Dear Diary
Jennifer Cotter
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Winter 1993-1994 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 3, No. 2 (pp. 3-7) | ||
| • September 23, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
10/18/93
I just experienced a very problematic encounter with a former professor of mine, Dympna Callaghan. I was waiting in the line at “the Blinker” snack bar for some food that I had ordered when she came up to order some food as well. When she recognized me she took this as an opportunity to say “I heard that the Alternative Orange is planning to publish an article that mentions me, and that you voted in favor of publishing this article” (see: “A Call for a Return to Theoretical Pedagogy…” Alternative Orange, vol. 3, no. 2 [this issue]). I explained that, yes, in fact I did vote in favor of such an article. I further explained that the reason I voted this way was because I thought that, given her expressed commitment to feminism, it was quite problematic that she would choose to articulate the charges that she has against the A.O. in a private space where she does not have to theorize and explain why she would make these charges.
Professor Callaghan went on to say, “I think it's terrible that the Alternative Orange is engaging in such racist and misogynist practices.” Having heard this untheorized charge (via another A.O. member) from her before, I pointed out that this was precisely what I was referring to; that if she thinks that the Alternative Orange is engaging in “racist” and “misogynist” practices she needs to make a public critique that explains how she understands these concepts and why she is deploying them against the A.O. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, how an article that problematizes the use of labels (cf. “limit concepts”), and argues for the necessity of developing explanatory concepts that demystify the structures that perpetuate and legitimate racism and sexism could possibly warrant the charge of being “racist” and “misogynist.” Nor could I help but wonder whether or not Professor Callaghan had actually even read this article as she did not even make an attempt to explain why she would use the term “misogyny,” an outdated concept that theorizes the oppression and exploitation of women as the result of a widespread personal hatred toward women (i.e., patriarchy as “attitude”). Not only does this concept prevent us from understanding the conditions that give rise to such “hatred” when and where it exists, but more problematically it mystifies the cultural institutions and practices which serve to legitimate and perpetuate the transpersonal, social-political oppression, and economic exploitation of women all over the globe by reducing patriarchy to a series of inter-“personal” phenomena. If this actually was enough to explain the oppression and exploitation of women, the logical conclusion of this is that it would also be “enough” to simply “educate” people to learn how to “value” and “appreciate” women, but Professor Callaghan refuses to do even this! She refuses to teach. In so doing, even on her own terms she participates in the perpetuation of the very problems she claims to oppose.
Professor Callaghan continued by saying that, “What you have done in your last issue is make fun of a professor for being a mother, wife, professor, feminist and Latina, and this is racist and misogynist.” I argued that we were not “making fun” of anyone, that we were quite seriously problematizing the identity politics inherent in the statement that we quoted (originally and uncritically made by La Voz de La Lucha ). To this, Professor Callaghan responded by saying that this caption did no such thing and that the A.O. is openly engaging in “racist” and “misogynist” practices. As I recall, diary, in the caption that Professor Callaghan was referring to, we engaged in a critique of those discourses that assume the “self-evidency” of “experience” and “resolve” the contradictions between opposing and contesting mediations of “experience” into discursive pluralism. As discursive pluralism uncritically encompasses these contradictions it renders unintelligible collective action—within a theoretically mediated (i.e., explained) social totality—based on a set of consistent political principles. Such a limit to intelligibility is crucial for the production of “flexible subjects” that contribute to the maintenance of “a politically fractured and unorganized labor force necessary for the reproduction of capitalist accumulation” (Alternative Orange, vol. 3, no. 1, 5). Being “successful” within relations of exploitation then, is contingent upon having developed the capacity to occupy, negotiate, and “manage” the contradictions between such diverse and conflicting subject positions (i.e., “identities”), without intervening in the institutional pressures which demand this “management.” Our appropriation of La Lucha’s statement about a particular professor who, we argue, supports discursive pluralism was a move to relocate such affirmations as an uncritical acceptance of this form of “success” and the ends and interests of the institutions that require it. With this in mind, I argued that if Professor Callaghan thought our argument problematizing identity politics (via a critique of the discourses which support it) was “inadequate,” she needed to show us how this was the case by explaining it to us, and demonstrating how—without abandoning a socially based theoretics—we could get beyond these “problems” and “limitations” in our critique.
Professor Callaghan then went on to ask, “Why should I offer my response, when I haven’t even been invited to respond?” I found it surprising that a professor expressing such a strong commitment to oppositional politics would wait for an invitation before she decided to intervene in discourses and practices that she finds politically problematic. What I found even more surprising, however, was the fact that the essay to which this entire exchange between she and I referred, was a public response to her refusal (communicated to an individual member of the A.O. while he was using the English Department copy machine) to accept an invitation extended to her (and other professors) to theorize her pedagogical practices within the space of the A.O. I pointed out to her that, “Yes, you have specifically been invited. There is a formal invitation in the first issue of the year for teachers to theorize their pedagogical practices within the space of the paper, and your name is on this invitation.” What I did not add, but could have, was that this invitation was reproduced on a mass scale and posted in various areas around campus, including the bulletin board in the English Department office. Under the circumstances, the only conclusion that I could draw from this remark was that Professor Callaghan did not want a public invitation which would require her response to be public, instead she wanted a private invitation to respond to the individual members of the A.O. Such an invitation would relieve her of the pressure of both having to decide which position—or “identity”—she should occupy in a public forum, and of having to explain and defend the criteria by which she has made this decision. It would allow her the space to be a “flexible subject” who does not have to subordinate, for instance, professional interests to a project of emancipating women and people of color. The most unbearable pressure on the “flexible subject” is the pressure to decide, for decision puts limits on opportunity; the opportunity to represent oneself “differently” in different spaces, the opportunity to “succeed” within relations of exploitation. Indeed, rather than respond publicly, Professor Callaghan has chosen to occupy the private space of the lunch line, the private space of the copy machine, the private space of the mailroom…. All of these can be characterized as private spaces because they allow particular subjects to remain unaccountable for the discourses they make use of and the practices they engage in; a public exchange is not one that merely occurs in front of other people (e.g., the “Blinker” employees, other students, departmental staff members, etc.) rather, it is one in which the discourses that particular subjects rely upon for their position, and the knowledges that they are engaged in producing are made explicit and available to social contestation and critique.
Perhaps realizing that an acceptance of a public invitation would mean that she would have to take political and pedagogical responsibility for her position, Professor Callaghan now expressed that, “I have no interest in responding and being set-up for a ‘showtrial’.” I argued that this invitation was not an invitation to a “showtrial” but was, in fact, a call for a serious political and intellectual engagement with professors that have expressed a commitment to oppositional pedagogies. Diary, I would further argue that making such a reference to the A.O.’s critique-al engagement with the discourses and practices of professors on campus as equivalent to a Stalinist “showtrial” is not merely an inflation of the institutional power of the Alternative Orange, vis-á-vis, for instance, the administration in regulating and controlling pedagogical practices but it is also a complete erasure of the history of the relationship between Stalinism and critique. What allowed the Stalinist regime in the 1930’s Soviet Union to engage in the opportunistic and politically unprincipled “purging” of Communist Party members was not a reliance upon critique, but its reliance upon pragmatism; its violation of the principles of democratic centralism through the suppression of “freedom of criticism.”
Once again, Professor Callaghan shifted the grounds upon which she was arguing when she asked, “What gives you the nerve to ask me to publicly theorize my pedagogical and political practices when you are supporting such racism and misogyny in the practices of the A.O.?” Given the fact that throughout this entire exchange she had refused to explain how she understood these concepts and how she thought the A.O. was engaging in practices that could be characterized as such, and instead had simply repeated labels over and over again to the point when everyone in the snack bar area had stopped what they were doing to see what was happening, I realized quite clearly that she was not at all interested in providing a rigorous and critical explanation of “racism” and “misogyny,” one that would enable the Alternative Orange and its audience, or, at the very least, the other students in the snack bar area to understand and intervene in such practices. She was not interested in making her own discourses available to the collective production of oppositional knowledges through public critique and contestation rather, she was interested in making them available to lunch time GOSSIP. Instead of engaging with the argument provided in the essay in question, she was using her position of relative institutional authority over me to intimidate and harass me during my lunch break for endorsing the publication of this essay which critiques her own pedagogical practices as contradicting her expressed commitment to ending racism and sexism.
These intimidation tactics do not function to produce the knowledges necessary in placing sustained critique-al pressure on the discourses and subjectivities that work to reproduce and legitimate racism and sexism, rather, they work to suppress the production of such knowledges by shutting down an investigation into the production of such discourses and subjectivities. In fact, when I problematized her position of relative institutional authority and the way she was using this to privatize a discussion of racism and sexism, she responded by saying, “Stop pointing at me and waving your hands about.” That is, rather than engaging with the content of what I was saying, and accounting for her institutional authority, she chose to focus on my hand gestures; a move to simply re-assert this authority by deploying petit-bourgeois codes of etiquette to dismiss a critique of her practices.
She repeated, “Are you going to stop waving your hands about?” I told her that I would not conform to the codes of behavior she was deploying, as this attention to such codes was a way of deferring engagement over pressing political questions. I also asked her why she would ask me to do so and pointed out that her “request” implied that she simply wanted me to behave as a “good girl.” A “good girl”, Diary, is someone who remains silent, follows unexplained orders and does not inquire into the ends and interests of these orders. Professor Callaghan’s response: “Its not a matter of being a ‘good girl,’ you just need to stop waving your hands about.” I referenced the fact that this unexplained order on her part was symptomatic of the way in which she was making use of her authority.
She remarked sarcastically, “Yes, you’re entirely the victim, aren’t you.” Then she walked away before I could reply directly.
In her final statement Professor Callaghan seems to indicate that I have positioned myself as a (helpless) “victim” and that I should “stop” being a “victim.” However, she also seems to indicate that someone else is the “victim,” that she too/instead is a “victim.” She is the “victim” of my (and the Alternative Orange’s) “oppressive” discourse. This discourse is “oppressive” to the “flexible subject” because it demands accountability to the collective theoretical-practical struggle against exploitation. According to this logic, to “stop” being a “victim,” means to refrain from theorizing “authority,” “institutionality,” etc. In this case, it means to refrain from explaining how Professor Callaghan’s practices are situated within and overdetermined by her relative institutional authority. In short, it means to ignore—to conceal—the cultural institutions and practices that marginalize particular subjects. Diary, if we conceal these institutions and practices how is there any possibility of intervening in them? Insofar as Professor Callaghan provides no content whatsoever to her charges, and thus does not contribute to the production of knowledges that can explain “victimization,” her discourse cannot enable marginalized subjects to intervene in the conditions of their own “victimization”; it cannot enable marginalized subjects to understand the conditions that produce their exploitation and oppression and thus enable them to determine the means by which they can intervene in these conditions. In fact, the very discourse that Professor Callaghan understands as a “victimizing” discourse—a scientific and revolutionary marxist-feminist discourse that does not conceal the material conditions of oppression—is precisely the kind of discourse that can enable the intervention into and transformation of conditions of exploitation and oppression.
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