TV consumption

some days (particularly saturdays) i just need to take in hours of mindless TV. it isn't until i can literally feel the brain cells start to fall away that i will get up and start my day. so far today i've watched:

-tennis: Kim Clijsters v. Svetlana Kuznetsova the J&S Cup Warsaw, Poland.
-Vh1's top 20 countdown
-the last 15 minutes of Shallow Grave
-a few minutes of each morning show
-a few minutes of the Travel Channel's Haunted London
-a few minutes of MTv's Made

it feels like it has been years since i've actually seen music videos--more than one in a row, in their entirety. maybe that is because they don't really show them anymore. it scares me a little--how sucked-in i am by the frangmented images and flashing lights. i can just stare at the screen--slightly comatose. plus i've been so detached and distanced from what is popular in pop music these days. i feel as though it used to be the center of my universe for so long...it feels a little weird to not know who the killers are. or not to know that gwen stefani ain't a hollaback girl.... maybe i'm better off....

now i really need to "get serious." it is the end of the semester, after all.

postponed exam girl:(

So it is official. I met with my committee yesterday. I won't be taking my exams in two weeks as originally planned. I am just not ready. I want to write and articulate more about this lack of "readiness," but for now I just need to retreat a bit. I need to take care of some grading and go see FeverPitch. Then maybe I can start to sort things out...here and elsewhere.

no academic "fun" for the exam girl

Today the CHATS conference is going on at SUNY. I'm feeling a little left out. I'd love to be there, but I need to have an revised outline of my dissertation chapters out to Rosemary and Bret by tomorrow evening, and I have stacks of student papers just waiting for my attention. Sometimes it is so hard to balance. I was at the "kick-off" of the conference last night for the JAWBONE reading, which I hosted, with readers Kazim Ali and Judy Johnson. The reading was followed by a fabulous round-table discussion on (inter)disciplinarity and the public sphere--organized, in part, by my wonderful friend Tara. It was a wonderful experience of interacting with friends and strangers--graduate students from both across the country and the oceans. Tonight everyone will be at DeJohn's for Judith Johnson's second reading of the weekend, "What ‘Is’ Is When there is no ‘There’ There." Again, I'll be home grading papers on 1984. But I'm not bitter.... No, but I am grateful that I was part of last night's discussion, even if I didn't actually participate--'cuz the heart races and the sweat formulates. No, I just come home and talk my girlfriend's ear off as she falls into sleep.

consumer/producer and re/production (texts)

Many composition scholars (and others in education, cultural studies, etc.) have argued for the goal of changing students from passive consumers to active participants in the writing classroom (and their educational process as a whole). "They" have made it sound as though, if we remove students from their role as consumer, we have somehow found "the answer" (to a more informed, thoughtful citizenry; a more decentered, and therefore, less "corporate" or capitalistic classroom). Some, Alan France, among them, have argued that student texts need to become "something" more tangible, more purposeful than simply a grade in the gradebook. He argues for the publication of students texts. And yet, taking them out of that consumer role (which ultimately is actually impossible--they *are* paying for these classes; we are being paid to teach them) and "empowering" them or "centering" them, is only to put them in a new role within the University setting--that of the worker (which they also were always already--it's just a matter of emphasis). So for me, this is not simply a question of consumer or producer, it is a question of re/production.

foreign language translation exam

I just got home from the taking the required foreign translation exam. I think my brain has about reached the saturation point for today, and yet I can't stop thinking, planning, printing, writing, e-mailing, etc. I guess that is kind of a good thing, though I feel like my productivity must be a wee bit on the shabby side at this point. I have a very full day ahead of me tomorrow, including a meeting with Bret to go over the revision of my outline for my dissertation chapters. I should get ironing and organizing. But no, I want to say more about the exam. I think that my reader will have an entertaining experience, as there are complete sentences in there that make NO SENSE. non sense. nonsense. I "translated" two pages entitled "Madame Bovary ou Le Livre sur Rien." This is lit. stuff that I can't even understand in English, much less French. *Sigh* At least I now have a general idea of what I'm in for, and maybe I can work with a tutor over the summer.

textual identities

In studying the noticeable silence within composition studies surrounding class as a writing/classroom issue, I've become hyper-aware (neurotically maybe) of this little classification system found on the back upper left-hand cover of books. I'm not sure if there is a name for this bizarre, seemingly arbitrary labeling system, nor do I understand who chooses the categories. What system is used for this? But I do find it interesting...:

Bruce Horner's Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique = "Literary Criticism": This is one of the few books that actually argues for a correlation between the teaching of writing and the material conditions of that teaching/writing. He does not shy away from concepts of labor, work, and class (even if the Library of Congress subject headings do). Yet, this book, that clearly addresses composition within its title is classified (somehow, somewhere, by somebody) as lit. crit. ?

??? Where/when does the split happen between socioeconomic? As in, when is it "just" social? When is it "just" economic? I only ask this--driven by the Library of Congress subject headings that simply refer to the book as addressing "social aspects" and "social conditions"--What does that mean???

Donna LeCourt's Identity Matters: Schooling the Student Body in Academic Discourse = "Education": While LeCourt, focuses on identity politics in a more general sense that Horner does, her text still manages to address "class" issues. She even labels herself as working class and writes from that perspective. But again, while the book is devoted to the subject of writing and the writing classroom, its "identity" is not aligned with composition.

Lisa Ede's Situating Composition: Composition Studies and Politics of Location< = "Rhetoric and Composition": Indeed Ede's text proudly professes, in the upper-left-hand corner of the back cover, to be a text situated within the field of rhetoric and composition. Ede who begins the book by making claims about situating composition materially does not mention class, economics, materialism, Raymond Williams, Karl Marx (and here I am generalizing, but still...). Whatever sort of materiality she is writing from, within, or about is never made explicit.

Am I just a conspiracy theorist here? Maybe. But I doubt it. Something is up.

which western feminist icon are you?

You are Judith Butler! Your postmodern queer theory
has shaken up people's ideas of gender,
sexuality, and sex. Your work has blurred lines
between what it means to be a womyn and what it
means to be a man. Queens and transbois all
over the world worship your Birkenstocks!


Which Western feminist icon are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

student texts and Bartholomae's prompts

Composition studies/theory tends to focus on the way that skills-based courses are complicit in capitalism and has tended to view social constructionist folks as somehow outside of that or probing it in some analytical way. But the question still remains--Why Foucault? Why Freire? Why do we prompt them to think like a teacher? (By this I’m referencing Bartholomae’s Ways of Reading and its prompts/assignments that have students “pretend you’re Foucault”; “think like a teacher.”) Also, wrapped up in this is simply the fact that a textbook with Foucault and Freire sells. Another part of this is the fact that while situating the student writer in the context of a long line of other thinkers/writers (as opposed to the autonomous creative individual of the expressivists), we have maintained student text production as “useless” nothing more than an assignment to get a grade. It doesn’t operate in the world the way a text by Foucault does.

beyond "yes"

i'm sitting here going back and forth and in circles in my head over what could be a huge problem with my project, but maybe not...the more i think about it. i'm thinking about how i'm situating my project very specifically within the site/context of the corporate University. and i'm claiming that this economic base of the University is directly affecting the writing classroom. furthermore, i'm claiming that composition studies/theory may still be in complicit in this relationship--even after various arguments and pedagogical theories said to have moved away from it. but my problem lies with the specificity of University as economic base. i mean is the University only one formation that is shaping subjectivity in the writing classroom? i guess that ultimately that is a key question for me. and now i'm stuck. damn. i mean, yes, i want to argue yes, but i guess i have to work on the answer--beyond yes.

the apprentice

The season--The Apprentice's third season--I began watching the Donald Trump "reality" show. I started watching because the concept had changed from gendered team division to division based on education (it is not street smarts versus book smarts)--and this idea very much interested me (for various reasons). Anyway, I've seen two episodes, and I find myself getting very much irritated by this show founded on the greatness of capitalism. On Thursday night, the winning team (book smarts this week) got to go for dinner on Steve Forbes' yacht--a boat bigger than most (if not all) of their homes. As they floated past the statue of liberty, the wind blew through their hair, the lights around them twinkled, and some of the contestants were nearly moved to tears. Here, they said, was a man whose passion was the American Dream. Here, they said, was a man who knew better than anybody the tenets that this country was founded on. As, he flew away in his private helicopter, the contestants wished to have one of their own one day. This, they told viewers, is the embodiment of what this country means. I want to throw up and scream and pull out my hair, and yet, I'll watch again next week. And though, I resist it (mentally and maybe even in writing), I still contribute to its ratings. And even though I read their vision of the "American Dream" as a sham, I am still sucked into the drama of the show.

the transfomative comma

So the other day (Wednesday) a number of us from the department are having lunch. We were talking about the teaching of writing. After reading Susan Miller's book (Textual Carnivals) and John Schilb's article "Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, and Composition," it was interesting to see the way that even the most well-meaning and progressive of instructors/professors continue to view (inadvertently I hope) composition as a service course--as Schilb puts it "a plodding servant of other disciplines" (apparently--according to this lunch conversation--also as a servant to the English Studies). Composition is often seen as doing its best job when it focuses on basic writing skills. It's interesting because I know that these same professors see the classroom as an inherently political space, and yet when they lament the fact that their students can't write they say things like: "Why don't they know how to write? They don't know MLA or proper sentence structure. We should have a required composition class to teach them how to write. What am I supposed to do teach them to write in the middle of a literature class?" The implications in these statements are numerous: Certainly it is implied that skills-and-drills should be the focus of the composition classroom so that literature instructors don't have to "waste their time" with such things. It seems as though the implication could be that literature teaches will cover the politics, the exploration, the "enlightenment" of their students. They will take care of opening student eyes (so to speak), while writing teachers simply prepare students for those more intellectually rigorous tasks. And yet, I'm sure these same professors if and when assigned to teach writing make it into the political and contextual/politically contextual task that it is. I'm sure these instructors, when teaching writing, would want to/need to stress the interrelations of discourse, culture, and society. Because what is also being overlooked in these statements is their root(s). Where does this push for "knowing how to write come from"? What does it mean to produce students who "know how to write"? And within what kind of system is this particular production of students overwhelmingly helpful? We are producing students en masse as workers for capitalism. They will be easy to train and efficient producers because they know how to write. They may not know who to think, but they'll know how to write--perfect. In terms of the University--"sales" will look good as student consumers (and their parents) can purchase necessary skills in order that they can enter the workplace.

BUT, then during the lunch coversation, Helen brought to the table this wonderfully subversive idea--a semester-long course on the comma!!! In Fiske's book Understanding Popular Culture I've been reading about the ways that resistance always embodies the thing that it is resisting, and the comma course seems a marvelous example of this. Present a study of slowness, deliberate close-reading, a study of politics through language-use, an examination of society through the use of punctuation--present this in the "disguise" of a back-to-basics skill course. I love it! It's brilliant. This could be just the thing that composition needs. I can also envision arguments against this idea of resistance as manifesting the thing it is resisting, but we need to pay close attention to the way that capitalism tends to subsume resistance for its own purposes. Consumer capitalism appropriates the things that tried to be antifoundationalist. And so it is possible that donning a similar "disguise" to the one that capitalism wears, we may be able to avoid that within this example of a semester-long comma study.

While thinking about all of this today at Uncommon Grounds, I was looking around at the artwork adorning the walls. The contemporary pieces sported images of men in suits placed against funky, slightly psychedelic backgrounds. On the pieces, overlapping with the images, were words: "My mom's proud of my corporate merger" and "Capitalism is contagious--catch the fever." And I had to wonder whether these pieces were subversive or were they just art. By this I mean that "As Peter Burger observes, 'If an artist today signs a stove pipe and exhibits it, theat artist certainly does not denounce the art market but adapts to it....since nwo the protest of the historical avant-garde against art as institution is accepted as art.'" If, in teaching writing, we can circumvent the avant garde, but supposedly going "back-to-basic," maybe we can avoid corporate appropriation. Maybe?

subject, space, and specificity

I feel soooo tired right now--still recovering from yesterday, and I must leave for campus shortly, but I just want to try to force myself to flesh out some ideas (which I probably won't be able to, but...).

In John Schilb's essay "Cultural Studies, Postmodernism, and Composition" he writes that theorists in both cultural studies and postmodernism stress that "discourse operates i particular conjunctures: in other words, that specific discourses specifically affect specific people at specific times in specific places." I know that this idea alone could be debated, but for the purposes of my cultural studies project, I want to attempt to fill in the "specifics" w/ regard to composition in order to better see what specifics I still need to explore: The specific discourse is academic discourse (or I might get even more specific and say the academic discourse as found in the community of a writing classroom--or something to that effect). The specific people are the students in the time and place of a corporate university setting.

"In criticizing Jameson, Spivak calls for attempts to "specify the postmodern space-specific subject production." Is my project my attempt at doing this I wonder.... The writing classroom housed within the contemporary university producing student subjects.

Many days I just want to avoid dealing with all the PoMo arguments. I mean if NOBODY even knows what it is/what it means, how can little old me deal with it?

And yesterday things just got worse after talking with Mark about this death of the subject, which I know nothing about. If the subject is dead, then who or what am I dealing with in this writing classroom?

old news in the field of composition studies

In my head I am trying so hard to make all of this (the cultural studies and the composition studies) come together, but it's not. I figured it would be easier in writing. Not really. Maybe if I don't write in a way that makes sense. Maybe if I write messy it'll clean it self up--magically.

As Susan Miller addresses in Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition, there are really two things going on here: 1) the status of composition classes and studies within English departments--that is, marginalized, subordinate, "the women in the basement" (as Miller describes it) and 2) the subjectivity of the student subject in the writing classroom--that is univocal, self-contained, writing intransitively ("as, to, and about nothing in particular"). The two, of course, clearly reflect each other. Miller writes, "What is needed additionally is the articulation and critique already suggested, disclosing connections between specific social and textual superstructures and highlighting how writing situations construct their participant writers before, during, an after they undertake any piece of writing" (198). So I want to look at these "social and textual superstructures"--the social superstructures I see as #1 listed above--the context of the writing classroom as situated within the department AND the larger context of the contemporary University--a University I eventually hope to argue as corporatized (in more ways than one). What are the textual superstructures? Maybe the relationship between (academic--in this particular instance) discourse and power?

I suppose that it is in these instances that I see cultural studies as--not necessarily saving the day--but being helpful and relevant to pedagogy/theory within composition studies. (This isn't what I thought I was setting out to do--which was to look at compositions (mis)appropriation of cultural studies and the ways in which composition studies perpetuates academic capital. I suppose the latter part still fits into what I'm addressing here, but the first part seems to say that composition studies hasn't appropriated cultural studies enough .

A bigger gap: A bigger split seems to exist between Miller's take on the subordinated role of composition studies and arguments that John Fiske (and others) make about the role of subordinated positions within society. (Or on second thought--maybe they are both saying the same thing. I'm not sure right now). Fiske's exploration of cultural studies, in his book Understanding Popular Culture, focuses a lot on the power of subordinated groups. He writes, "A text that is to be made into popular culture must, then, contain both the forces of domination and the opportunities to speak against them, the opportunities to oppose or evade them from subordinated, but not totally disempowered, positions" (25). In the case of compositition we have two supposedly subordinated positions--the student and the field/discipline (I have to use field and discipline interchangeably for now). Sooooo....let's see: If I understand Miller's argument(s) correctly she is holding composition teachers accountable for perpetuating the "negative myth" about composition's "low" status in English departments "by assuming as assigned self-sacrificial cultural identity." To move out of this "by precisely acknowledging how it is a culturally designated place for political action" (186). Okay, so I guess she is implementing a kind-of cultural studies framework in this way. She and Fiske are on the same page so to speak. Ultimately, it seems, she is arguing for an active politicization of composition both inside and outside the classroom w/ the one reflecting and influcencing the other. And yet, I feel, this is kind of old news. I believe composition has made moves to become increasingly politicized (here is where critique needs to come in). Ah, I'm getting nowhere new with this. I could cry.... "An actually improved status depends on openly consolidating the field's internal, existing resistances to the cultural superstructure that first defined it" (186). But what are these "resistances" Miller speaks of? And we must take into account Fiske's idea that resistance must embody the thing that it is resisting. So what does this look like in terms of composition and the writing classroom? I feel so dumb. The answer is already out there. Well, first of all, the composition classroom has always been the sight for "civilizing" incoming students, initiating them into the world(s) of academic discourse(s), and "regulating otherwise questionable, nontraditional entrants to the academy" (187). So here we're (back to) using writing for social change, using writing to subvert some corporate University dominant paradigm, but again, this is old news. I need to be coming up with the new news here. And I'm failing terribly.

marxism and lack of guarantees--manipulating language

In looking back a couple of posts, I have this total "duh!" moment: I still need to read Marx as a primary text in order to answer my questions re: Larrain and Hall's readings of Marx. *rolls eyes*

I left off on Hall's use of more recent theorists/theories in relation to Marxism. In this regard Hall tends to address theories of language and discourse. This depends on language as the vehicle for ideology. Language is not fixed; it is multi-referential. Hall argues that this is implicit in Marx's beliefs about market exchange--"It would be distinctly odd if there were no category allowing us to think, speak, and act in relation to it." Hall believes that the two approaches to understanding theory (discursive versus...what is the other approach called? materialist???) are not necessarily contradictory, as the latter could be said to be about displacing the discourse of the bourgeois political economy and to replace it with a discourse that fits into the Marxist schema.

I think that Hall goes on to argue for this discursive approach because he feels it "means that our grasp is concrete and whole, rather than a thin, one-sided abstraction." He says this because "the economic relations themselves cannot prescribe a single, fixed and unalterable way of concpetualizing it"--it being the market. The market, he argues, can be "'expressed' within different ideological discourses. And while I tend to agree with him, I feel as though his argument is a bit flimsy in that it is kind of an illusion itself--a slight of hand. He takes issue with Marx's use of the terms "real" and "false," arguing that it is misleading in an all-or-nothing way between True and False, and yet he doensn't support Marx's use of them in such a way. How to say Marx didn't allow for the variations of meaning in "true"/"false" (i.e. "partial" and "adequate") that Hall argues for?

Hall follows this by dismantling the idea of ruling ideas as being those of the ruling class. He does this by referencing Laclau's work, which claims that classes are not the subjects of fixed and ascribed class ideologies. Laclau also argued that particular ideas and concepts do not belong exclusively to one particular class. This argument is also built of ideas of language and discourse. Again, returning to the idea of langauge as fluid and "multi-accentual," language is constantly intersecting variously oriented social classes. Volosinov argues, "Sign becomes the arena of the class struggle." Hall writes, "This approach replaces the notion of fixed ideological meanings and class-ascribed ideologies witht he concepts of ideological terrains of struggle and the task of ideological transformation." But Hall also tries to hold onto the problem of the class structuring of ideology (he doesn't want to throw the baby out with the bath water and seems careful not to do this). And he achieves this by drawing on Gramsci who argued that "ideological struggle does not take place by displacing one whole, integral, class-mode of though with another wholly-formed system of ideas." Hall writes:

Certainly it is not a form of vulgar materialism to say that, though we cannot ascirbe dieas to class position in certain fixed combinations, ideas do arise from and may reflect the material conditions in which social groups and classes exist.

I like this take, though I do see that it relies entirely upon the arguments of Laclau, which can also be argued against. Hall sticks with Gramsci in his reading of Marx's relationship between ruling ideas/ruling classes by writing that this relationship is best understood through Gramsci's concept of hegemonic domination, which Hall makes clear is about the process of attaining that domination. This historical bloc which has acquired power is the object of the exercise.

Hall closes "The problem if ideology: marxism without guarantees" by stating what the economic cannot do:

• provide the contents of the particular thoughts of particular social classes or groups at a specific time
• fix or guarantee for all of time which ideas will be made use of by which classes
• effect an final closure on the domain of ideology
• cannot secure correspondences between particular classes according to their place within a system

In the end he puts it this way: It would be preferable to think of "materialism" through determination by the economic in the first instance (as opposed to the last). Again, I like this idea and its escape from the reductionism and determinism of an orthodox Marxist perspective.

24 hours each day

is not enough for me. I feel as though I should be reading every waking moment, as that is what Alisa did. And yet, as part of my project, my work, my research, and my own sanity I feel the need to study the culture to which I refer when I say I'm doing working in "cultural studies." I can't "do" cultural studies without paying attention to the culture. And yet I can't keep up. Not enough time to take in both independent media and mainstream media. I need to pay attention to lefty pop culture, as well as Mtv and VH1. And sometimes my brain just gets tired from reading everything I see. Sometimes I just want to turn off, be passive, let it all wash over me without judging and analyzing. I don't read sports, so there is one refuge, but while I like football, it is not my most favorite of seasons. And if I'm not careful, I could easily start reading athletics as well. But I suppose that is enough complaining for one day. Ultimately though my exam reading suffers.

I honestly don't think I am going to pull off this PhD thing. It doesn't feel possible to me at this point. I read soooo slowly. I digest things soooo slowly. My mind is not the mind of a scholar/hard-core academic. To sit down right now and write about Stuart Hall seems an insurmountable task. To make sense of the various arguments over ideology; to understand the nuanced differences between negative and neutral versions of ideology. It's all too much for my meager little mind. And I dream of being creative--an energy I feel I've truly lost, and after playing "Beyond Balderdash" recently, I think it's true. I dream of being able to create and write whatever I want to write--essays, polemic, poetry, memoir, and blurred combinations of them all.

Anyway, I feel as though I don't have a lot of choice, but to head toward taking these exams, yet there is nothing in me that feels as though I am going to pass them. Or even be able to do a reasonably good job at them. I know this is the entirely wrong attitude, but it is where I am at.

In "The problem of ideology: marxism without guarantees," Hall outlines the various debates surrounding ideology. In addition, he is acknowldeging to what extent he sees Marxism as "scientific," and in doing so, defines "science" based on his own terms.

In addition to all the confusion surrounding the myriad definitions of ideology within Marxism is the fact that this essay by Hall is followed by an essay by Jorge Larrain, "Stuart Hall and the Marxist concept of ideology." So in the first essay, Hall insists (calls it a fact) that "Marx most often used 'ideology' to refer specifically to the manifestations of bourgeois thought" and that ruling ideas are those of the ruling class. In the next essay, Larrain insists that Marx did not mean this by ideology. He argues that Marx's ideology is a neutral one and therefore not attributable necessarily to dominant ideas. Who am I to believe? I would lean toward Larrain's arguments, but Hall does say "most often"--while a minor statement, this is not to be overlooked. In my mind it makes Hall's arguments and Larrain's arguments much more similar than they first appear. For Larrain himself admits the flux in Marx's use of the term ideology, and as he points out in addressing Capital, according to Marx, the operation of the market, which "creates a world of appearances which deceive people," was constituted by "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham" (individuality). And "these four priniciples were for the Marx the basis of bourgeois political ideology."

Shit. I think I got lost in my own argument--this happens often. I was trying to prove the point that as Hall argues, Marx did use ideology to refer to manifestations of bourgeois thought, but maybe Larrain does agree with that fact, and only argues against the Hall's idea that Marx sees ruling ideas those of the ruling class. But aren't those two statements equivalent? Or not?

Back to the ideology debates: So Marx's concept(s) of ideology most commonly come up against Althusser's (and later against the likes of Gramsci and Hall among others). First (apparently) Marx was criticized for not conceptualizing "the social formation as a determinate complex formation, composed of different practices." He has also been criticized for arguing that the superstructure is devoid of its own specific effects. Althusser moved away from Marx's ideas of "distorted ideas" and "false consciousness" to a more linguistic conception of ideology. Althusser wanted to address the question of how ideology becomes internalized within us, and he ultimately argued that ideology thinks us, or rather "interpellates" us. This was also (importantly to classical Marxists) a move away from the class structuring of ideology ("and its role in the generation and maitenance of hegemony") as argued (or not--depending on who you ask) by Marx.

Marx has also been criticized for his concepts of "distortions" and "false consciousness." Hall and other critics put forth questions about how/why some people can't "see"/recognize the "distortions," while we, the enlightened, can. He argues that the terms themselves are relatively uneffective and unhelpful, particularly in addressing questions of how "an economic structure generate[s] a guaranteed set of ideological effects." They also, as Hall puts it, "entaila peculiar view of the formation of alternative forms of consciousness....

Presumably, they arise as scales fall from people's eyes or as they wake up, as if from a dream, and , all at once, see the light, glance directly through the transparency of things immediately to their essential truth, their concealed structural processes.

Larrain seems to address these arguments when he explains that for Marx, "it is not the ruling class that directly dupes the working class; the very reality of the market relations creates a world of appearances which deceive people." This leads me to believe then that both the ruling and working classes are both "duped" by the reality of the market relations--a world created for "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham." But Hall asks a similar question, or rather, he makes a similar claim in regard to his criticism of "distortions" and "false consciousness": "They make both the masses and the capitalists look like...dopes." Maybe he's right....

Hall goes on to explain that "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham" are "the ruling ideological principles of the bourgeois lexicon...from this Marx extrapolated several of the theses which have come to form the contested territory of the theory of ideology." In order for me to follow all of this I must constantly keep in mind that for Marx "the hidden abode" of production is where the exploitation of waged labor and the expropriation of surplus value take place. (Marx through Hall): "The ideological categories 'hide' the underlying reality, and substitute for all that the 'truth' of market relations," which is what we "see" on the "surface." Hall claims that these theses of Marx contain "economic reductionism, a too simple correspondence between the economic and the political ideological; the true v. false, real v. distortion, 'true' consciousness v. false consciousness distinctions"--these Hall deems as the cardinal sins of classical marxism. Ultimately, though, Hall does want to retain much of Marx's profound insights, while "expanding it, using some of the theories of ideology developed in more recent times." And these are.... to be continued!

For me it is so important not to lose sight of that fact that because for Marx there is no "cloud of unknowing," (or at least this is what Larrain claims about Marx) then it is not critical ideas or science that will dispel ideological forms, it is political practices of transformation.

This is all I have time for right now. It is, after all, New Years Eve. Have a happy!

Shari and the Jewish Vote

Today I went to Shari's presentation. The title was something like--Is it a Jew or a Drag Queen, The Possibilities of Political Performance. I really enjoyed it. It was funny because she drew a total map of the entire presentation at the beginning of it, which is totally-Shari, and it made me giggle. But I have to say it helped. Overall though, I really found her juxtaposition of Butler and Marx, as read through the "I am the Jewish Vote" project, compelling. I appreciated her point that through Butler, the pin, could be read as "I am also the Jewish vote." But I especially found bold her assertion about the reductionist qualities of Marxism if read through this concept of the "Jewish vote." I refrained from clapping (and this is not to say that I am in complete agreement, but I like that she could tackle the argument in this way--from this unique perspective). Somehow, through Shari, the redeployment of power seemed more effectively subversive in some ways than Marx's material conditions.

evil is an empty signifier

Over Thanksgiving I found out that my mother is reading (well, she hadn't started reading it at the time but had borrowed it from the library) David Horowitz's 2003 book, Left Illusions. I started skimming some of it while visiting the fam and eating food, and last night I took a trip to my local library and took it out--so as to be prepared for any upcoming holiday conversations at the New Hampshire household. This morning I read his article "Marx's Manifesto: 150 Years of Evil," and I can't believe the way I've allowed this guy to get under my skin. This guy's writing is absurdly empty at times. He simply deems Marx as "wrong." He lists everything he's wrong about: the oppressive nature of the bourgeoisie, the increasing misery of the working class (I must have forgotten about all the happy looking teenage girls working in Honduran textile factories), about the increasing polarization of class (can anyone say second term in office?), and he goes on from there. Of course, he fails to provide any evidence for why Marx was supposedly so wrong about all of these things.

Allow me to work backward for one moment. At the end of his article, Horowitz tells us that "private property, which marxists want to abolish, has been proven by history to be the indispensable bulwark of human liberty, and the only basis for producing general economic prosperity and social wealth." Excuse me? Go tell that to the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia whose water supply has been privatized. I'm sure they feel very prosperous without access to water. Sounds like human liberty to me....

I will, however, concede to Horowitz on one point--that Marx's economics is outdated because of its severely polar class distinctions: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. I will agree with him that class has become more complex than this, more fluid, but it is what he does with this point that makes me crazy. He claims that this fluidity of class structure has "made a mockery of the core principles of marxist belief." I disagree. Fluidity does not remove conflict--conflict based on class differences--differences manifested by the existence of private property and corporate control. So while my concession is indeed that Marx's economic categories are too narrow in scope, I concede this because there is an existence of a "middle class" and there are changes in what might comprise the "bourgeois," not because as Horowitz claims (is the response of progressives everywhere) "it is necessary to confront race and gender oppression as well"--(side note: I do in fact believe this and this is one of my difficulties with orthodox Marxism and its entirely obsessive focus on class struggle....but that is for another entry...someday). And Horowitz is correct, Marx couldn't account for the rise of Trans-National Corporations in a way that has broken down and over-powered the nation state. Marx couldn't account for the political power we have handed over to these corporations that ignore any kind of borders and boundaries--allowing for an unchecked control. But these added complexities to Marx's economics do not erase the conflict and class issues that are still very much prevelant, very much harmful. (This rise of the TNC makes a mockery of Horowitz's statement that "when the power of the state is unchecked by private property and the power of private associations...public power becomes absolute, totalitarian." Who, may I ask is checking the private associations???)

Horowitz despairs over the fact that the core marxist model is still a potent force, that this model sees a just solution to social problems in "confrontation and political war," and that "this model is alive and well among radical feminists (this is actually wrong--you're wrong, David Horowitz--some radical feminists have been the most successful at deconstructing the traditional Marxist model)..., queer nationalists, and the rag-tag intellectual army of post-modernists, critical theorists...," and so on.... His use of militaristic language irritates me: political war, intellectual army.... Yeah, we tend to be a really violent lot. Look at us in our campus offices, look at us at peace protests--lots of bloodshed there. But Horowitz insists on focusing on Marxism as the bloodiest, most war-driven revolution in history, at the same time he can't seem to get his head out of the United States long enough to see the Honduran textile workers and the people of Bolivia I mentioned earlier.

the expressivists versus the poststructuralists--again

This morning I read David Bartholomae's response to Stephen North (published in PRE/TEXT in 1990). This essay/article was written in response to an earlier piece in PRE/TEXT that North had published--a piece I have not yet read but hope to get to today. While on many fronts I can sympathize with what Bartholomae has to say about North, this is probably because I am less than sympathetic to the expressivist movement, which Bartholomae deems North a part of. On my own knowledge of North (who is a faculty member in the department where I am working on my PhD) I wouldn't necessarily call him an expressivist, but this is all beside the point.

I guess the point is that this "war" between the expressivists and the social constructionists/poststructuralists has been going on within the field of composition for a long time, and the field is in need of a third party candidate--in my opinion. I mean the two end up negating each other in this weird way: The danger inherent within the expressivist paradigm is a writer who is too wedded, too close to the writing. It is a matter of the personal taking over in a way that erases difference (as Bartholomae points out) because it is all about "me." Bartholomae argues that teaching "late-adolescents that writing is an expression of individual thoughts and feelings...makes them suckers and...makes them powerless, at least to the degree that makes them blind to tradition, power and authority as they are present in language and culture." On the other hand, I have to ask if the social constructionists/poststructuralists--of whom Bartholomae could be representative--have really saved us from these dangers. Because as I see it, we are left with the dangers of a too detached and therefore too depoliticized writer. We are left with a neutralized form of the subject--divorced from agency that could potentially lend itself to political praxis and democratic society. Now this, of course, begs the question of what the purpose of academic discourse is. Is it about critical citizenship in a democracy, as I have put down here (there is that critical word again...problematic now, after the Michael Warner lecture, in its own way)? Or is it about something else (the possibilities are numerous)?

But also, in terms of the expressivist movement leaving students "blind to tradition, power and authority," I have argued elsewhere that Bartholomae does the same thing when he encourages students to "be Freire,""write like Foucault," "respond like a teacher," etc--thereby perpetuating tradition, power, and authority, without leaving students room to intervene in it in any way; without leaving students the opportunity to address the social constructedness of such writing assignments as Bartholomae gives in Ways of Reading.

resisting resistance

Henry Giroux has been critiqued by Marxists (as well, I am sure, by many other theorists/scholars). He has been accused of being complicit in the capitalist system because of his focus on race, gender, sexuality, ageism, etc. But in "Reading Texts, Literacy, and Textual Authority" he readily admits that meanings and experiences deemed legitimate "and what forms of reading and writing matter are largely determined by those groups who control the economic and cultural apparatuses of a given society." Is it because he uses the word "largely" controlled by..., rather than exclusively controlled by...that there is a problem? Later, Giroux makes the argument that "textual authority is about the struggle over culture fought out at the level of ideological representations and the exercise of institutional power." Is it a problem that he sees the struggle for culture fought out somewhere other than between the classes? Is it because Giroux's approach is not to change the "groups who control," but rather to "empower students" that there is a problem here?

He has been held accountable for using loaded words like "student empowerment." And yet again and again I am seduced by Giroux. I am called to action and passion through his words. And here I am almost ashamed to admit to this. What kind of trouble(s) can we get ourselves into when we start talking about empowering students, which in a rhetorical way always sounds so positive? I know the problems exist, but whenever I read Giroux I find myself forgetting what they are.

So I want to think about resistance. I want to resist and challenge resistance. Giroux is big on resistance--encouraging teachers to challenge ideology, commonsense, epitsteme, whatever you want to call it, through "adding new categories of analysis." I'm not sure what those categories would be per se, as analysis can be argued as the one of the most hegemonic concepts in the English department. Can we construct analysis specifically to be counterhegemonic?

Last week I went to an interesting lecture given by Michael Warner on the idea of "uncritical reading/thinking," and I would assume this could lead to "uncritical" writing. In his lecture, Warner addressed our obssession with critical thinking (i.e. thinking like us, thinking in a certain way as deemed appropriate/acceptable within the walls of higher education)--in this way critical reading/thinking has become the "norm"--it has, in fact, become ideological, invisible, commonsense. Uncritical reading/thinking is seen as unsystematic and naive (amateur). And Warner comes to question why we need to rule out and shut down these other kinds of reading/thinking. I know that there is a connection here somewhere....

Many students resist our need, desire, prompts to have them resist their culture--the one they know, the one that has comprised their experiences. And yet, we think we know better--we want to give them a consciousness so that they can rise up and revolt. This is an exaggeration, of course, and goals vary from classroom to classroom, but the first thing I need to do is question analysis. Ironically, Writing Analytically, is the title of the text I use in the class I'm currently teaching. Because writing analytically is somehow valuable, but what if it is not the only "best" way?

Giroux describes his approach as a "project of possibility," and that possibility is for constructing a student experience leading to critical (there is that word again) citizenship and democracy. These are admirable goals. The problem I'm having with all of this is getting bogged down in theorizing and defining. What is a citizen? Who is a citizen? How do we define citizenship?

Although the essay to which I'm referring ("Reading Texts, Literacy, and Textual Authority) was written in 1990, I get the feeling that Giroux still believes that the dominant view of English departments is that of a site for the dissemination of Western culture. Is this still a dominant view? And is it the view inside or outside of the department? Inside of outside of the institution?