Dear A.O. Staff,

As I understand many others are replying at length to Skip Thompson’s text addressed to “the majority of the A.O. staff,” and that, in fact, it is probably best that those who have been implicitly identified by Skip in this text as “the indoctrinated” take more time and space to do so than one such as myself who I understand is seen to be one of “the indoctrinators,” I will keep my reply fairly brief. Also, because Skip represents himself as bewildered and overwhelmed by the “lexicon” of “the majority,” I will keep what I have to say “very straightforward” and “very clear.” I will accept Skip’s representation of himself, therefore, as the “ignorant subject” (and I will not address the issue of what this “ignorance” quite clearly knows despite, or, in fact, because of, by means of, through its particular “ignorance,” as I suspect others will deal quite adequately with these points).

In this light, several points strike me right away in reading Skip’s text. First, we have a very familiar—and I must add very tired—contradiction: on the one hand, members of “the majority” are charged with extremely problematic and indeed potentially reprehensible political practices, and yet on the other hand, the writer wants these very same people to take more time and expend more effort to teach him how to speak, write, act, etc. just like them. If it is true that the “majority” is guilty of totalitarianism, then one who is committed to “world liberation” would want to vehemently oppose all that they are doing, and in no way speak, write, act, etc., such that he would be complicitous with this end of totalitarianism (once again, I leave aside the question of the political and ideological significance as well as the historicity of the discourse of totalitarianism that Skip brings to bear—the conflation of “far left” and “far right,” the charges of conspiracy, indoctrination, and you might soon expect to follow from this the whole hysterical line that what we will see next is “brainwashings,” “show trials,” “purgings,” “liquidations,” “executions,” “Gulags,” “secret police,” “killing fields,” etc., etc.,). For many, many years now members of the intellectual marxist groupings at Syracuse University with which I have been associated have been charged with fanaticism, extremism, and elitism by a steady trickle of different individuals who have at the same time insisted that they would like these very same marxists to teach and even lead them (!) in their own usually very different kinds of activist practices. I think the same thing needs to be addressed to Skip Thompson as was addressed to those who have urged us to come out of the academy and organize the masses in the streets while denouncing what we did do and how we did do it from within the academy as entirely “wrongheaded,” “off the wall,” “lunatic,” etc. In other words, Skip, you need to decide where you stand in relation to the work the “majority” is doing: is it useful and important and necessary and urgent work or is it problematic and reprehensible and elitist and totalitarian (or less significant and less “dangerous” than that, “just plain irrelevant” and “hopelessly out of touch”—again, these are the precise words used by some of your past “comrades”)?

Second, if Skip wants to be “educated” by members of the majority, then, fine, ask for help in “catching up” and take advantage of what is offered, such as what Skip himself indicates Stephen Tumino has provided him. I know, moreover, that quite a few others have already—in the very short time Skip has been involved with the A.O.—spent a considerable amount of time and effort as well in trying to help Skip. However, A.O. meetings are not introductory classes: if we are to turn meetings designed to make editorial decisions and to work through the coordination of production concerns into such classes, then the former necessary work will not be done. Moreover, if we must all work “at his level”—“with his “lexicon”—we cannot at the same time make an effective intervention within and against the most advanced forms of bourgeois knowledge that are currently being produced and disseminated from within the academy. Once again, we have a clear choice: are we producing a populist, left pluralist, “radical” democratist publication or are we advancing counter-hegemonic critique, from an historical materialist perspective, of the most advanced and powerful discourses produced and disseminated from within the academy? Of course, it is important to work to write texts which are pedagogically effective, “rigorously” challenging yet conceptually and argumentatively clear and cogent, at the same time as we engage these advanced knowledges in sharp and unrelenting contest. However, this cannot mean simply popularizing—or “translating”—everything into the most comfortably familiar “lexicon.” Different things cannot be said with equal accuracy or effectivity in the same “lexicon.” Any graduate student in English and Textual Studies today should well know this.

If Skip would like to arrange a study group on marxism, marxist theory of ideology and ideology critique, late capitalism and the academy, materialism and language, or whatever, I am sure that all of the members of “the majority” would gladly help him with reading lists and be prepared to offer comments and critiques on written reports or other texts he and other study group members produce as a result of their readings. And yet, he should not—as Zavarzadeh’s submission to this issue of the A.O. indicates—expect endless patience with him if he is unwilling to take the time to read through a lot of things in order to further develop his level of understanding of what’s going on in A.O. discussions and debates. Unless a “student” is willing to make a sincere, serious, and conscientious effort to work hard in further developing his level of understanding, it is not worthwhile for those of us who have very limited resources in time and energy, and much to which we are committed and need to do in our “own” intellectual and political work, to set aside other things in order to teach this student. Skip needs to keep this in mind: all the time and energy that Stephen Tumino, Jennifer Sahay, Jennifer Cotter, Mark Wood, Adam Katz, or myself (as well as others within “the majority”) invest in teaching him is time and energy not invested in doing other things. Therefore he has to, at the very least, justify to us why he is so important that we should give him this kind of attention at the expense of other urgent and necessary interventionary projects. Besides, there is little time and energy left over right now to give beyond what is already available, and this means that Skip will have to take at least a significant proportion of the burden for learning upon himself by teaching himself: many others of us in the majority—including myself—have done so in the past, and in many cases with far less support and assistance than Skip can expect to find here and now. If it is a matter of great urgency to learn and develop, then you do not wait for others to lead or carry you forward, you begin at least to do this yourself. I myself have worked very long and hard in the past with “students” who have been willing and able to match and even exceed my commitment of time and energy to them—and who have been able to justify to me why I should expend this time and energy working with them by making a strong and firm commitment to take up and push forward the work we were engaged with together and to contribute back to me as much as they possibly could (and steadily more and more as time went on). This kind of “student” has not been as unusual as Skip might think—and he might consider it as a model for what he needs to do at this point himself. It is, in fact, only this kind of “student” for whom it is worthwhile for those who are working very long and hard in many other—important and urgent—areas to divert what Skip must recognize are often extensive and extraordinary amounts of time and energy to so “help.”

Finally, if Skip has read the A.O. carefully over the past year or so he will see quite clearly that members of the “majority” conceive of contestation and critique as a vital and necessary means of “education”: you learn a great deal from critique and contestation and in fact learn early to develop capacities to engage in “self-critique” and to seek out contestatory engagements and exchanges so as to continually further your own political-intellectual level of understanding. Therefore, speak in meetings and associated spaces from where you are at, subject your positions to critique, seek out contestation, attempt to do as much of this as you can yourself, and pay attention to what can be learned from this and how your own level of understanding can advance as a result of this engagement.

Bob Nowlan

October 13, 1993

p.s.: In light of the Jensen-Lindgren proposal in response to Skip’s text, I would just like to add this: the members of any such study group will have to produce a significantly compelling argument for why any one they “request” to come to this group and explain what they have written for the A.O. or otherwise should do so—in light of what I have written above. Once again, nothing changes: Why is doing this kind of work—coming to their group to explain to them what one has written, how, and why—in relation to these people a useful and important investment of time and energy, versus other areas in which those so invited are concentrating their efforts? These people in this prospective study group need therefore, at minimum, to be able to justify why those they so “invite” to come and explain what they have written should heed this invitation by giving a concrete indication of what the study group has been accomplishing in and through its “study” and how it has been accomplishing this that justifies responding to their request as they would like.