Essentialisms...

Hi Steph,

I appreciate your interweaving the DRP class and the discussion about the department that started here under the ìGhetto Talkî section. Again, I think youíre trying to bait folks into a conversation that is not an easy one to have, and while I applaud such transgression, I do want to recognize certain ethical dimensions involved in this. Take something as crude as time. Youíre a graduate student, and even though I see a concerted effort in this department for our graduate students to stay as humanly long as possible, eventually you will leave. I, however, may be here for another thirty to forty years. I donít have the need to diagnose immediately the issues you identify concerning the department because I am still observing it as an organism of slow-growth. Or, if you prefer another metaphor, part of the practice of thievery is to learn everything you can about the system you plan to steal from. So while I thoroughly appreciate the comments you, Becky, and unhooked and unhinged offer, I fear too impulsive a response may not do justice to anyone who actually will live in this community for a long time. I hope that makes sense as a call for judicious understanding and not as a dismissal of your invitation.

Incidentally, since you ask why I responded (repeatedly) to your narrative about human nature on a political scale rather than to your whole life situation, I am tempted to reply. What follows may seem insensitive, but it is not meant to be anything but a friend reminding another friend about the inherent vicissitudes of life.

In all earnestness, how interesting do you think your personal turmoil is? How interesting is mine? Not very, except to you and to me as the source of our massive egos. I could show you all the stuff I wrote when my marriage collapsed and I retreated to Cape Cod to reconstitute my life. You probably wouldnít connect after too long. Some of it is interesting, but most of it is self-pity. And while I have no problem with self-pity if it is performed in an aesthetically pleasing way that invites audiences to recognize it in themselves and identify with the suffering, most expressions of self-pity I produce and engage dwell too close to a sickness of narcissism (in the Kierkegaardian sense). Or, as I advised myself in an aphorism, ìDo not psychologize. Rhetoricize. Make your past relevant to the world.î

I donít mean this in a Dr. Phil way, that nasty corruption of liberalism that tells you to take responsibility for yourself. I mean it in the way that we all suffer profoundly, most of us daily. I am amazed that our species can get up in the morning. I am more amazed that we manage to accomplish anything given the hauntings that pervade everyday life. But this is why I think of Gramsci and Bakhtin often. At least I am not smoking my manuscripts imprisoned under a totalitarian regime. I guess in comparison to victimization by Mussolini or Stalin, my divorce wasnít so bad. And when I lose my patience at losing an online game of cards, it sometimes helps to remember that 100,000 Iraqis are dead thanks to our current game of nation-building.

What you identifyóand what unhooked and unhinged aptly unveilsóis something that can swallow even the best-meaning among us, namely a tragic frame of reference. Remember that the tragic frame requires active audiences for its fulfillment as much as it requires active performers. What I appreciate most about Kenneth Burke is his reminder that we have options, that the comic frame may be performed and with it a humane appreciation of our mistakes of not-knowing, and a warning that we may become rotten with perfection. Is the academy infected with this rottenness? Most assuredly so. But so is nearly everything else that human hands touch.

And while I approach the academy with a disgust that I reserve usually for folks like A-Rod in the Yanks-Red Sox playoffs, I would be the first to say that this is one of the most free spaces on the planet. To forget this is to give in to the system AND to allow oneself a constant lament, since it becomes a tragically self-fulfilling description. Bourdieu unmasks these problems in Homo Academicus; they are part of the system that is the academy, but they are also part of the structure of contemporary life in the industrial world.

You say you want to practice a different form of interaction within the department, and thereby find a way to advance it outside the academy. I couldnít more strongly agree. But how can we do that if we continue a tragic frame, one of blame, resentment, incessant self-gazing, piety, and what Bakhtin calls agelasts, those who will not laugh? That is, whether we seek reform in departmental interactions or in a transformation of the political towards the democratic and away from the fascistic, we had best do so laughing. Wouldnít that be a radical notion to practice and a possible antidote to stray rage?

I was about to respond to Steph's blurb about school committees when I read Stephen's plea for a larger frame.

So to quickly address Stephen.....I was actually trying to take a longer view...One thing I saw from the descriptions U&U provided were that I found it typical of my dual graduate programs. I can't speak about other programs, but I find it interesting, at the least, to recognize that PERHAPS one of the politico-communicative games being played (in 2 places) demands that performers adopt a stance of certain curiousity. That is, students must seem certain about what they are curious about. You know; "goal directed." and if the goals change, it is REALLY hard to manage.

Now, I think that actually relates to what I was going to respond to in the first place: "So here's all this massive energy about things none of us are currently actually DOING (like running for the school board), which some of us may do in the future (godspeed!)"

Ah, but when one DOES do those things, partly out of using the small amount of expertise one has gained through research, and partly out of potentials for future research, and mostly part out of feeling an old-fashioned sense of civic duty (and all that good stuff about agency and efficacy).........one's status as a scholar gets questioned. "Are you going into local politics?" and other such questions have the effect (when they come from academics) of saying: pick one--are you with US or THEM?

The funny thing is, the locals just ask: "what are you doing next?" "What are you involved in now?" They assume that you will continue with your job, your profession, and that the political life is just part of your commitment to the community. Academics worry that outside committments are akin to leaving the profession.

(Side tangent: When in one grad program, I was strongly urged not to get a "job" because that would detract from my studies. Other women students were discouraged from reproducing, for fear of that same detraction from the life of the mind.)

i'm concerned by this in Steph's post:

"Unfortunately, as unhooked and unhinged wrote, it seems (if not always, at least far too damn often) that there's "no real way to recover from the mistake of not knowing." We should all be perfect first - know the right procedure, the optimal timing, the precise move and then enact it without error, hesitation, or misstep. Or else."

notions of the 'right procedure' and 'optimal timing' really fly in the face of what i think are most interesting about art and creating: process (and the dismantling of process). certainly this is my claim, but isn't this where the real work takes place? do we have to respond to the "right" or whomever 'without error' as you say, or can we nod to them, acknowledge their struggles, and go about our own too? not separate but equal, but agnoism in a productive (self productive) fashion?

--sp

In many ways, I'm an outsider to this blog space. I am not in the class with Steph, Stephen and others and I have decided to post anonymously. It would have been easy to be dismissed on those two grounds alone, but thus far folks have been responding to my rather bleak view of the department and my experience of not fitting in. First, I must say that my intention was not to suggest that everyone in the department is a part of what I termed "the cutting edge." I was speaking of experiences I had with certain professors in classes I took with them several years ago. I was not clear about my definition of
"cutting edge" and realize that my lack of clarification left a lot of questions. I don't want to go into details about who said what, who did what, and what I did and what I said.
My main reason for posting was to speak about something that has been bothering me about the academic world and especially departments where certain members of the faculty espouse critical thinking and alternative views of history, culture, theory, and so on but act in ways that undermine what they are teaching and writing. When I came in I was a bit lost. I wanted to really explore certain areas such as critical rhetoric, but they were not what others in the department were doing so I immediately felt "unhooked" and later when I started talking about my interests I started feeling "unhinged" as though what was grabbing me was nuts.(existentialism, the "deadness" of social and cultural life that focuses on consumption, youth, beauty, leisure; the academic emphasis on being an expert and staking out a territory instead of being an activist or an advocate; my own stumbling around trying to stake out an intellectual space for uncertainty, fear, dislocation, rootlessness and all those other things that busy people with their own agendas and fulfilling personal experiences might see as a waste of time or simply interpret as ignorance and stupidity or think best addressed in a psychiatrist's office). I mean when graduate students come into a program like this one, saying I can't find myself or my voice or my intellectual self is a major risk and it's only a matter of time before they drop out. Who really here wants to work with grad students who say, "I'm not interested in that, but I'm not sure what I am interested in because I'm still trying to figure out if the academic "game" is for me because there aren't too many people around here like me and the ones who do are doing stuff that makes real political sense to them but doesn't to me)
Maybe others here haven't had this experience, but I have and I'm lucky I found meaning in my personal turmoil and had the courage and "bad manners" to read stuff I found interesting and turn it into work I could really feel a part of. This did not happen because the majority of faculty I met in and outside the department encouraged me or even showed interest. I think this process I went through is a real aspect of becoming an intellectual. Feeling encouraged and supported even when the faculty members have no personal or professional interest isn't easy for faculty, I'm sure. Eventually, when I could speak about my intersts coherently enough, I found encouragement in my chair and committee, which I will always respect.

Peace

U&U (You and You?) proposes ìto speak about something that has been bothering me about the academic world and especially departments where certain members of the faculty espouse critical thinking and alternative views of history, culture, theory, and so on but act in ways that undermine what they are teaching and writing.î Amen to that!

Again, a tragic view of this would forget that faculty are human, prone to the same damn inconsistencies that we ask othersóand societyóto dispense with. (I try to be democratic in my exchanges, and I fail often enough.) I wonít go there. But I couldnít more strongly agree that educators become the models for the visions of the world they profess. I use the word ìeducatorî carefully. I mean faculty, graduate students, and administration. I also mean other sources of education, either within the limits of a university (such as the police, who around here often seem to forget they are educators as much as RSAs) and citizens in general. It should come as no surprise that our undergraduates know how to ìspeak leftist,î because they think it is what the Comm faculty want to hear. Many of them are genuinely on the left, but I have always appreciated those who have the guts to tell me that they say empty things around here to get praise from people who they feel often talk the talk but donít walk the walk.

Itís not just here, however. Thatís why I encourage a more comic read on this as a GENERAL problem of higher education. Such hypocrisy plagues the academy, and I think it plagues much human society. But I agree with U&U that what complicates matters within the academy is the creation of ìexpertise,î especially when it centers around upholding legacies of thought. The preservation of legacies truly creeps me out, far more than any other form of group behavior. Take those pesky Burkeans, the kinds who used to wheel the husk of the man out onto stage at conferences so neophytes could touch his mummified fingers. Or take Leo Straussí bastard children, now waging war in Iraq with my taxes. The list could go on and on and onÖ

But speaking as a faculty member, hereís the pressure I face: relevanceóand meritóis often determined by the creation of legacies. On the one hand, it makes sense. I do what I do because I want to ìprofess,î and thus share my ideas with others, and persuade them to come along. On the other hand, I donít want people to try to become me. A commitment to the democratic, by which I mean here a respect for differences, warrants that we avoid such fetishizing of a preserved line of thought for its own sake. So as someone trying to both (1) make a living at a job that emphasizes legacies and (2) be a democrat (small ìdî), I am torn daily by competing obligations. I mention this not for pity, but to contextualize the weird pressures the system inflicts upon faculty just as much upon graduate students. At least both faculty and grad students can fuck things up for undergrads, yes?

I mean that in a good way, and I think U&U points to an important vocabulary for it: ìgameî and ìbad manners,î as in be aware of this game and treat it with bad manners when possible. Judging when it is possible is a skill any graduate student should practice; at the heart of it is what the ancient Greeks called metis, ìcunning intelligence,î and phronesis, ìpractical wisdom.î And I donít think we could ever praise ìbad mannersî enough. As Walt Whitman reminds us, what democracy needs most is not the cutting edge or legacies, but ìa little healthy rudeness.î This isnít a satisfying answer to the problem of legacy-construction and alienation lurking within graduate student training, but it is an endorsement of the attitude andóI might addówhat I see as the virtues of not moving quickly to a connected knowledge but rather lingering within a rhetorical contest of ideas.

Speaking as a professor, Stephen, you keep the discussion at the level of systemics/structure. However, I'm sugesting something much more personal and individual. Perhaps I should just come out and say that who professors like and don't like always is a personal issue. We cannot talk about systemics without talking about human beings and human actions and choices. From a cultural standpoint, smiling and telling students "sure, that sounds interesting" or "i can work with you but only if..." often comes down to how people learn to negotiate social space. Is it more "polite" to feign interest but fail to return e-mails or phone calls. Or is it better to say, "I can't meet. I can't work with you. I don't really want to do that." I suppose the issue here might be how Americans (generally) are socialized to be superficial in order to be popular. In other words, is it a cultural "thing" to say enticing things but to act in a way that can be interpreted as disinterest? I don't know the answers, really. I own my filter through which I view these situations. I tend to see the issue as an interpersonal one born of the cutural milieu, which then makes the issue systemic. Being blown off is the way of the land. I don't have a lot of "social success" because I say what's on my mind. i tell people what I think and why. i tell undergrads, "no, I won't write you a letter' or "no, I won't work with you on your senior project" when that's how i am feeling. Again, I have "bad manners" and I don't know how to play "the game."

Aha! I see now where youíre making the point, U&U. I wouldnít abandon a discussion of the structures of the academy, but I can appreciate the personal level as well. And while I couldnít vouch for the professors youíve had throughout your career, I can testify to my own circumstances. When I was a PhD in Classical Studies, for example, one professor realized my Greek wasnít good enough (I was self-taught) and dismissed me outright. He made every possible attempt to embarrass me or ignore me, right up to the point of inviting all the other students in a class except me to a party with a visiting scholarówhile I was in the room. He failed me in the class, and quite frankly, I probably deserved the ìFî for the work, but the humiliation was stunning. Opposite him was a mythologist whom I worked with closely, and who was charitable about my lack of experience in the languageóand saw great promise in the ways my interests in anthropology and social theory might inform the study of ancient Greek culture. I left the program after one year. I invited the latter professor to my wedding and we remain friends. I havenít spoken to the other one for years, but will someday send him a copy of my first book in social theory, inscribed, ìFuck You.î

I tell this story to humanize my own circumstances. On one hand, that professor was right in what he was doing. In a top notch Classical Studies program, he wanted to weed out those whom he felt werenít up to par as he saw the discipline. He just took it way too far. If I had let him break my spirit, he would have, and send me crawling away from graduate school altogether. And letís face it: professors generally do not get their jobs for showing diplomatic tact or fine appreciation of the human condition. Isnít that why so many of them research it: they are fascinated with what they lack? Profs are hired very often on the basis of a research trajectory and the promise of a legacy, not whether they will put in practice what they research. (Iím over-generalizing, I know, but I hope productively.) Thereís nothing wrong with that in theory, but I think youíre correct in mapping out the ugliness of what happens when they rule out graduate students who donít seem to fit that same model they once fit. And yes, the most talented and engaging and truly promising scholars may be the ones who get pushed aside by such inhuman practices. Again, I think part of the problem here is systematic, but I can sympathize also with being turned into a persona non grata. Yet nine years later, I have what I set out to do and can look back at that situation and laugh.

Now hereís where I can come to respond to your concern by reminding you that not everyone has the same motive for what you identify as the superficial engagement with graduate students. I trust for some it really is a ìthatís nice, let me back away slowlyî to someone who seems unwieldy. Some profs are like that professor I described above: fit model or get out. Some are obsessed with legacy (hence even more strongly, fit model or get out). Some are just plain fucking assholes, like everywhere else in life. But some of us are dedicated to a fault. Personally, I tend to work with the pariahs, slackers, crazy intellectuals, and curmudgeons. I have one plain donut (who is not so plain) in the circle of people I work with here; everyone else is fucking out of their minds, and I appreciate it tremendouslyóindeed, I feel at home. But let me tell you, itís exhausting. Not because the ideas arenít good. Hell, no. The problem is the ideas are often too damn good, and the personalities involved all too damn demanding (like myself). If I could solely dedicate my time to working with graduate students I would, but Iím also spending 24-7 trying to help the undergrads who need to find their voices, which is no easy task when you teach 250 of them a semester.

And add to this I am a profoundly lazy human being, who really just wants to not work and sit at home with my dogs. By the end of a semester, my energy is gone. It regenerates quickly, but it is spread out to so many people, as theirs is to me. (I see this as reciprocal, not as me getting drained by academic vampires.) So I always have to face a kind of Sophieís choice: Do I work closely with just a few people and tell everyone else to go away, or do I work with as many people as possible, but often delaying meetings or at least running behind (things that, I presume, would look like disinterest)? Iíd be happy to put this to a vote, but I donít think people will be happy with me if they elect my working closely with few people.

I donít write this to make an apology for me or for other professors or for the academy, but I do want to bring up the question of how you and other graduate students read motives. I literally can get 100 emails a day, about 75% of which need to be answered, and of which about 50% expect an answer immediately. When grad students get antsy with me for not replying according to their standard of quickly, the devil in me canít wait for them to become professors so they taste the bitter weed that is the end of free time. (I have, for example, exchanged one email with my best friend in three months. One. Thatís all the communication I have time for.) So grad students: Eat, drink, and be merry now, my friends, for tomorrow you shall die. Weíre all human, and while some of us manage to get rid of our humanity better than others in the academy, some of us struggle to keep it. Itís no easy task when the interpersonal demands are insurmountable from the start.

One other thing I feel obliged to respond to is the question of cultural language practices. Despite my last name, I grew up in a family that was still highly marked as working class Italian-American. We have a way of placating people with language that is unfamiliar to mainstream Americans; that is, you say youíre coming to the party even when you have no intention of it, because it is more important to show in language the commitment to the other person than to physically be there. Most Americans treat this as deceptive. Itís not. If I say I will help hide a body and donít show, THAT is a credibility issue. If I say Iím coming to a party and donít, that is not really a problem where I come from. Working on academic matters is somewhere in-between, but generally closer to me to the party commitment. I just donít readily buy into the American Protestant Work Ethic easily. And I canít tell you how many times I have left meetings shaking my head saying, ìAh, those poor academics with their obsessions with truth over beauty.î

My point here is that I celebrate ìbad mannersî that play with the rules of the academic game, but sometimes I thinking saying ìyesî can be just as profitably bad-mannered as your saying ìno.î I would encourage you (and all graduate students) to understand when ìyesî is a commitment complicated by time and when it is a polite society blow-off. There are shades here, in other words, and I think itís important to note them.

Stephen, your experience doesn't surprise me. And Paula told us the other day that the time pressure (especially around deadlines) is even worse when one becomes a faculty member. It *is* inhumane to live/work (or work/live) this way, and I don't mean to disparage the attempts people make. That's why emphasizing the systemic/atic nature of the department matters, as well as articulating its juncture as a cog in the university, which it itself a microcosm of larger macrosocial forces. Its a question of "when and where we enter." I *know*, for instance, that the academy isn't run as a democracy, but *very few places are*. Maybe, no - DEFINITELY, my persistence in seeking engagement around these issues and questions is as selfish as it is altruistic. We all need for things to be better, and we - graduate students, especially - will (most likely) NEVER have as much "freedom" to experiment with agency and empowerment (yada yada yada) as we do now, here.

Meanwhile, I learned another "story" today about a doctoral student who felt discounted/let down by a committee member/advisor. I'd hate to try and count how many I'm aware of (knowing that it's - probably - not all of them by far). It seems the department got itself into a historical pinch by allowing (?) a culture where students could postpone and postpone....certainly (I'm sure) there were extenuating circumstances, but there always are, right? And when the "stories" are that this or that faculty might forget about your meeting, takes months to read a draft and still may or may not provide feedback (and I'm sure there are also "extenuating circumstances" for faculty too)....it's hard to feel much sense of urgency and harder (perhaps?) to feel very respected. I'm not speaking personally, but/and, I know a lot of stories by now! Its kindof discouraging.

I know that the department is trying to toughen up on students and move us through the pipeline much more quickly. That's fine - as long as there is "reciprocal pressure" on the faculty too. Which, I'm sure there is, but changing old habits, patterns, etc is tough work. Takes time. Requires cooperation and investment in new goals. And maybe some kind of advocacy (?) within the College? I'm really naive (yes, I admit it) about the overarching administration structure, but the people I encounter doing their jobs (for instance, a recent between Michael Morgan and Ralph Faulkingham, who is Chair of the Anthropology Dept) usually impresses the heck out of me. I *KNow& there's "visioning" going on, and.....there's something piecemeal about it.

Speaking of which, I had some thoughts on change, re David's challenge, whether or not people *really* "want change" - check out "Mentoring, Redux"

http://www.stephaniejokent.com/weblog/archives/001169.html