Regarding the Scull Controversy

Rather than going away as an issue, the Scull versus the Foucauldians debate seems to be spreading. It seems odd to me that people are willing to get worked up over this issue. Afterall, standard periodizations of Foucault's work place The History of Madness outside his developed periods; viz., the archaeological, the genealogical, and the problematization. That is, within the Foucauldian corpus itself, The History of Madness is an outlier (not unlike his commentary on Kant's anthropology, his book on Roussel, or the disavowed Maladie mentale et personnalité). The question, then, appears not to be about the place of The History of Madness in Foucault's own oeuvre - a concept that should no doubt be question by anyone who takes Foucault's work seriously - but, rather, about what "Foucault," that is to say "Theory," signifies in the context of (primarily) (North) American disciplinary politics. (Although, it is worth pointing out that comparing passages from the "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" essay with The History of Madness is, at best, strange - it is wrong-headed to criticize a non-genealogical work for not being genealogical!) Scull is engaged in a territorial pissing match with rivals. His concern, it seems to me, is to reject the work of Foucauldians by nit-picking Foucault's major dissertation. (I guess it is easier to take on a dead guy's dissertation than it is to take on work published by Nik Rose twenty years ago.) Predictably, the "Theory" warriors - themselves derivative hacks of the worst sort - are all to happy to jump into Scull's boat in an effort to push their own agenda within the narrow perspective of American English departments.

(Cross-posted from theoria.)

Good Magazine: Philanthropic Condescension, Teacher Salaries, and Truthiness

I subscribe to a lot of magazines, sometimes just for the hell of it. I have a long standing interest in the genre... And many of them don't cost very much. So I signed up for Good Magazine after I took a look at the first issue. This was especially easy since, remarkably, 100 percent of the cost would be donated to a charity of my choice... No lose situation... What the hell, right...

Good is a strange bird, but one fully in sync with the times. Here's the editorial statement:

We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization.

While so much of today's media is taking up our space, dumbing us down, and impeding our productivity, GOOD exists to add value. Through a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events, GOOD is providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world.

The word "business" sticks in the craw a bit, but who cares, right? Sounds like a good idea, even if the statement doesn't inspire much confidence as far as a predictor of hard-hitting content. One imagines post-partisan up-beatness, neo-liberalism restrung as greenish good will plus tech innovation etc...

But looking back, I probably should have seen what was coming up the pike. I was shocked today when I opened up the newest issue arrived and I flipped through to the following infographic feature at the center of the magazine. (Please excuse the poor scans - hopefully you'll be able to make them out... Click to enlarge....)

I nearly choked on my dinner when I saw this page, which is a state by state chart of how much higher the average school teacher salary (well, not quite... wait for a second) is than the average "white-collar, nonsales employee" in the US. So we're not even talking teachers vs. proles and farmers here. This is teachers vs. executives, managers, administrators, (nonsales) service and clerical workers.

The numbers are shocking. The average teacher in Connecticut makes 43.1% more than the average white collar worker? In New York, it's 37.7%. Vermont, 53.9% And in Florida, we're talking a whopping 65.2%. Teachers must stock the upper-echelons of the upper-middle class, giving doctors and lawyers and corporate vice presidents a run for their money! Wow! We're not even talking college teachers here - just plain old high school, middle, and elementary school instructors.

Of course, this is just so much bullshit. The first clue is the lead name in the list of sources for the infographic. That's right, the good old Manhattan Institute, an organization renowned for its slippery use of statistical analysis - a Scaife and Olin funded right-wing think tank in the classical mold pledged to "develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility."

So what is the trick of the MI study upon which the Good pages are based? The oldest and silliest trick in the book when it comes to knocking teacher pay: the comparisons are based on hourly earnings rather than yearly salaries. So, because of the summer and other breaks, as well as the short formalized work day (8-2 or 9-3 clock in and out), yeah, obviously teachers' rate of pay looks ridiculously impressive. Basically, when presented this way, the average teacher in the US, who actually makes $47,674, is factored as making the equivalent of something like $57,000 per annum.

Which of course they don't make. They make $47,000 per year. The Manhattan Institute explains their deceptive method in the following way:

One of the significant benefits available to public school teachers is that they work fewer weeks per year. Teachers can use that time to be with family, to engage in activities that they enjoy, or to earn additional money from other employment. Whether teachers use those free weeks to make additional money or simply to enjoy their time off, that time is worth money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing earnings. The appropriate way to compare earnings in this circumstance is to focus on hourly rates.

Um, sure. This is true. But let's be clear. School teachers are not going to, as a rule, find work during the summer months (and mid-semester breaks, for god's sake) that compensates them at the same (ridiculously high - that's the point, right?) level. Anyone who has been a Ph.D. candidate in need of summer cash can tell you that the summer temporary work options generally include, what, landscaping, summer camp counselor, barista, lifeguard, supermarket bagging - all minimum or in some cases subminimum wage type positions. Over the summer, one might expect to pull in, oh, $1500 or so before taxes. Of course, teachers can "be with family" or "engage in activities they enjoy," sure. More likely, teachers do some of that type of thing and a lot of class preparatory groundwork, etc. But the one thing they can't do is go into cost-reductive hibernation for the summer months, abandoning rent, mortgage, car payments, eating, and the like. The cost of living runs on a, yes, twelve month cycle. The salaries, yes, are for a twelve month cycle. In casual parlance, it's usually called a year, and there is no option to stay alive and hungry only during a fractional part of it.

OK. Well and good. The MI study is dishonest, cherry-picking a set of data to work with that paints an inaccurate picture of the situation. But we expect that of the good folk at the Manhattan Institute. Still, why didn't I just write a post arguing with the MI? Why bother with Good?

I bother with Good because they dishonestly made things even worse. Take a look back at the scans above. While the Manhattan Institute paper is careful to ground its claims in the proper nomenclature - they are careful to at every point describe the comparison as one of mean hourly earnings, which is the right word for the numbers compared - in the Good graphs the comparison is erroneously stated as one of salaries. "CT 43.1% above avg worker's salary." No one, speaking proper English, uses the word "salary" to denote an hourly wage or hourly earnings, or really anything other than the total amount of money one is paid for a job over the course of an entire year. (Just in case anyone is unclear on this point, take a look at what comes up when you search for the phrase hourly salary on Google - a whole bunch of calculators for converting your yearly salary into an hourly wage.) This error on Good's part smacks of hyperbolic, inflationary dishonesty. Far fewer of its readers would be all that stunned to learn that teachers have a relatively high rate of pay per hour - the graph is only provocative because it suggests that the yearly salaries of teachers is that much higher than other white collar workers.

I imagine the reaction of the average reader would be something like Holy crap! Teachers make that much money and they don't even have to work summers!!!! Overpaid bastards!!!! Which is exactly not the case. The word salary, in other words, allows Good to score twice against teachers for a single strike...

I'm sure the reaction of Good would be that this was a fact-checking error, a non-intentional slip. But of course it isn't - the proper language is right there for them to take from the MI piece, and the fact is salary sensationalizes the piece, makes it seem provocative and convincing in a way that mean hourly earnings does not. You can hear the number crunching, the figure forcing in the latter - the former seems to be clear as day, a simple calculation.

So why would the good folks at Good play the truthiness game? Why would they take up this issue, which seems a bit distant from the overall focus of the magazine, in the first place? Go take a look at some of the press on the founder, and I think the picture starts to clear up a little bit, especially in regard to his family foundation's investment in teaching entrepreneurship in the schools. (Hint: public sector teaching jobs are not very entrepreneurial... But privatized, deunionized schools, well, that would be a different story... Hell, while we're at it, why not scrap the whatever shreds of public sector infrastructure are left in the world, as tech savvy scions of media capitalists with their checkbooks + 25-40s with their green and good intentions (organic eats etc) would do a far better job at this whole taking care of poor folks than the... You get the point.)

It's a shame, really. The magazine, in general, seems like a partly noble gesture. But it is hard to see how this infographic jives at all with these philanthropic intentions. (Even if schoolteachers were overpaid, which they of course aren't, not by a longshot, this is an issue that Good thinks is worthy of attention, among all the other very grave problems there are in the world?) And above all else, we suffer from far too much bullshit in the realm of politics and popular sociology, far too much fact bending and bad faith argumentation, which makes this sort of thing, in the end, truly unforgivable.

Hunter's "The History of Theory"

Ian Hunter's article, "The History of Theory" (Critical Inquiry 33, 78-112 [pdf]), has come up in recent discussions as an alternative to the rather stagnant "'Theory' Wars" that seem to creep up every so often.

Continue reading “Hunter's "The History of Theory"”

Hear the Kossacks Call

What's funniest about all of this "Path to 9/11" humbug:  the 9/11 Commission Report was itself politically white-washed crock of shit.    Sorry to spoil the party (and sign the petition, please*) but still someone had to say it.

*particularly if–like most LS lurkers–you are a centrist with any cred.

Update 9/10:  Oh wouldn't you know it, "The Path to 9/11" is linked directly to David Horowitz (where does that man get all his money?):

Continue reading “Hear the Kossacks Call”

you-topia

Michael Wood, in Children of Silence:

Auden thought a critic had an obligation to declare his or her idea of Eden, because the pleasure of a work of art, at the moment of enjoyment, is our pleasure and not someone else's:

So long as a man writes poetry or fiction, his dream of Eden is his own business, but the moment he starts writing literary criticism, honesty demands that he describe it to his readers, so that they may be in the position to judge his judgments,

Or even just to look at the critic's assumptions, I'm inclined to believe that writers of any kind do in fact declare their dream of Eden, whether they set out to or not - at least in implication, and for those readers who care to find it. And I'm not sure that their dream of Eden is the first thing I want to know about a critic, or anyone else. I might want to know about their idea of affection, or their notion of cruelty. But then perhaps these things are already contained in the dream of Eden.

Auden pursued his game quite literally, that is, follow out the metaphor with entire owlish seriousness. He wanted to know what Eden would look like and how it would be ruled, and grouped his questions under these headings: landscape, climate, ethnic origin of inhabitants, language, weights and measures, religion, size of capital, form of government, sources of natural power, economic activities, means of transport, architecture, domestic furniture and equipment, formal dress, sources of public information, public statues , public entertainments.

Wood wisely steps away from the game soon after trying a few questions on for size. Are you wise enough to do the same?

I'm not...

 

Continue reading “you-topia”

Haditha Friedman

Lest it need be said, Haditha is not an abberation.  Only let's remember too, the folks who helped–and were paid handsomely–to put us there.  If one only ever reads five things about Thomas Friedman, hack, let four of them be these.      

Update:  Crooked Timber has taken the "hackery" meme and run so, you could also go there  (after clicking the links below, of course!).

Continue reading “Haditha Friedman”

Will the real war reporters please...

Chris Allbritton takes the New York Post's Ralph Peters to task for being sychophantic sack of shit:

Among the claims in his slanderous column: “The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree.” The Iraqi Army — and police, for that matter — stood by while Shi’ite militias ran rampant through Sunni neighborhoods. They only took up the security positions when the Shi’ite clerics, including Moqtada al-Sadr, had already calmed down the worst of the violence. That’s not “performing extremely well,” unless by “extremely well,” you mean not confronting the enemies and keeping your head down until it’s safe to come out. That’s usually called “hiding.” ...He also makes what may be an unintentionally ironic comment when he criticized Iraqi stringers: “The Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don’t pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.”

Continue reading “Will the real war reporters please...”

'interpretation'

I would like to bounce off of Matt's heads-up about Bérubé, titled "Serious students need fear not (at least not yet)" below. Bérubé, for those who don't know, has written a critical, though certainly not 'trashing', review of Theory's Empire, the recently published anthology that wears its hostility to Theory, aka postmodernism, etc., on its sleeve. The discussion in the comments section to that post is interesting, and I urge everyone to take a look if inclined.

The question that discussion raises for me reminds me of an intellectual test that can be performed when thinking about the criticisms that 'postmodernism' and 'theory' tends to attract.

To apply this test, I chose a highly favorable review of Theory's Empire by Michael Potemra, National Review, July 4, 2005.

Continue reading “'interpretation'”

Handmaids' Tales

Cardinal O’Connor’s comments today seem to me to raise some interesting issues, but also shed as much heat as light (apologies to Matt for the metaphor). So, after you’ve read it, my two pence worth. “Women demand tougher laws to curb abortions”. 1) Women are demanding this, and since they are the ones with authority on the issue, we have learned since the 1980s (rightly in my opinion) their newfound doubt (their conversion perhaps?) is, as the insinuation goes, that much more decisive. Thus the headline speaks for itself and seems to need no further justification. 2) The recommendation gleaned from the small group canvassed are not strictly speaking asking for a ‘curbing’ of abortions; the loaded term implies quantity rather than the real issue - time limit. 3) I know exactly what programme the Cardinal has been watching – I watched it myself. And whilst I marveled at the technology which can show us a grimacing foetus, I don’t think it changes the fundamentals of the issue in any more than a contingent, subjective way (and the programme itself was tendential in its use of a voice-over  to humanise a foetus; foetuses don’t speak, and it is somewhat irresponsible to suggest otherwise). 4) The key issue remains that the right to choose is more about the foreseen conditions of motherhood, of the situation - economic, social - in which a child is to be raised, and not the simple and Manichean issue of termination of a depersonalized versus a personalized entity. The Cardinal is looking within when he should be looking without.

difference without apologies

It's a well-worn argument to suggest that the Left (whatever exactly that is) should spend more time learning from the Right (ditto), taking a few leaves out of the books of Reagan, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, the Southern Baptist Convention, Bush, the Republican Party, Harper, what or whomever have you...

Continue reading “difference without apologies”

and now for something completely different: lookalikes

Proud to relay that Crooked Timber has nothing on IT in this most crucial of blogging departments. See also here and here and... well I'm undoubtedly missing some.

If not for this damn sled to catch, I'd certainly labor to come up with one myself, to put right smack-dab here on top, in fierce competition with Alain's eternally-nauseating neocons. Maybe you yourself have a suggestion though.

Continue reading “and now for something completely different: lookalikes”

Paxless in Americana

It's a match made in heaven.  One wonders if they know each other?  A commenter on the latter, one "Big Billy" asks a good question:

What if a pair of opposing hypocrits (where one says one thing and doesw [sic] the other, and the other says the other and does the one thing) team up? As a human, I find it impossible to constantly avoid hypocrasy [sic], so why not pair up and embrace out hypocritical natures, and then we can really progress, right? My partner will do my work for me while I do his work for him. We will both get our jobs done while approaching more exagerated extremes.
But then again, we're probably better off if you just call me an idiot too.

In this our quest, for the ultimate blog brevity I then leave it to you, dear eater, to draw your own excursions.  For it is a black and white world, with the Author sitting f'evern top (ever'n especially whilst claiming the bottom!) and we was only ever kiddin', once Hugh challenged e to a duel. 

A duel, e says!  At dawn, no less.  E dunno, somehow "be offended, but say so" just don't 'ave the same ring to it.    An' sometimes it be da fools who call idiots, "idiots" best.

Continue reading “Paxless in Americana”

Theory's Empire: Dissenting with Dissent

Matt Christie has provided an excellent guide to debate about debate over Theory's Empire.

Our army at war

“Our boys and girls.” This is a near-universal locution in popular discourse from left to right; the U.S.’s volunteer, professional army is constituted of boys and girls, in some sense “our” sons and daughters, even mine though I have no children and am young enough to fight. I have no interest in how the right employs this image. Everyone knows that they’re about family, patriarchy and filial duty—of course they see the army as their children, obligated to die for them and due only the obeisance of dull hackneyed tributes.

Continue reading “Our army at war”