun’ stuff. It makes us think that if we can’t understand something, what
is being said must not be all that important anyway.
This has been so convenient for the elite layers benefiting from our lack of understanding about our own interconnected situations.
It works best for them if most of us continue along in the following manner: If
we vote at all, we vote on dumbed down ‘issues’ that have been predigested for
us, and then we leave it to the politicians on our ‘team’ (Dems or Repubs) to
do what they do once they are elected while we shop,
watch entertaining TV and movies that make us feel without thinking
too hard, play with gadgetry, and decorate our dwellings and ourselves
while making no sustained, collective efforts and demands. We’re played against
each other in constructed competitions for jobs, education, material goods, and
care. We have little or no solidarity with others (beyond a small number of
family and friends, and even then, we often don’t like them to ask much of us).
But we can be whipped up into a frenzy against this or that supposed enemy, so that
we give up our rights or send ourselves or our kids to risk getting mutilated
or killed while helping to devastate or murder so many others. We do the jobs they construct, regardless of how meaningless or harmful they are, at the wages they decide to pay. We ‘just follow orders.’ We do
not get to actively create the kind of society that we yearn for.
When I went back to school in 2009, part of me wanted
to work at learning what is difficult and thus understanding my condition and
world better, and part of me resented the difficulty. I especially hated that
so many people I know and love would not have access to these things. Too many
had been lost or were in such pain. I also had observed that most of the people
propping up the destructive hegemonies and dominating the rest of us had
college educations, and those educations had not brought them enough empathy,
wisdom, courage, or active care for other lives. I wanted to know why. Why was
that, when I found education to be so vital? It’s a huge question on which I've been continually
working to find answers.
At the end of that first semester back, I wrote a
paper in which I expressed these huge questions and my efforts to discover
answers. I noted that Henry David Thoreau (my very favorite author, if I had to
choose one) had said that he “went to the woods because [he] wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life” (65), and that I had
come back to school to front other essential facts, and in my own way, to try
to live deliberately. I am glad to say that this remains my core reason for
what I do. I do not want to live by accident, infused with and thrown about by
hegemonies and other words and realities that I cannot name, which remain all
too real in their effects upon us. I do not 'when it comes time to die, discover that I have not lived.'
I will end this by including a fuller
excerpt of the Thoreau passage from which I quoted this most famous part of Walden.
I do not at all mean that going to a university or getting degrees in literature
are the sole ways to live deliberately, but that trying what is difficult and
finding words that come from and convey those endeavors matter tremendously. Thoreau, like Gramsci, writes here against that fatalism that is all too easy to swallow and be swallowed by.
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical
aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in
our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to
be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a
few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere
and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the
quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make
his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated
and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as
we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when it came time to die, discover that I had not lived. I did
not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to
practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put
to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive
life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be
mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its
meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion (64-65).
“Nutshell Biographies #2 Center for Learning Through Community Service. ANTONIO GRAMSCI and the idea of ‘hegemony’ (Thanks to Victor Villanueva and his book Bootstraps: From an American academic of color. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993, from which some of this material has been adapted.)” Here is the citation for their Gramsci quote: (1) Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. NY: International Publishers, 1995 [copyright 1971]. p. 337
Thoreau, Henry D. “Walden.” Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings. New York: Norton, 2008. Print.
***
There is something I want to add. After I posted this and then was doing other things, I kept thinking about the paragraph in which I talked about how it works best for an elite layer if we continue along in certain ways. I don't mean to say that we are ever really reduced to just those things. And even some of those activities that I named come out of desires to enjoy life and create. I am not arguing for some kind of grim asceticism in which we feel that everything is 'wrong' and that we are 'bad.' It is just that in a capitalist society, people are encouraged to figure out how to use those relationships and deep desires to turn into money and domination over others. But I don't want to imply that I see people around me cynically. We are always so much more than what the elite and the capitalist system try to reduce us to, and if we were not, we would just succumb. We would not be worth our own efforts to create better. We are always so much more, which is why we are worth caring for and fighting for in the first place. We have relationships with one another, and we strive to grow. We create in so many ways. We love life.
I really agree with the importance of engaging with difficult texts, thoughts, ideas, etc. It's really amazing to me how the mind can grow to be more receptive to difficulties, and I think one part of that is definitely closely reading difficult texts, like Gramsci's. But I think those texts have to be rigorous and true, in addition to being difficult...for example, I can think of many, many texts that are written in a difficult way, but only out of a sort of pretension. So in that sense I also agree with the impetus behind your question about: should these words and ideas be so difficult? Because I think what you're responding to is also what I see to often: difficulty for it's own sake, as some sort of "show" of knowledge...so, for me, the test of a worthy engagement has both components: if it is difficult, that is fine, but it must be difficult because of something inherent to the subject matter, and not because of pretension. So, in some sense, I would add that an emphasis on difficulty--like simplicity--can also have its own blindside. Albert Einstein put it well: “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
ReplyDeleteYeah, there are things written in unnecessarily complicated ways with an overuse of jargon (and they can also be really unpleasant to read on an aesthetic level). But with Jameson's book, that isn't the issue. He has a purpose to his content and his form.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much a matter of just reading a slogan or a simple analysis. If it were, people would just have to read or encounter those basic ideas and then they'd change their society. But it takes so much to overcome that fatalism and lack of faith in our abilities to enact massive societal change. Most people don't know history well at all, so the transformative changes of the more recent or more distant past are either not known or are known in superficial ways without enough understanding of how they took place, what their significance was, and how we can theorize those lessons now. Many have a deep sense of helplessness in this society, and we tend to combat it with singular efforts to 'better ourselves.'
Even being able to explain something simply takes the preceding work of understanding it well and then finding ways to communicate those ideas. But we can never really stop at that level of simplicity (the one in which someone gives us a basic understanding). The challenge is to profoundly shift ourselves and our society intellectually and also emotionally and thus in our lived practice.
I think of it from a different angle: I don't think we really need theories to be explained to us, and we don't need Jameson, either. What Gramsci is pointing at with "hegemony" is the need to think and figure things out for oneself. It's almost like a process of self-questioning. Hegemony is an explanation--fairly straightforward, if one has some background in Marxist thinking (which of course few have, which is part of the point behind the concept as well)--of how and why individuals participate in their own individual/social oppression. I think education in capitalist society is not a force for liberation, or for living deliberately. It's merely an institution, quite hostile in fact to critical thinking, as any other institution in capitalist society. I don't believe in it--in the sense of holding out something unique or special about it. I think education tries too hard to stuff people's heads with facts and with politics, and with rote memorization, and most of the time it succeeds in creating both hegemonic as well as idealistic minds.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not quite so simple as whether we "need" Jameson or Gramsci or Federici or Lukacs or Marx or whomever else. Having "some background in Marxist thinking" means exposure to that from somewhere (mostly a from college / university education in this society), and it means reading theory. That's what the background consists of. All of those thinkers had "education in a capitalist society." Gramsci had less than the others; he had to leave the university at a certain point - and he had the most "class-knowledge" from his lived experience. And then he spent all those years in prison for his organizing and educational work with other workers. It is only a very vulgar Marxist which would believe that no education is needed. Marx and Engels themselves drew heavily on a knowledge of history. They did not merely 'feel' their way to any revelations. Gramsci himself said:
ReplyDelete“The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is "knowing thyself' as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory. It is important therefore to make an inventory.”
That historical process doesn't consist only of knowing some family history. It entails a broader view, and then an ability to critically understand that history.
"Education" doesn't 'try too hard" to do anything. There are many different forces at work in these institutions. Raymond Williams has written a lot about hegemony and he makes that point (in harmony with Gramsci) that at any time, there is not only the dominant hegemony, but pre-emergent as well as oppositional ones. Classes are spaces with people teaching and learning in them, and that means many different things can go on.
They aren't inherently a force for liberation or living deliberately, but neither is sitting home reading, and neither is talking with others, and neither is having a really shitty job. Many people have shitty jobs in this society, but don't automatically know how to see beyond the ideologies we're immersed in. These ideologies make it seem as if this is simply the nature of 'life itself.'
It isn't a question of 'believing in it' with regard to education, as if it were a religion. It's a matter of what people study and who they learn with and how they use it in their lives.
I will add that I never limit education to what goes on in formal classrooms. I educated my own kids outside the schools. And there is a great deal of education that can be had from lived experience as a worker or from economic struggles or from being terribly oppressed. And material forces impel the working-classes to be the revolutionary forces because of their position. But there is little basis for the idea that we don't need any education. And it's not a Marxist position.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing: I think that we do need to work at creating far more education in other settings beyond the college setup - groups of people studying and talking and writing together.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you taking time to write some detailed responses; but you are simplifying my position (since, it's true, I don't take time to elaborate my position....would require way too much time and effort on my part, and would require citing too many texts, references, etc to effectively elaborate). One thing I don't understand is why it is imperative for us (by us, I just mean, people, not you and me) to have the same beliefs? I don't believe in education in capitalist society as a unique or special place; it's not a Marxist position, it's my own belief, informed heavily by materialism and many specific thinkers, including obviously Marx's own texts. Since I don't believe in education as a unique or special place, I also don't believe in having either to defend or promote it; it's simply one place among countless others where learning, thinking, reflecting occurs. Why draw an ahistorical conclusion from my comment, and inaccurately describe my position as saying "we don't need education."? I don't believe in idealising institutional education in capitalist society. Period. Certain classrooms can have whatever they have going on; the form is the same. For me, it's a matter of accepting what kinds of places they actually are (in general), and not what I would want them to be or what I think they should be. But, again, I really don't understand why it is necessary that you and I (this time, literally you and I), have the same beliefs. We've been informed by different things in our life, and continue to be so. We're not going to have the same beliefs. I have no desire to convince you, or anyone, of them, since I think that is really not where convictions come from anyway.
ReplyDeleteWho said we have to have the same beliefs? There is no one capable of enforcing that. I'm not really sure what you even mean by that, but at any rate, you wrote your thoughts, and I have responded with mine. That's what any dialogue is going to be, and everyone in always informed by different things in their lives, but stopping there would only leave people in postmodernism's "positionality" which I think is a dead end.
ReplyDeleteEducation is not even a place; it's an activity which occurs in all kinds of spaces. There is no need to idealize institutional education or various other forms. It's a matter of what we do with it. I am not saying this to "convince" you, but to express my own beliefs about it, just as you are doing.
Anyway, Amir, I never said in my blog post: "Hey, everyone, you need to hurry and enroll in college!" I said quite the opposite - that going to a university or getting literature degrees aren't by any stretch the only way for a person to live deliberately. I explained my own experience and what two really excellent professors shared with me about why it matters to work at what is difficult.
ReplyDeleteI do value my education - very much so. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done this. I would have done something else. That is part of what it is to try to live deliberately, which is obviously not some pure state people can attain, but is rather an effort that is worth making. It is the same with having kids, writing, or anything that we put our deep care into. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I hear what you're saying. For me, I don't value education in institutions over other things, per se; but, it's one of the remaining places in this society where people are at least given the place (if not always the time) to think critically. Ultimately, that is why I return to institutionalized education. Not to mention the fact that outside of the academy I would hardly find anyone to engage with the texts/ideas I am interested in studying. But, even at that, there's not very many academics who are engaged with the ideas I am interested in; since post-modernism and other theories are all the rage. Even the way Marxism is engaged with in academic studies is not necessarily my persuasion. There's a lot of nuances...there's no monolithic Marxism...but in the academy it's supposed to be like a "thing" you can study and "apply" to literature. Frankly, many of these professors have never even read a word of Marx--beyond perhaps the conventional "Communist Manifesto."
ReplyDeleteAlso, on a side topic, there are way too many PhD candidates who do it for all sorts of reasons that the PhD is not designed for: they do it to postpone work; they do it because they're not sure what else to do; they do it because they think it's the only thing to do; they do it because they think it will make them smart...but the PhD is really not meant for any of these things...even merely a love of or passion for literature or philosophy is not truly what the PhD is for...it is not even for teaching...that, even, is not its purpose...which leaves academic study really for a very limited purpose and function...which, eventually, will disappear completely and reappear in a different form.
ReplyDeleteI haven't met any professors who teach Marxist theory but have only read "The Communist Manifesto." Those who actually teach it have read a lot of Marx. As far as those who aren't Marxist theorists, I don't see much of a way to know how much Marx they've read, but I know that in our graduate program, most people read quite a bit more than just "Communist Manifesto" just in the regular theory course.
ReplyDeleteThe PhD isn't really set in stone in terms of what it's meant for. I mean, we can say it's meant for "research," but in terms of what that research is supposed to be, that ranges widely and includes ways of teaching literature and writing. And in literature, teaching is always going to be a big part of the picture because it's such an integral part of what the person has to do. Also, there is a big difference in how PhD professors function at different kinds of academic institutions (four year state schools; research 1 universities; community colleges; smaller liberal arts colleges...
I think the best professors do have a passion for literature or whatever their topic is. If someone doesn't have that, what's the point? I mean, the job outlook in the academic humanities is horrible right now, so there's not much reason to continue if there's not a deep love for the topic and a belief in the value of what that person is working on and toward.
To be honest, Amir, I have a hard time talking about this topic with you because it's something I care about a great deal, and have spent years of effort on, not just the two years in my master's program, but the six semesters at U of M and the two at Palomar and the four at AV College. And then there are the many years I put into educating my own kids, and various other efforts to teach and learn. I guess I am idealistic about education, in the sense that I love what it can be when it's at its best.
ReplyDeleteI love it for its own sake, as we love other experiences, and then I love it also for its potential effect on us and how we engage with others. I know that not everyone has those experiences, and I wish that they could. But my experiences years ago at AV College changed my life, and some of my experiences at U of M did, also. My independent study with Dan in fall 2009 or being in his American Lit class, or most of my classes in my grad program, or August's political science courses my first time at U of M, or other things...
I just had my MA conversation on Thursday, and it was so wonderful. I loved that the three of them took the time to read my essay carefully and gave me great suggestions and had such a warm, caring talk with me about it. I loved when my advisor had me go out while they talked, and then came out to say, "Congratulations. You have an MA." I love that he let me be in this theory course even though I couldn't officially take any more courses, or that he let me in his other course in the fall when it just made extra work for him. I love that Dan was willing to work with me on my honors thesis from far away just because he knew how much it meant to me, though he got no pay for it and it took up more of his limited time. I love that you and I became friends at U of M and used to read each other's work, and that Delaine and I became friends, and met for passionate (yes, even idealistic) discussions for lunch every week.
I can't unravel the meaning of all those experiences and the massive effort I put in and that others put in all the time. I can't unravel these efforts, not only because it would hurt, but because it wouldn't ring true for me. I am not saying you even mean it that way. I am just saying that is how it hits me and what I end up responding to on some level.
Well, sorry, that was probably overly sensitive. I guess I am torn: on one hand, I believe that people should be able to discuss a topic and not make it off limits because they may have strong feelings about it. On another hand, if they are to speak honestly, at times they may have to acknowledge that they do have strong feelings about it, that it is a topic that they aren't engaging with at mostly only an intellectual level. But I don't think those strong feelings should be used to somehow override or silence someone else, and that is why I say, my last response was probably overly sensitive.
DeleteI guess one problem is that when we talk about whether "education in capitalist society" can be "a force for liberation, or for living deliberately," we are already in subjective waters. Some questions I can think of are: what is meant be "liberation" or "living deliberately"? Not saying those need to be answered here, but that they are inherent to the discussion. If we mean on a personal level, then one person can't answer that question for everyone. Even on a larger scale level, it depends on what is meant by those terms. Universities have been sites of major resistance because they are a place where large numbers of people come together and sometimes organize and make demands. The Sandanista Revolution in Nicaragua, in the last 1970s, grew out of a student movement.
Educational institutions are places where the contradictions of capitalism become especially visible in a multitude of ways. Is the learning valuable for its own sake, or only as a means to an end? Does everyone have a right to continue learning or should it be a sorting mechanism? Should it be free, or should it cost money, and what does it say if rich students graduate with no student loan debt but lower income ones have to shoulder $50,000 or $100,000 of debt? What happens if so many people have that debt that they finally demand release from it? What happens when people see the huge chasm between certain values that are taught in various ways through that education and the actual practice? These can be deeply upsetting to people, but they can also move people to action. They can make them confront what has been so normalized in their society.
I also didn't explain what I meant about having a hard time talking about these things with you specifically. What I meant was that I know we have very different opinions about education, including what is possible in college classes. We've discussed this issue a lot of times outside of this blog. As I said earlier, I have strong emotions about it, especially at certain times, as in when I'm getting ready to graduate and feel this mix of being very thankful that I got to do this, very sad to have to end it instead of being able to just keep on learning with a community of other learners, and very unsure about what I want to or mostly what I even can do next. I mean, maybe it would be like if I'd just given birth to one of my kids a couple of days ago, and someone visited and said they don't think having kids is particularly meaningful or special or worthwhile. There are times in life when it is hard to engage with someone on a topic without high emotions being part of it. And maybe that should be part of any analysis anyway, because our emotions can't be disentangled from the rest of it, especially if we're talking about something like what is liberating or what contributes to someone 'living deliberately.'
Anyway, so I just wanted to try to explain a little better.
I understand....of course that's great that you were affected and loved your times in the higher education...I too wish that more people could experience that...partly I come at it from a different place because my own experience with higher education has mostly been the opposite...I didn't enjoy...I didn't love it...I didn't have good experiences...I didn't feel challenged to think...there was only one or possibly two professors I could say that really affected me....otherwise, nearly everything else I did, I read outside of the classes....including poetry....so, yeah, of course our personal experiences come into the reasons we have, in addition to the theoretical aspects...take care...
ReplyDeleteJust read your comment after posting the one above it. Yeah, I can understand what you're saying. It's true; it is a huge problem that it really doesn't come through for enough people in the ways that it should. And there are aspects to it that are at odds with the better parts (the intense pressure at times, the grading, the burnout that teachers and/or students may feel, the large classes without personal contact, and the bad fits at times. And it can be alienating. You take care, too.... Thanks for going back and forth about this.
ReplyDeletethanks for your replies...yeah, i don't mean for you to take it personally...but i can see how the timing of the conversation could be difficult for you because you are graduating now...i think it does go back to our different relations to higher education, for example i don't have attachments to higher education and i don't have many memories to look fondly back on....so, for me, it's like i just have a more loose relation to it...but, i also have to say, that after i graduated last year and left, that i felt depressed for a few weeks...so obviously i did--i do--care about the things i studied and the few relationships i formed....but life outside of academic study has been just as important...and just as fulfilling...i think one can make a life in many different ways...and i just don't privelege academia over others...it's a job...like being a doctor...there are both obligations and rewards...
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this. Capitalist logic always has us see what we do in academia or health care as a job - something we do for money - in accord with the logic of exchange-value. I like what Adorno has written about resisting that logic. And I love what Badiou says about acting according to the limits of the possible. He gives the example of a doctor confronted with a patient who will die if she does not treat that patient, but who she most likely can make well if she treats him. If the patient has no insurance and thus according to the system, is not eligible for treatment, will she treat? Badiou says that if she maintains fidelity to 'the event' (the moment or development of her decision care for others in this role), she will treat him according to the fullest limits of the possible.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I believe with regard to work in academia as well. I try my hardest to not have it reduced to capitalist logic. Resistance means not behaving in full accord with that logic. For me, even choosing to get a degree in literature and go on to grad school in literature is part of that resistance. I did not want to twist and turn myself into whatever form would make good money in this destructive system. Right now, drone studies is thriving. People who haven't even finished associate's degrees are getting jobs making well over $100,000 a year to kill others in distant places, as if it is a video game of sorts.
I think we have already enacted resistance by choosing to study what we have. It is vital to recognize that, not in overly glowing terms, but because these things always help us see that we all want more than what capitalist logic calls for. And I see teachers like Dan and Dr C. (my advisor) as enacting resistance to exchange value and also treating it to the limits of the possible when they do things for the intrinsic value of what they study and because of their relationships with others they teach and learn with. When Dr C has his theory group in the summer, totally disconnected from the institution, it is a kind of resistance. When Dan worked with me on my thesis from afar after he left, that too resisted being forced to perform according to capitalist logic.
Dominant ideology only categorizes those kinds of actions as either self-serving so that they revert back to exchange-value - in rather cynical assumptions that they must be getting something out of it to advance their careers or as pure altruism as charity. But David Graeber notes that in human economies, our actions aren't sliced apart like that. We do things as part of our relationships with people, and we are who they are -- I am not just 'I' but 'we' -- and this is what mutual aid really is.
Academia is a unique space - not the only unique one - but one far different in its potential and forms of resistance than a profit-seeking corporation whose very form and logic is by law to make profit above and beyond any other goal. Administrators are treating academia now as a profit-making enterprise and as a way to create lots of high paying jobs for themselves, but that is always at odds with so much of what we really try for and want in our education. We want deep relationships, deep learning, care for each other and for our labors. And we want to understand more about our condition, because it hurts to not understand. It hurts to understand, but not understanding is far worse, and it is a kind of violence to keep most people out of these educational efforts. I know because I was in so many ways structurally kept out for years, and because so many people I've been close to have also lived with that pain.
I don't believe it's fair to take for granted what we have (education) and decide that it doesn't mean that much, so others don't need it anyway. It isn't what it should be (institutional education) -- that is for sure the case -- but that is why, as with other workplaces, we have to fight for what it should be and what we already know on some level that we want.