Dear Majority of the A.O. Staff:

Allow me to assault you with my experience as a “newcomer” to the A.O. staff. Sitting silent and uncomprehending (for the most part) through the first two 2—2 1/2 hour meetings of the year, I began to see something profoundly disturbing, emotionally. I saw a dynamic I have only witnessed in studies I have conducted of meetings of the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana as a covert investigator. A certain core group of people knew “the lexicon” inside and out, and used it to secure their power in a larger group of semi-committed, semi-participating subjects. I have also witnessed this, most disturbingly, in religious institutions. The lexicon I am speaking of (here) hinges around the words, if you are not self-conscious of this already, “theorize,” “articulate,” “oppositional knowledge,” etc., words which I had grown quite accustomed to reading and thinking about in the silence of my room, yet never thought would be useful or “manageable” in spoken (that is, constrained by time and energy) discussions. Then came the valuative word “rigorous,” and later, in a casual discussion with S. Tumino, “pure theory.”

It may not surprise you that you are employing the same formal tactics of the leaders of the KKK. You may have theorized, explained and “submitted” to “rigorous critique” these strategies and found them unproblematic. I, however, am beginning to feel excluded and even oppressed as a newcomer (not to mention concerned for the future of Marxism on this campus). There is a significant difference between an all-out “pedagogy of support” (which, without the provisional end of developing practices that will produce the conditions for revolution, is extremely susceptible to acquisition and commodification in the academy) and a pedagogy of indoctrination, which I see occurring here (I have been on the receiving end of this) and in the KKK and churches. One extremely conservative editor of a popular writing textbook includes “difficult” (“rigorous?”) texts like anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s essay “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” in a book for freshmen. The logic of this, he claims, is that although they won’t understand it all, they should begin to acquire some of the discourse of the academic institution simply by being “exposed” to it. The problematic here is that students cannot simply “look up” the words academic institutions employ in a dictionary (as J. Sahay suggested to M. Jensen when she asked for a definition-explanation of “misogyny” in the last meeting), they must “go to” those who use them. And, indeed, one cannot “look up” the definitions of “theorize” in Webster’s and get anything close to what is meant by it in the space of this student-funded division of an academic institution. So what is the newcomer to do? Be passive and “absorb” in accordance with the conservative’s sponge metaphor? “Earn” the ability to speak by “rigorous” study?

Regardless of the positions I anticipate in response to this—for example, you should “engage” with what you don’t understand, or “critique” what you disagree with—I assure you that none of them will be: “speak in a lexicon you know already.” This is not encouraged because the A.O. staff takes its terms to be self-evident, simply accessible if you are “rigorous” enough in your “theorizations.” If you “do the work” you will “understand.” Well, let’s just look at the word “rigorous,” which is the most often employed unexplained term in this space. It is, of course, a word derived from a metaphor of writing. Writing, and thinking, are like manual labor. They are “work” which, like manual labor, if you put enough time and energy into, will produce something. The more time and energy one puts into a “theorization,” presumably, the more “rigorous” the theorization will be. This, as we know, is not self- evidently the case. In practice, the more time and energy a subject (or collectivity like the A.O. staff) puts into materially supporting (via the consistent and repetitive use of) a lexicon without attempting to revise it or allowing it to be transformed by other (practical) pressures, the more centralized power and authority it (the group or subject) has. We all know that states secure hegemony through the repetition of specific ways of thinking, images, summarizations, etc. at institutional sites as well as others. Well, the way you (the majority) have secured the “supersession” M. Wood speaks of in his interpretation of S. Tumino’s proposal for self/auto critique of “contradictory elements” is by repeating yourselves uncritically.

Ask yourselves why you use the word “theory” and where it is situated historically and from what discourses it arrived at our meeting table. Ask yourself why you use the passive tense consistently (“it is necessary that” etc.). Ask yourself why you speak in this lexicon as well as write in it. Ask yourself why you create sentences that are oftentimes chock-full of clauses and unrelenting strings of complicated terms. To answer these inquiries, you’d have to admit that these formal strategies (the use and repetition of key words/concepts, for example) are the product of a very powerful ideology: that of the dominant institutions of capitalism, mainly economic, legal, academic and state institutions. Using these strategies is a contradiction to the production of oppositional knowledge. And, of course, we cannot escape contradiction as long as we are existing in capitalism; but it is a contradiction with practical consequences and effects. The stark reality of these effects are: you won’t have enough people to produce oppositional knowledges anymore, physically, materially, if you keep repeating yourselves. You may attract the temporary interest of a few radicals “lingering at the edge of theory,” as S.Tumino put it in another casual discussion. But without compromise, of terms, of positions, and the acceptance and support of principled differences, your numbers will dwindle.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not espousing discursive pluralism or supportive pedagogy here. But I am saying that discursive pluralism and supportive pedagogy have some progressive elements, the main one being the end goal of (discursive) liberation. The “freedom to speak” is indeed progressive (that is, it assists the building of practices aimed at a revolutionary end). But this freedom is cut short, deferred in the space of the A.O. meetings by the repetition of unexamined and unexplained terms and rhetorical strategies. It is also cut short by administrative practices such as voting and the dominance of a simple majority, and by physical practices such as “yelling” and “interrupting.” When you go home after our next meeting, think about how you feel about me. How do you feel about the person who is having difficulty even understanding you? Think about your relationship to me as someone who has not fully acquired and refuses simply to repeat your lexicon. What’s going on there, at that point where my interruptions appear unusual or over-simplified to you? Also, think about yourself and how you came into contact with the specific terms you are repeating. I believe, if you put some time into it, you will start to recognize some extremely conservative (and traditional) strategies at work both in how you acquired the lexicon and how you introduce it to others.

Sincerely,

Skip Thompson

October 8, 1993

[Proposal appended to text:]

1. for A Teach-in for the Newcomers and Dissenters in which the majority of the A.O. staff can “teach” the minority just why it uses the lexicon that it does, and why it will not accept or understand as theoretical other lexicons (such as those centered around ‘experience’), and why the practice of voting instead of consensus-building is employed, and why people yell and interrupt each other in this space of “theory,” and why the pedagogy of indoctrination is not regarded as problematic, and why the reforms that allow the very existence of the A.O. (i.e. the SGA’s liberal sympathies) are not regarded as serious or worth supporting (via their quantitative expansion), and why the personal (principled differences, similarities in positions, etc.) has gone unaddressed in the public space of the A.O., and why etc….

2. for a re-articulated A.O. “space” in which newcomers can learn through contestation conducted in a lexicon which is not the lexicon of the majority. In other words, don’t expect newcomers to “come to you” or “work” to acquire your lexicon only. Devise inclusive strategies, other ways of speaking about the problematics we write about (allow ‘experience’ for example, allow “private” emotions, etc.).

3. for an open compromise on principled differences. I, for one, am working for world liberation. I may disagree on the prioritization of practices, but my end is the same as yours. Why does this go unsaid, unacknowledged? Why do we ignore and suppress our commonalities when there are so few people who are working for world liberation anyways?