Long Sunday

What's the Matter with Liberals?

At I cite I have a discussion of Michael Berube's What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?  All but the preface, with its somewhat obligatory nods to psychoanalysis, is pasted below. The larger discussion (which I confess to having neglected) is here, at the Valve.

My basic claim: Berube demonstrates quite clearly what is liberal about liberal arts. But instead of recognizing liberal arts and liberalism as formations of power/knowledge (and hence as in combat with conservativism and leftism) he views liberal thinking as reason (and hence as a universal norm) and dismisses those who disagree with him politically (those on the extremes of left and right) as irrational. Thus, he slides between the university and the polity, rendering those who are politically unacceptable irrational, as if the same measures or standards or conditions of rationality held politically that he thinks hold academically (or in the university).

Canada's Nuttiest Professors

Idealistic and optimistic often look to Canada when the going gets tough - recall all those false promises of moving to Canada should Bush be-elected and the popularity of sites such as Marry an American - might think twice. It's likely the case that everything is bigger in Texas and we, to the north, suffer under its ghostly shadow. Were it not enough that we had a shallow replica of "The Weekly Standard" in Canada called "The Western Standard," who, like "The Weekly Standard," views itself as the vanguard publication of "neo-conservatism" and western alienation, but they've also seen fit to erect a pale, ghostly shadow of none other than David Horowitz's The Professors in their recent "Back to School Guide" on "Canada's Nuttiest Professors" [pdf]. But, unlike Horowitz, they were only about to find twelve professors. (Readers will note that the Canadian Association of University Teachers claims to represent fifty-thousand academics.) But, unlike Horowitz (I assume; I haven't read his book), they also conveniently provided caricatures of those nutty professors.

On Classification

Sociologists, of course, have known for quite a long time that classification is not neutral (see Ange's post below - but also this and this) . In an effort to refocus the debate from accusations of cynicism, some selections from Emile Durkheim under the cut.

Academic distinction

While universities continue to be significant in the production of what-passes-for knowledge, theory, science and so on (for reasons that have to do with resources, libraries, payment of relatively high wages and therefore the allocation of time), it's nevertheless also the case that the internet - among other things - has posed significant problems for anyone wishing to protect the status of universities, and perhaps the universities' increasingly shaky monopoly on the authorisation and licensing of expertise, knowlege, etc.

So, while some feel nauseated, I'm actually a little amused, saddened and, from a distance, quite fascinated by the protectionist gesture of academicblogs.org. 

Spooked

In Australia recently, a number of universities have advised phd students researching terrorism that, under current laws, the information they gather "might" be passed on to security agencies.  A student in the Terrorism Research Project at Monash University was questioned by Federal Police after borrowing books from the library on terrorism.  At least one prominent sociologist has, after receiving a grant, abandoned research into the motivations of suicide bombers.  A paper by the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre urges universities to do more to counter "extremism" on campuses and insists that researchers should "be willing to share the findings of their work with government before publishing". Responding to questions regarding the conduct of research under the so-called 'Anti-Terror' laws, the Attorney-General insisted that prospective researchers should first discuss their research with him, personally, but urged the research to continue.  In other words, the issue here is not censorship (or not quite), so much as ensuring that academics become either de facto or unwitting spooks.  Somewhat sharpens the meaning of 'informant' as used in Qualitative Research Methods 101, does it not?

fish

Stanley Fish in the NY Times a few days ago:

All you have to do is remember that academic freedom is just that: the freedom to do an academic job without external interference. It is not the freedom to do other jobs, jobs you are neither trained for nor paid to perform. While there should be no restrictions on what can be taught — no list of interdicted ideas or topics — there should be an absolute restriction on appropriating the scene of teaching for partisan political ideals. Teachers who use the classroom to indoctrinate make the enterprise of higher education vulnerable to its critics and shortchange students in the guise of showing them the true way.

Sure, I suppose I agree. In practice even more than in theory. I certainly don't "indoctrinate" in my classroom. But, on the other hand, I certainly do expose my students to the historical record, positions and representations taken with regard to and within the historical record, and in general a more sophisticated, probing way of viewing the world than the one they brought into the classroom, or so I at least hope. All of which is kosher under Fish's rules, as everything is always up for argument and discussion, of course. I never, in arguments and discussion, take sides except for pedagogically productive purposes, a play acting of argument to move things along. 

But, I imagine, given the "ideas or topics" that I teach about, and the quality of my non-indoctrinary teaching, there's a strong likelihood that the students emerge, on aggregate, further "left" than they entered the classroom. In fact, one might well make the argument that the non-indoctrinary approach that someone like me - or perhaps someone like Fish, who knows - takes is nothing more than a subtler, more efficient approach to political conversion - even indoctrination - than, say, the lame dork who shows Fahrenheit 9/11 to his physics class. What if I, in fact, have learned the hidden-in-plain-sight tactics of the mainstream media, constantly staging a debate that in fact is just a show trial, incessantly giving my students the illusion of autonomous participation, when in fact the game is rigged from the start?

It is tough to figure out what Fish would say to this, as he ignores the possibility that the free trade in ideas might itself be deployed in the service of ideological mystification. Is it simply a question of openness to the possibility that the students will truly find their own way? When I was a kid at Catholic school, I learned that the rhythm method was a permissible form of birth control family planning because it demonstrated an openness to pregnancy, whereas the Pill or condoms did not. Fuzzy logic, to be sure. Where does good old fashion coitus interruptus fall on the scale? The nuns didn't go there, strangely enough.

Last semester, so effectively did I not-indoctinate my class that they found a book whose politics I find very intriguing indeed (William Morris's News from Nowhere) entirely ridiculous. I couldn't stop talking about utopia and the limits of fiction and they, almost as a one, took the position that Morris demonstrates through his fiction the absolute impossibility of anarchic socialism. I can't help but think that they, following their teacher's lead, underread the book... But perhaps that was just, for me, an acceptable risk, a write-off, in my grand campaign to have my beliefs metastasize through the student body... L'effet du réel, as it were...

In short, I think Fish too is underreading the situation. Or, perhaps, he's writing in bad faith, fully aware that the free trade in ideas is not only a rhetorical trick, but is in fact the definitive rhetorical trick of our time. "We report, you decide," right? The piece would then be a brilliantly performative piece, engaging in the very tactic of manipulation-via-objectivity that it would be tacticly endorsing.  I wish it were the latter, but I suspect it's the former. One might so easily imagine an entire army of leftist professors with Fish's article in hand, bent on ideological domination of the student masses, all in agreement that the best approach is the one of least resistance. Stage debates, employ the silence and cunning of impersonality, shift the goalpost, and reap the ideological benefits in the end. This already, to my mind, is the case (but from a different ideological direction) in US economics departments, where reality itself is conservatively liberal and the price of admission is the acceptance of the status quo.

One other thing: I wonder what Fish would make of politically-polemical or at least engaged writing on the part of academics. Writing occupies such an ambiguous place in our work. The toughest part of my job for my father, who is distinctly not an academic, to understand is the fact that I need to write - that that is what, almost exclusively as I work at a research university, will earn me tenure. There is no way in but to write, and no way to stay but to write, but we are paid to teach. I have to write, but no one is required to read what I write. So where does this fit in his rulebook?

UPDATE: The Naked Gaze has a good post up on Fish et al...

it never ceases to amaze me

It never ceases to amaze me that people still write and publish stuff like this. But fair warning: it's about another author who complains about the dominance of Theory in English departments. People bored with this topic might quite reasonably give it a miss. Me, it never ceases to amaze. I sent the author an e-mail. I couldn't stop myself. I know it's stupid.

Four notes on the periphery of a speculative morphology

1. "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value" is, perhaps, for those who arrive at it from literature, cultural studies, philosophy or similar, Spivak's most 'difficult' or elusive of essays. It seems to be the one that, more than any other, makes readers blink, their eyes glaze over.

Sometimes, at best, this is expressed as a bewilderment as to what might be at stake in the argument or, as a slightly different question, as a consideration of what is at put at stake in reading at a particular conjuncture. At other times, with a more or less implicit embarrassment that Spivak herself notes, the readers' gaze is averted from the discussion of 'economics', or better: labour-power and value - which is to say, that which is least familiar and proper to the aforementioned disciplines but which, as it turns out, the essay is about.  Other times, still, the confusion that results from Spivak's indisciplined writing cuts the other way. But, indeed, "before there is language, there are languages", as someone would say  (though, it remains to ask whether this statement exists in its temporal, integrative sense, as the hope or promise of a lingua franca).

Tronti blogweave

For your quick or leisurely perusal, the compilation of Long Sunday's recent symposium on Mario Tronti's "The Strategy of the Refusal", and some remarks.  The multitudinous, but alphabetised, contributions:

»Jon Beasley-Murray, The new barbarians
»Eric Beck, Minor refusals
»George Ciccariello-Maher, Class and subalternity
»Jodi Dean, Two questions on Tronti [follow-up]
»Roger Gathman Fantasy sites and the conquistadors of the planet
»Nate Hawthorne, Notes on "The Strategy of the Refusal"
»John Holloway, Adorno meets Tronti
»Doug Johnson, Intellectuals, the refusal of power, office workers' unions
»Brian Lamb, I would prefer not to bore you
»Craig McFarlane, Refusing to engage
»David McInerney, Tronti and Althusser
»Angela Mitropoulos, When will this labour end?
»Brett Neilson, Five theses on Tronti
»Stephen Squibb, Strategy of refusal of strategy
»Keith Tilford, How no can you go? Part I [Part II]

The preamble to the Long Sunday symposium, which includes links to related texts.  The relevant essay by Tronti is here, and a quick link to Long Sunday's Tronti folder. 

There were also a number of related posts elsewhere:  Destructive Creation, Northanger, Going Somewhere, Philosophy.com, pas au-delà, Attitude Adjustor. (Those are the most directly related to the discussion, though I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed some.)  And, not least, there is always the ongoing reading at Leggiamo Tronti.

My immense gratitude to all those who contributed their writings, readings and questions - those who simply took the time to read along with, and specifically those, such as Matt, who spent much time coding and uploading.

Already, Jon has the ball rolling for another reading, and I'm hoping that blogweaving continues, mutates and grows.  Not only because it creates a shared conversation that cuts across various blogs without converging along the one line, but also because - in ways that have yet to be fully explored - it marks an autonomy of writing, reading and research from the university that, particularly in times such as these, becomes an imperative.  Needless to say, what we read and write is related to how we read and write, no less than it is to the diificult questions of who, how and why this 'we' might appear, in that process.

Many thanks for the adventure.

Intellectuals, the refusal of power, office workers' unions

(The following is a guest post by Doug Johnson, from The Weblog)

A critique of culture means to refuse to be intellectuals.  Theory of revolution means direct practice of the class struggle. - Mario Tronti, "The Strategy of the Refusal"

So far as I know, Steve Wright's tendentious and hackneyed monograph Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism is unfortunately the best (perhaps only?) English language, book length account of the movement from which Antonio Negri arose.  Wright is highly critical of Negri, and basically attributes the downfall of Autonomia to the forsaking by Negri and others of Tronti's insistence that there be "no intellectuals," that "theory of revolution" must always be undertaken by those who "direct[ly] practice class struggle" through time in the factory.