small minds, like small people, are cheaper to feed
and easier to fit into overhead compartments in airplanes
Thursday, September 08, 2016
vertigo and reconstructing 3-D visual space using an old Renaissance painting trick
Saturday, June 11, 2016
futility work
Monday, April 25, 2016
what to do when you're doomed
Sunday, April 17, 2016
w(h)ither liberalism?
What is usually left behind is Foucault’s insistence on periodization in the production of power-knowledge. This theme, most prominently examined in Foucault’s pre-genealogical, transitional work The Order of Things, should caution us to resist positivist impulses to totalize any theory. In the game of academic publication, the posture of positivist totalization is a significant display of dominance, so it continues.
In so far as the theorist is dissatisfied with every partial truth, the theorist should interrogate the way that a given theory appears true—under what historical and political conditions, under what episteme (remember those?), under what regime. When times change, the ground shifts, and with it eventually the groundwork of theoretical knowledge.1 And times have changed.
Foucault explored the births of the clinic, the prison, and sexuality. They share a general historical-political context, which in all cases coincides with the development of bourgeois industrial capitalism. To my knowledge, Foucault did not write anything about the development of capitalism that would parallel his theorizing about the clinic, the prison, and sexuality. My guess is that this was because of academic politics of the day, but an interesting thought would be that it is because capitalism was too base for Foucault’s theoretical tastes or capacity. In any case, these are all contemporaries, age peers.2
The basic set-up of capitalism has changed a great deal, even since Foucault’s death. Multinational corporations have overtaken the capacity of any state to control them, and the state and all institutions are being broken down, restructured and rebuilt through the auspices of corporations. Among the institutions undergoing this radical change are the clinic, the prison, and sexuality—and also identity, language, music.
Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality both rely on a notion of the individual as the site of power-knowledge, produced through the construction of subjectivity, self-consciousness (a word Foucault eschewed), and self-identity. The Panopticon relentlessly called upon the prisoner to attend to himself as prisoner, to become penitent, and eventually to become productive citizen. For that power-knowledge to effectuate that conversion, the individual implicitly had to understand himself in terms of identity-within-society, as a person-with-personhood, as one who would be held to account, and to whom this account should be significant as a matter of who he was. Individuals-as-persons were needed, and their self-surveillance was needed. To become “docile”—Foucault’s name for the ideal type of socially productive, well-adjusted citizen-body—one must be interpellated as social being, as a being whose identity within society could matter.
On the other side of the ledger, the anonymous bearer of power-knowledge was subjectivized into a hierarchical, bureaucratic position by way of achievements of docility (e.g., earning PhDs, moving up the corporate ladder, etc.) The fundamental attributes of power-knowledge, leaving aside all details of their nominal spheres of endeavor, are the capacity to produce knowledge, the capacity to produce docile bodies, and the capacity to produce and reproduce its own hierarchical bureaucracy. In short, at its base, power-knowledge requires a division of labor and a division of social control that depends on every member doing the assigned work in the assigned time in the prescribed fashion. Without bureaucratization, the liberal institutions Foucault interrogated could not continue to exist.
Where we are now is a situation in which systems of bureaucratization and hierarchy are in crisis. Obviously, this is not due to a proletariat revolution.3 It is due to the contradiction inherent in bureaucratization as a form of power. Perhaps the exemplar of bureaucratization in our computerized, networked society is the dominance of control and decision algorithms for guiding financial, industrial, and other major economic behaviors. The relationship between computer systems which wield power-knowledge and individuals upon whom power-knowledge inscribes and prescribes is at so abstract a remove from lived experience that it is barely intelligible. To most individuals, most of the time, it is invisible not only in its production of oneself as a subject, but also in its prescriptions.
I am not personally very interested in knowing how my credit scores are arrived at, and I am not suggesting, nor am I interested in the notion that computer systems control my life. My point is this: the fundamental arrangement of power-knowledge has gone past the models Foucault concerned himself with. The persistence, omnipresence and invisibility of power-knowledge in the shape of something like a credit score makes it appear to fit Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon. But if I am not aware of being in prison at all, if I do not or can not understand myself as a consumer, for instance, then I can not be subjectivized as such.
To conclude this all too briefly. Industrial capitalism needs workers—that is, subjects who work, subjects who are conscious of themselves as workers, who are accountable for being productive, industrious, conscientious, and “free.” The institutions of power-knowledge belonging to the era of industrial capitalism likewise need subjects who are conscious of themselves and who are accountable for having knowable identities.
It is not clear to me at all that consumer capitalism needs consumers who are subjects conscious of themselves as consumers. Consumers need not be accountable at all. In this era, we are not called to account as productive, industrious, conscientious, and least of all as “free,” despite (because of?) the cultural currency of these brand names.4 While it may appear as if advertising and marketing has taken on a decisive role as the Panopticon of Panopticons in our era, the programming of consuming does not rely on the production of subjectivity in anything like the sense Foucault analyzed. Instead of power exerted to produce an affirmative active subject, consumer capitalism produces a passive recipient/perceiver.
1. I have always suspected that Foucault was deeply Hegelian, especially in the archaeological period: theorization of power-knowledge always comes on the scene too late to effect change. Critics who charge that Foucault provided no basis for action are fundamentally correct. The owl of Minerva flies only at the coming of the dusk.↩
2. We ought to be struck by the way Foucault’s analyses, even of power-knowledge, assumes the relative stability of bourgeois industrial capitalism and its production and reproduction of power. Who or what else could be power if it is the nameless, identity-less, universal that Foucault suggests? Who or what else could be everywhere at once, underlying all social forms, all forms of knowledge, all institutions? Being? God?↩
3. If anything, the contrary: it is due to the crisis of industrial capitalism, and the proximity of its catastrophe. ↩
4. The hierarchical relations of our age are beginning to resemble feudalism more than industrial capitalism.↩
Thursday, April 07, 2016
on arguments against full inclusion of non-tenure-track faculty in governance
One of the tenured
full professors who opposed the amendment very vocally insisted that the
problem was the proposers of the amendment didn’t understand that if the
amendment passed, part-time faculty would be able to vote, and that because the
constitution says they can’t vote, they can’t. I am not making that up.
Another of the
tenured full professors who opposed the amendment insisted that this would make
it possible for part-time faculty to vote en
bloc to advance some agenda of their own, seemingly contrary to the
academic standards of the various disciplines and against the mission of the
university. The other objection was that part-time faculty are not capable of
exercising academic judgment in shared governance because they are part-time
faculty and not qualified professionally or academically.
There was never the right moment in the debate to bring out this screed, mainly because, as a lecturer, and as probably the most vocal and active advocate for non-tenure-track faculty on our campus, I have had to practice extreme forbearance in the interest. As the saying among us contingent faculty goes, every precarious faculty member is never more than 15 seconds from complete humiliation. The only thing we can do in those situations, if we want to survive, is remain silent.
***
I am responding to the argument that the distinction between general faculty and associate faculty in our current constitution must be maintained because of the distinction between faculty with governance responsibilities and those without. The argument as premised on the distinction in the current constitution is clearly begging the question, and so should not detain us. With all respect that it is due, I say we should not waste any more time on it.
Since there must be some principle not in the current constitution that would be the basis for the discrimination against part-time faculty being recognized as members of the faculty, what would that be? We are told that it cannot be based on the definitions of faculty and their responsibilities in the Collective Bargaining Agreement because that addresses faculty as employees, not as academics, and to accept the CBA definition would conflate the two. Let’s take it to be so and dismiss the CBA for now. (It’s just as well, because it would be a losing argument for opposing the amendment, since its definition of faculty is inclusive, rather than discriminatory.)
Then what is the basis for the distinction? It is asserted that part-time faculty are not qualified for service in governance, on the basis of their employment status. Why would that be? Either there is something about part-time employment status, or about those who are employed part-time, that explains why they are unqualified. It’s not academic degree status, because people with PhDs are hired to part-time and full-time non-tenure-track positions routinely by the CSU. It also cannot be lack of experience, since that would also disqualify probationary faculty hired out of graduate school, and ignores the lengthy experience and knowledge of academic standards and practices in their disciplines that part-time faculty gain at this and other institutions. So it must be something about so-called “part-timers” as such.
The defense of the current discriminatory exclusion of part-time appointed faculty from the definition of faculty rests on the view that people hired into part-time positions are inherently unqualified (because it is not related to employment classification, as we have been told, and it is not because of degree status or experience).
Let us consider the other reasons given to object to part-time faculty inclusion, to identify what those disqualifying traits are. Part-time faculty, it is asserted, are ignorant of their own discipline’s academic values and ways of being, are incapable of thinking rationally about decisions about their own disciplines, and are incapable of acting as responsible professionals or simply ethical human beings. Instead, they are irrational, moblike, and dangerous.
If that were really true, it would be shocking to discover that any of my colleagues would hire such crazed insurgents to teach in the first place. On the other hand, my own department has survived despite relying on this mob for much more than half of its teaching for the past few years.
But seriously, it is incredible to imagine that anyone could manage the day to day tasks of teaching classes, explaining concepts and imparting core knowledge in any academic field, evaluating student progress and student work, and fulfilling the other obligations that are endemic to academia, without disciplinary knowledge, ethical or professional responsibility, or a capacity for rational thought.
Finally, I would personally like to say something to the tenure-track minority who would be persuaded that non-tenure-track faculty are so incapable. You are not morally superior human beings by dint of your status and rank. Non-tenure-track faculty are not your inferiors. We are not your little brown brothers. We are in fact your colleagues, whether you like it or not, whether you recognize us or not, and we are not going away. Far from it. We are the majority already—yes, on this campus as well, though not yet in the numbers common across higher education—and a minority can only assert a tenuous claim to monopoly over institutional and professional authority.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
teaching and going home
I am now deeply involved in many aspects of my stupid university. When I'm not teaching classes, I'm involved in the academic senate and on the senate executive committee, I do faculty rights representation for the union, I join book clubs and sometimes facilitate discussions, and I'm also involved in the AAUP. I know several faculty who do as much or more, but mainly, they do less. I understand why.
I know my level of involvement causes stress, and I know my motivation for being so involved is not entirely healthy. Anxiety seems to be self-sustaining, constantly reproducing the kind of alertness that makes everything appear to be threatening.
And then last week, two major sources of stress became serious objective threats. My anxiety level reached Threat Level Busey at once. I feel vulnerable, exposed, and low on energy. I don't want to keep having arguments in my head when I'm trying to sleep, and waking up with them raging again. I don't want this crapola affecting daily life like this. Dinner should not be a daily crisis.
I know my friends have my back. I know I have support. Generalized anxiety means that I can't trust that I have support. I can't even trust that I can support myself.
Kinda awful.
Friday, February 12, 2016
normalization: remedial gym class, eye patches
I wrote in a blog post once that I had been in “remedial gym” in elementary school. This is not what the school called it; in fact, I don’t know if they had a name for it. This happened in first grade, so my memory of it is not all that reliable. Some parts of it are crystalline.
Evidently, I was so awkward and inept physically that it was noticeable in gym class. I couldn’t catch a ball thrown or bounced to me, or throw or bounce a ball to someone a given distance away.
I don’t remember the precise circumstances, but I was sorted into a special gym class, of something like six kids. The one classmate I remember was an unfortunate soul who lived down the street from me, David Swisher. He was chubby, hyperactive, a fairly ineffective aspiring bully, and unsuccessful academically later on. He was called, of course, Swishy or Swish.
I had homework for remedial gym class. So I could practice, my parents had to buy one of those hideous raspberry-Koolaid-vomit pink rubber inflatable balls with the scuffy texture—you know the thing, it was the “gym ball” because it wasn’t any particular kind of ball. I spent time in the hallway between our front door and the kitchen, bouncing this stupid ball back and forth to my mom. I think I wasn’t very good.
Now, this was strange, because I was physically very active, especially outdoors with my neighbors and best friends, Ryan and Trever Sink. It was hard to get us inside for the night. We spent every available daylight hour in good weather riding Big Wheels, bikes, or our old undersized trikes. We used the tricycles—solid steel and iron monsters—to play “Smash-Up Derby,” which involved riding them as fast as we could and running directly into each other as violently as possible. In the snow, we tromped around trying to see how far we could walk between yards, over fences that were nearly covered. I seemed reasonably coordinated for these activities.
It finally occurred to someone that I couldn’t catch, throw, or bounce a ball accurately because I couldn’t see it. On came the glasses. I still had trouble when the ball was to my left. It turned out I had a lazy eye. On came the eye patch, which was prescribed back then to try to train lazy eyes to work (I gather this has been abandoned since).
These were efforts to normalize my body and my movements. It didn’t matter that I was able, spontaneously, freely, and gracefully to crash tricycles together, to dig out of collapsed snow banks while suffering only minor frostbite, or to variously run, ride, leap, and so on. I did not perform to standard in the throw-catch-bounce test. Normalizing this performance began with identifying it as abnormal, separating my body from a mass where it could have remained relatively anonymous, placing me in a special location and prescribing special treatments. It reformulated my spontaneous, free, graceful embodiment as uncoordinated, incapable, and in need of correction.
Of course, a six year old with glasses and an eye patch (stuck onto the lens) is subjected to merciless hazing by other six year olds. This reinforced my body’s difference, the judgment that I am in fact uncoordinated and incapable, or in a word, defective. The failure of the eye patch to correct my lazy eye (lazy to this day) was my failure to achieve normalization, so along with my glasses becoming thicker every year, I remained defective, and it was my failure.
Now, imagine if my case had been really serious.
Monday, January 18, 2016
pain, perversion, desire, normal and abnormal
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* I mean "pervert" in a kind and kindred way, of course.