On a fast-track to “fuck it”

“Does it look like it did on the menu?  Minus, of course, the little dark clouds?”

A capitalist society systematically organizes each individual into a hierarchical gradient.  Our modern conception of money is how our place in this gradient is quantified.  There are times that I think economics is the most bizarrely intricate attempt to explain phenomena that we cannot understand.  In the capitalist operative model of scarcity, money is valuable because money is mobility, money is expected social deference, money is the capacity to act at whim; yes, money is even the capacity to speak with effect and without sanction.

As individuals, we can each judge all of this to be ludicrous, or real, or valuable, or socially constructed.  However, do we consider the implications laden in the act of analyzing the “constructions” of a disembodied “society”?  The word “analyze” connotes perception.  We analyze things that we perceive to be real and believe that “reality” is something concrete—something that simply “is.”  My question is, by deciding to analyze “what is” do we actually impede our ability to create “what is”?

“Cause every time I try to hold my tongue, it slips like a fish from a line.  They say if you want to play, you should learn how to play dumb.”

When we are criticizing “society” and its “constructions,” what are we doing?  What is society but a group of individual people?  What is a social construction but a concept collectively created by a composite sum of individual actions?  We position ourselves as somehow apart from “society” which we personify as a disembodied force.  What does this mean?I find it disturbing that all of you who I would include in my group of “like-minded individuals” are people that have made it their purpose to perceive and describe instead of to create.

I am posting passage from an article originally published in the New York Times Magazine that was cited in a journal I was reading as part of a research project.  I found it incredibly unsettling to read.  (Magazine article – “Without a Doubt” by Ron Suskind; journal article – “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror” by Mary Ann Tétreault).

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like…I had a meeting with a senior advisor to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

“And I wonder how he can see where he’s going with those dollar signs in front of his eyes?”

All notions of ethics aside, I am beginning to believe that this is true—that some people act and others conduct various analyses of their actions.  The non-actors tend to occupy themselves telling anyone who will listen how they think the actors should behave.  We who study social science at Wellesley choose to spend countless hours exchanging they ways we interpret the actions of others in order to “better” our ability to explain what we see other people doing.  This is an activity whose value we judge to be more than $200,000.  It strikes me as vastly overvalued, considering that $200,000 could afford anyone a lifetime of doing things (with all the necessary amenities—food, water, shelter) if only she were to go elsewhere.

“Oh, to grow up hypnotized and then try to shake yourself awake /  ’Cuz you can sense what has been lost, ‘cuz you can sense what is at stake.”

I firmly believe that we are what we do.  So, why is it that we sacrifice realizing our fantasies and instead choose to sit reading, discussing, and theorizing about the actions of others?  We choose classroom education over hiking the Andes, living in Laos, joining a guerilla group in Somalia, or embarking on a destination-less journey with a close friend or twenty.  We make this choice every day for seven to twelve years longer than is legally required within the United States.  We make this choice in hopes of bettering our chances of getting a “good” job.  Many of us intend to spend the 20-40 years after graduation laboring for someone else doing god-knows-what simply to make our life of constant labor more “comfortable.”  Many of us intend to someday give life to other being(s).  We intend to make them “comfortable” while simultaneously encouraging them to spend their lives in the classroom hitting the books hard in order to labor, and so forth.  In other words, we perpetuate this cycle by laboring through life and burdening the next generation with the insistence that do the same.  Why?  Why any of it?  Why all of it?

“I’m tossing and turning between sleepless dreams.  I’m poised on the edge of what it all means.”

It is terrifying to conceptualize myself as someone trapped into a caste of people whose primary social function is to comment on what others do.  It terrifies me to consider the overwhelmingly expansive system of “morality” and accompanying narrative of “progress” that others before me have created, which I daily reinforce.  I reinforce it every time I walk into a classroom to consciously digest creatively manufactured explanations for phenomena that no one understands.  I reinforce it every time I silently assure myself of the righteousness of acting as I do even while I harbor intense desires to do something different.  I reinforce it when I defend the merit of my continued act of academic study to others.

Foucault argues that tests and classification systems involve, “the deployment of force and the establishment of truth.”[1] Tests function to assess progress towards normalization rendering each individual a set of data to measure against the norms.  This creates the standards of perceived “truths” which will bring to bear on what is considered normative and shape individuals’ future actions.  Foucault argues that this kind of power works to “mend” the minds of individuals who violate social norms, transforming them into “optimally” socially functional beings, “subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies.”[2]

We are all inescapably mortal which places physical restraints on our ability to act as we wish.  We are limited in the sense that we all have an expiration date determined largely by chance.  Beyond our physical limitations, all other constraints are those that we create for ourselves.  Rejecting the belief that we gradually come to understand reality and subscribing to the belief that we each create our own realities is radical.  In doing so, we render ourselves agents and determinants of our course.  We free ourselves from the confines of the restrictions that we have placed upon ourselves.

“So let’s pull up some barstools, and get ourselves a ringside seat for the one unnerving moment they’re gonna show the truth on TV.”

More often than not, we, who have become so habitualized to disciplinary power’s normalizing force, do not even question seemingly objective phrases like “academic achievement.”  Habitualization blinds us to the arbitrary and mutable nature of the definitions of these words whose definitions are of serious consequence.  Thus, Foucault argues that truth is not something that exists waiting to be discovered but something that is produced by these and similar techniques.  He says that there is no singular true answer to any question, or any single explanation for any human behavior.  Yet, “regimes of truth” establish themselves, and these “truths” produce discourses that function as true in a given place and time.  We internalize these manufactured pillars or ideals as veritable and ensure their persistence through generations by blindly reproducing them.  These discourses shape and control interactions between individuals by manufacturing historically-specific “facts” that then stand to be disproven and which evidence often does not sway.

Foucault also finds the utilization of rhetoric of progress insidious, because it is through this rhetoric that exercises of power are justified and maintained.  For example, people are very quick to attribute the increasing prioritization of education to the process human progress.  However, while education may well improve people’s lives and promote new discoveries and technology, the inequalities institutionalized in our education system, help perpetuate poverty, violence, etc.  In other words, while continual progress towards technological advancement and development is part of the story, it is certainly not the whole story.  This incomplete narrative of progress is used to justify the current modus operandi, which in turn serves as justification for the perpetuation of systems of privilege.

“We woke up with the notion that enough is not enough without more, and then we pushed with one motion like the ocean heaves a wave at the shore.”

To relate this idea back to money, money does not have value except that which each of us bestows it.  It is only a combination of linen and cotton.  Its value is therefore representative, not intrinsic.  Money becomes mobility, entitlement to material things and service, influence, and immunity from social and legal sanctioning as we act as if it actually is all of those things.  We are criticizing the impacts of a capitalist system that we are creating, and we are spending our days doing it.  What are we doing?  Are we just not creative enough to imagine alternatives?  Capitalism has not always existed—meaning, its continued existence is neither natural nor inevitable.  It is something that had to be created.  Because it has not always existed, there is no reason for us to presume its continued existence, especially not when many are predicting an economic collapse in this country.

Foucault says that socialization is inescapable for both individuals and their thoughts.  However, without explicitly doing so, he gives us a way out by denaturalizing the “truths” and conventions that we have internalized as natural.  Each varied genealogy of what exists in the present gives us an opportunity for the intellectual freedom to reconsider the merits of what society has taught us is normal and valuable.  Thus, thinking and doing things differently is an alternative to legitimating the lessons of our socialization by blindly reproducing it.

We do not have to spend our lives in the classroom. Social standard operating procedure, systems of classification, and methods of governance have changed and will continue to change.  However, change is not always “progress,” (though it may masquerade as such) unless individuals decide to act as if it is.  We do not have to leave it up to our government to change laws.  Our government is ruled by “regimes of truth,” not the “will of the people” and “the people” are indoctrinated and disciplined to reproduce these truths.  The notion that the government is responsive to the will of the people and the notion that its sovereign people are responsive to its laws, work together to reinforce stagnation.  While the laws may have changed radically, they often have little effect on the culture unless people change their behavior.  (Prohibition, anyone?)  Anti-hate crime legislation does not stop people from committing hate crimes.  Anti-abortion legislation does not stop people from having or from performing abortions.  Anti-discrimination laws do not stop people from discriminating.

Are we simply not bold enough to break free of this mold? I am stumped.  I cannot account for the paralysis of the masses.  As for me, I am paradoxically terrified of and thrilled by unpredictability.  I am on a conveyor belt clinging to the comforting allusion of predictability it gives me…or that I create…or whatever.  Lately though, I am on a fast track to “fuck it, all of it.”

– “Watching the little birds fly kamikaze missions into the walls, think I’m gonna stay in today, sit on my couch, and watch them fall.”

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[1] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, ibid., p. 184.

[2] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, ibid., p. 138.

Note: all italicized quotations are song lyrics written by Ani DiFranco

Damn Feminsts

When I was little I had a shirt that said “When we shortchange girls we shortchange America”. I was never quiet sure exactly what that meant but I got the general idea. As I got older I grew to have a more and more clear understanding of what that shirt was trying to say and I also learned that while many people would agree in public with that idea there was still a great deal of unspoken shortchanging of girls going on in this country.

[ Side note-    I write about the shortchanging of girls because that is what I know, though through this class I have come to realize that I myself must overlook the devaluation of groups I don't belong to just as I am furious at "others" for overlooking women. It is a good thing to know. To think about. To try to pay more attention too. And to take note when some one from one of those groups tries to explain to me what things are like for him or her.]

It is the refusal to acknowledge of the existence of any inequality between white men and “others” that is the most detrimental weapon. Feminism has been labeled outdated, something we no longer have use for due to the current lack of gender stereotyping or favoritism. In fact many men will tell you that women now have so much more power and money then men that they are completely at our mercy (they tend not to be able to cite where they obtained this information). These men feel that any women who calls herself a feminist is a greedy man hater who is seeking total domination.

Some men , on the other hand, are happy to THINK of themselves as feminists but they have the most unbelievable understanding of what feminism is. For example an acquaintance of mine defended her boyfriends assertion that he was a feminist because (i am dead serious about this) he watched women’s basketball. Ummmm???? Huh? What? I think I would find that more funny if I didn’t feel it was so wide spread. I talked to a girl who told me that she couldn’t be a feminist because she liked to shave her legs. People! Sometimes it can be really hard to even know what to say next.

The young men who I have met who call themselves feminists or are accepting of women who think of themselves as such wouldn’t know what it was to be a feminist if it smacked them in the face. I am not trying to pretend that there is one definition of feminism or that everyone practices it the same. But one thing it is not is patriarchal gender norms given a new name to humor upstarts.

I know things have come a long way but I feel like we have stalled out by pretending that things have come far enough. Equal pay is at least something that is tangible. How do we measure less tangible and yet just as important inequalities? How do we measure the difference in number of girls versus boys who are sexually harassed by teachers? How do we measure the number of diapers, laundry, meals that a wife does more than her husband even when they both “work” the same number of hours?

I attended a progressive public high school in a liberal town and in 9th grade I took Advanced Freshman English (I know, I know, what a smarty pants). On the first day the teacher went over the syllabus. We were going to be some of the “great works of literature” like Grapes of Wrath, Old Man in the Sea, and Shakespeare some 15 or 20 books and short stories in all. And in the course of the whole semester  the only thing we were going to read written by a woman was  one 5 page short story. After class I pointed this out and asked the teacher the reason. He informed me that there were no great books written by women. The next day I brough him a book I had called 500 Great Books by Women and my parents offered to by the school a classroom set of a couple of books written by women. It was all to no avail. The class is still taught the same way and that teacher made sure I was never in any of his classes again. Not really a loss if you ask me.

Separate is Still Not Equal

The National Conference on Black Power reading said that the Conference “raised serious questions about the ultimate value of integration”. It also said that the conference adopted a resolution to ‘Accelerate “buy black policies” within all black communities’.

Some argue that integration caused economic harm to black communities, because it allowed the professional and upper-upper/middle class blacks to move into white neighborhoods. This resulted in those people then spending their money in white communities instead of black communities and a decrease in the number of successful blacks to serve as role models.

While some may feel that this argument is extreme, I find some value in is. I live in Prince George’s County, which is predominately black. PG County is the wealthiest predominately black county in the United States. We “buy black” because that’s all we can do — most businesses (except beauty stores and nail salons) are owned by black people. This also cuts down on hiring and wage discrimination. The government and the schools are run by black people. The doctors, teachers, businesspeople, and lawyers are mostly black. I think this atmosphere, mostly free from anti-black racism and full of positive role models, creates a positive cycle of wealth.

Yet, even as the most affluent predominantly black county, we are still not even close to being equal with affluent predominately white counties like Montgomery County, which borders PG. We had the highest foreclosure rate in the state of Maryland, even before the recession. Our high school graduation rate is 57%, compared to a national average of 71% Montgomery County’s average of 89%. Twenty-seven percent of PG County residents are college graduates, while 54% of Montgomery County residents have graduated from college. To me, this suggests that even separate communities of color are affected by the structural racism in this country and that “all black communities” may not solve the root of the problem.

Language and Valuing the Devalued

I think it is important to consider how language affects the processes we have been discussing in class. I thought about this after reading the pieces on Hawaii and their systems of thought. The terminology there is so important in how native Hawaiians view the world. Language has a lot of play in how people construct and maintain power in these hierarchical polarization paradigms.

The anthropologist Edward Sapir and his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf, developed a theory that has become known as the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis and serves as the linguistic equivalent to this connection between structure and agency. The main tenet is that language not only expresses our ideas about social reality but also shapes these ideas. The theory has two parts: linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism. Each culture divides up the world differently, and a particular perception of the world influences the language that is created; therefore, language represents perception. Linguistic determinism states that language is also the framework for our thoughts and perceptions. Language enables us to create reality by substituting words for direct experience. It is central to culture because it is through language that we are able to create and transmit culturally shared meanings of human experience, thought, feeling, and behavior.

Basil Bernstein, influenced by this thesis, studied language as a bidirectional relationship between structure and agency through the process of socialization. He noted the distinctions in language use associated with socioeconomic standing, particularly the link between language acquisition and social reproduction. His interest in language extended to a general interest in how class systems are maintained by having control over knowledge and the language needed to access and use it in complex and creative ways. His basic premise was that social location has a linguistic environment that is learned through socialization from generation to generation and that, reciprocally, one’s acquired language influences social standing. In his theory of speech codes, Bernstein argued that social class affects how students learn language in their family and school environments and that this, in turn, affects their achievement potential and social class possibilities.

So to value the devalued, how do we overcome problems in things like language differentiations? If you buy the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, of course…

“The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries, either. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference.” (Audre Lorde, 1979)

“Feminist analyses of patriarchy as a system in which men united to dominate women and of feminism as a movement in which women unite together against men ignore the fact that men of color do not have patriarchal power over white women, and that black women rarely feel a unity of interest with white women, who have often been their race and class enemies.” (Matthaei, 1996)

 

The readings and movie for 3/4/10 all illustrated the topic of “Combining class, race, gender, and sexuality.” The readings by Audre Lorde and the movie titled, “A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde” were especially poignant to me. I gained insight into the limitations of traditional feminism, which generalized the experience of white middle-class women as the experience of all women. But I also realized that feminism is still held back by this problem and will continue to be as long as racism is not recognized within the feminist movement.

These readings also caused me to reflect on my own actions and the way in which people react to me. I hope that I can recognize times when I am being racist, as well as the opportunities I receive because of white privilege. Furthermore, I hope that I will not be defensive if others point out times when I am being racist, and instead strive to be open to criticism and dedicated to recognizing the diversity of experiences of women.

Never Drink Coffee that is Darker than Your Skin

I was so interested in the Malcolm X reading, he didn’t seem as violent as my teachers in High school had portrayed him. However, I was a little put off at first when he said:

It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.

I was a little insulted at first, because I am biracial, and this quote basically makes a bastard-child out of me. However, I do get what he is saying about separation being important. Before coming to Wellesley, I had had basically enough bad experiences with men that I thought the only way I could have my head clear enough to concentrate or make any progress was to not have them around. So I get why oppressed groups need separation. But that doesn’t fully solve my issue as being a person in the middle of too hierarchically opposed groups.

Another reason I cant blame Malcolm for what he said is that my mother used to joke that a person should never drink coffee that is darker than your skin(mind you her skin was the color of a perfect cup of coffee). It’s werid to think of this, since I am much lighter skinned than her, but maybe all of us mixed cups of coffee should get together, and take a break from diluting our experiences by pretending that we really fit into just one racial group.

I say all of this to say that I think it is important to revive Fusion, or some sort of multiracial organization on campus. Being mixed race is a different experience for everyone. Maybe every once in a while, the diluted shouldn’t dilute themselves with the non diluted…

Privilege

I keep thinking about privilege:  Who has it?  What do they do with it?  Can you give it away if you want to?  Can you use it for good and not for evil?  In my quickie intro (ala facebook) I describe myself as such:  “I am a lefty-radical, working class, gender queer Jewish mutt with white privilege.”  We’ve talked about identity politics a bit in class but I’ve been thinking about them for years.  My politics are my identity for myriad reasons but most of the identities have been “given” to me.  When I was a kid in hand-me-downs and people called me names for being poor or when my high school history teacher taught my class that Jews started the Black Plague and that we enjoyed being slaves in Egypt because it was steady work.  Hell, my gender identity is given to me every time someone assumes I use female pronouns.

However, I had to work to identify my white privilege.  Someone also told me I had white privilege but I fought that information before I just accepted it.  I had to have multiple conversations with people, read loads of books and take classes that dared mention it.  I had to study history and politics and I had to admit some hard truths.  No one wants to think that they didn’t earn something they’ve worked for, but to acknowledge that a not-insignificant part of my success has come from the color of my skin and *not* because of my charming personality was hard to swallow.

So this is what I’m wondering…in what ways do you experience your privilege (whether by race, class, education, social-capital, etc.) and what does that mean to you?

3.4.10 – Separatism

In class we recently covered the topic of separatism as one form of resistance to the racism and sexism of the Hierarchical Polarization Paradigm.  The idea behind this dramatic separation was that in order to resist the HPP, one must completely escape the societal structure under which it operates.  While we did discuss the problems inherent with this idea as a solution–the impracticality of such an undertaking and the polarization underlying such a separatist society–I think that there is an important place in anti-racist, anti-sexist movements for stronger advocacy than what we currently see today.  One problem we presently face is that because there aren’t many explicit  laws which advocate sexism or racism, many citizens assume that an  “equal playing field” already exists in this country.  Other than the occasional nationwide coverage given to a specific injustice (e.g. Jena 6), the public doesn’t usually perceive racism and sexism as pressing problems within society.  Because the HPP is strongly rooted in our socioeconomic structure, it begs the question of how to continue the struggle against a more subtle system.  As we’ve discussed at length in this class, the integration of separate movements is one means of addressing this problem.  Yet I wonder if we need the firey, even incendiary rhetoric of a young Malcolm X to at least to reengage the country in a conversation.

Recognizing “the Other”

Where do we start in recognizing the other? A few thoughts…

In the Audre Lordes’ letter, “An Open Letter to Mary Daly”, she says, “assimilation within a solely western-European herstory is not acceptable.” She continues to say, “but in order to come together we must recognize each other.”  For Lordes, the letter was a means to break the silence and “speak to white women about racism.”  These comments made me think of  several issues,thoughts and ideas where communication can only happen if their is a recognition of some sort. Wether it’s bridging cultures, beliefs, ideas or knowledge, there needs to be space for the reconizing of the other.

I then thought of Professor Matthaei’s article and the conceptual differences between neoclassical and Marxist economics. To what extent and how are we able to bridge these two camps of thought?

For me, as much as I believe in contextualizing ideas and forms of knowledge, beliefs, and more, I think of morals as author Seyla Benhabib says, ” which concerns what is right or just insofar as we are considered simply as human beings.”

This helps me believe in  moral connections that binds things together. Recognizing the other becomes/is a moral responsibility.

Barriers

Do you believe in universal history? I don’t. I think of universal history as a guise for the history of dead white men to be honored. It does not apply to me because when I look at the history books my story is not there.

Black women have taken a back seat not just to white men, but white women and black men as well; pushed to the margin of history and herstory at the same time. I constantly wonder what the implications are for mass movements. If recognizing difference creates barriers to unification; and failing to recognize difference alienates members with multiple identities (ie: black women in the feminist movement); where is the place of common ground? We cannot move forward together without first breaking down the barriers within our own groups or else the hierarchical polarization is maintained by privileging one experience over another. But whose responsibility is it to break those barriers? Are women of color responsible for educating white women on the separate struggles they face? I personally agree with Audre Lorde that it is wasted energy–I am tired of teaching about me! Why don’t you do some homework of your own and come prepared to discuss? I would rather depend and join with those who already understand me; no explanation necessary. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier to keep our causes separate so we don’t have to go through the painful process of recognition and respect. But nothing ever gets accomplished by taking the easy way out, nothing worthwhile at least.