Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Personal Credit Crunch Woes

I am "on hold" right now waiting for a "credit decision," so I can buy a used Subaru to brave the bitter winters up here. I find this whole credit process so damn demoralizing these days. I am asking for a relatively small loan, but because I pay my student loan each month ($580 a month!) and I make less salary, they are questioning my ability to make payments.

The loan servicer came back and asked if I would like to include my husband's salary OR would I like to just put the whole loan on my very high credit card balances that I have at the bank? WTF? Do you understand this logic? I surely don't. Why would the bank prefer that I put the car on a credit card rather than underwrite the loan? I am sure they are going to approve it. But, I am surely not alone in bemusement and confusion over the recent freezing of credit and the decision making process of banks.

Does anyone out there understand?

Oh, and I forgot to add, that one option for me to ensure the loan was to defer payment on my student loans. Huh? If I stop paying my student loans and let it rack up interest (a fixed interest rate since you cannot renegotiate that shit), I can get a car loan.

Oh, and another thing. The only reason I am going through this is because I was approved at an amount and then asked to increase it by $500 so that I could roll the transfer of title and tax fees into the loan.

I am just trying to be a good consumer. Apparently, I would be a great consumer if I screwed the government their money for the loan they gave me for my PhD and just gave that money to the bank.

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Thursday, November 20, 2008

The Only Thing Keeping You Unhappy is the Belief You Are Alone

This is what Don's "ex"-wife tells him in the penultimate episode of Mad Men. I love thinking through these sort of statements. What sense of "alone" is meant? Is she saying the Don is alone because he fails to see that he has people in his life that love him? Is he alone because he doesn't allow for the possibility of mystery--of something unexpected and unpredictable to happen that can improve one's life?

Surely there are moments when all of us feel "alone." They hit me when the person or people I am closest too cannot seem to grasp what I am feeling or when I cannot find words to express what I think. Some people feel alone when they contemplate death--the idea that in the end you are on your own in that moment.

But, for people to feel alone, while they are surrounded and loved by others seems almost like an illness, and yet it is all too common.

What I am wondering about is what is the opposite of believing you are alone?

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Got Nothin, Not Really

I went back to the Gender and Sexuality Studies course again today and because we had lost so much time with the technology problem on Monday, the whole class period was taken up with screening the rest of Boys Don't Cry.

Honestly, it was a real shame that we didn't have more than 5 minutes to discuss the movie since it is incredibly powerful and intense. I gave them the last 5 minutes to write their reflections, ask some questions, and digest.

I read the reflection from "pen chewer." He wrote that he was surprised by how powerful the film was and how glad he was to have seen it as it illustrated well the concepts that the class had discussed all semester.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Fragile Female Egos, Fragile Pomo Slacker Egos, and Questions

My musings in the post Fragile Male Egos yesterday got me thinking more about reactions to my teaching style in Gender Studies than the reaction of female students to disengaged male students in Gender Studies courses. I decided to rethink the same scenario changing some details to get at the assumptions of critics of my teaching style.

Case One: Fragile Female Egos

My new colleague asked me to take her Introduction to Under Siege* European Male Hegemony course this morning at 8 am! I am amazed that the students make it for that hour. I have to be up; Maddie makes sure of that.

Anyway, my colleague asked me to show Girls Shouldn't Cry Wolf and then get the students in small groups for discussion. I had some trouble getting the film started, so I threw out her plan. Showed part of the film, then had them put questions on the board and we started a discussion.

I was my usual, in-your-face-let's-talk-about-false accusations of rape-and-feminazi-revelry in victimhood self. I mostly pushed the group of women huddled together in the back of the room clinging for dear life. (They may have been perfectly at home--this was my perception based on past experience).

I wanted the students to think about the relationship of female coquettishness and false rape accusations. Why do women continually say “no” to their boyfriends sexual advances even though their eyes say “yes”? (In the back of my mind I had Kerry's observation about the normality of false rape accusations among our students).

Jane, played brilliantly by Melanie Griff, continually seduces men, winds back at their place after a few drinks, and then cuts the sexual act off. . At one point, Dirk (John Makeovich) asks her why she wears such seductive clothing and makes eyes at men in bars and then dares to accuse men of hurting her—raping her in fact—when she agreed to sex by the way she dressed and acted. Jane's response: "it just seemed like what feminists do here."

The film gets to the heart the rituals--painful ones at that--women go through to prove they are feminists. Proving you are a feminist, means proving you are frigid. That is why you have to dress sexy, then protest the sexual act, and then call rape.

In any case, I started directing some of my, admittedly, pointed questions to the women huddled together in the back row. One woman was doodling, and so I dubbed her "doodler." She didn't want to answer my question so threw it to her side kick. She lowered his eyes, hoping I wouldn't see her text messaging. Didn't work. Then a third woman said: "look, men cry rape as much as women do."

I turned back to others in the class. But, I returned to huddlers again and finally the men started "protecting" them. One man said: "they think you are picking on feminists." Another: "they feel attacked."

I found this phenomena fascinating. The men were rushing to protect the "fragile" egos of these women, because I was asking them the same questions I was asking everyone else? Sure, I was mocking doodler a little bit to get her to lighten up and answer the question. But, she further retreated into himself.

Clearly, these three women don't analyze feminazis and false rape accusations much. That's the point of the film. They get punished—violently by other feminists--if they do. But, I am still bemused by the mens' reaction to my attempt to get these women to think about these connections.

I have to go back on Wednesday. Any ideas what I could do to make this observation worthy of discussion in relation to the film?

Case Two: Fragile Pomo Slacker Egos

My new colleague asked me to take her Introduction to Epistemology course this morning at 8 am! I am amazed that the students make it for that hour. I have to be up; Maddie makes sure of that.

Anyway, my colleague asked me to discuss Searle’s account of the social construction of reality and social facts and then put students in small groups for discussion. I had some trouble finding the classroom, which cut into our time, so I threw out her plan. I gave a quick summary of Searle’s point, then had them put questions on the board and we started a discussion.

I was my usual, in-your-face-let's-talk-social facts-ultimately-referring-to-physical-facts-anti-french-pomo-social construction self. I mostly pushed the group of slackers huddled together in the back of the room clinging for dear life. (They may have been perfectly at home--this was my perception based on past experience).

I wanted the students to think about Searles’ claim that X counts as Y in C, using his example of money. Why do pomo thinkers miss the point that the value of money ultimately refers to precious objects? There is, duh, some physical fact that we then interpret socially. Ideas don’t make reality! (In the back of my mind I had Kerry's observation about the normality of Lyotard worship among our students).

I showed a tiny clip of the Derrida film to give students a flavor of the incoherence of French pomo claims about reality. At one point a young student studying under Derrida at Irvine is asked: “why do you continually subject yourself to this unintelligible drivel.” He responds: “It seems like what grad students do here!”


Searle gets to the heart of postmodern vapidity—which involves painful rituals of reality denying and extreme relativism.

In any case, I started directing some of my, admittedly, pointed questions to the slackers huddled together in the back row. One ambiguously gendered emo student was rolling his/her eyes, and so I dubbed him/her "eye roller." She/he didn't want to answer my question so threw it to his/her side kick. He lowered his eyes, hoping I wouldn't see him under his beanie* . Didn't work. Then a third woman said: "look, Searle is a right wing lunatic."

I turned back to others in the class. But, I returned to huddlers again and finally the other students started "protecting" them. One man said: "they think you are picking on post-modernists." Another: "they feel attacked."

I found this phenomena fascinating. The students were rushing to protect the "fragile" egos of these French theorists, because I was asking them the same questions I was asking everyone else? Sure, I was mocking eye roller a little bit to get him/her to lighten up and answer the question. But, she/he further retreated into himself/herself.

Clearly, these three slackers don't analyze the epistemological incoherence of their social construction theories. That’s the point of the film. They get punished—violently by other pomos--if they do. But, I am still bemused by the class reaction to my attempt to get these slackers to think about these connections.

I have to go back on Wednesday. Any ideas what I could do to make this observation worthy of discussion in relation to the film?


SOME QUESTIONS:

(1) Is the Case One ("fragile female egos") structurally equivalent to my "fragile male egos" post?

(2) Is Gender and Sexuality studies equivalent to European Male Hegemony studies?

(3) Does Gender and Sexuality studies strive to demean men as group or dehumanize them?

(4) Was asking pointed questions of the male students, who seemed unengaged, equivalent to pushing female students to recognize that feminism forces them to make false rape accusations? [For the record, in the class I taught yesterday, I didn't use the men as foils for any argument, I just pushed them to consider the content to the same degree that the women were.]

(5) In Case Two ("fragile pomo slacker egos"), does the in-your-face Socratic style unfairly beat up on 18-22 year olds?

(6) What makes Case Two different from my discussion from yesterday? I am willing to see the important differences that implies different pedagogical techniques, but let's spell them out.

(7) Does asking pointed questions to students who are unwilling to defend their viewpoint, picking on them? It might very well be.

**P.S. I think the best observation of the dynamics in my class yesterday come from Lesboprof who points out that I haven't yet earned the trust of the unengaged students in the class I was visiting. Having reflected a lot more on this, I think that is why my style could've come off as unfairly picking on the male students--given the pervasive stereotypes of angry feminists at work. This style doesn't seem to cause as much friction if the content is abstract and conceptual, e.g. what Linda Alcoff calls a "normative, familiar, trustworthy" "postural body image." ("The Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment," in Visible Identities.

*These changes are made thanks to *I*'s comment.

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Monday, November 17, 2008

Fragile Male Egos

My new colleague asked me to take her Introduction to Gender and Sexuality course this morning at 8 am! I am amazed that the students make it for that hour. I have to be up; Maddie makes sure of that.

Anyway, my colleague asked me to show Boys Don't Cry and then get the students in small groups for discussion. I had some trouble getting the film started, so I threw out her plan. Showed part of the film, then had them put questions on the board and we started a discussion.

I was my usual, in-your-face-let's-talk-about-sex-masculinity-homophobia self. I mostly pushed the group of men huddled together in the back of the room clinging for dear life. (They may have been perfectly at home--this was my perception based on past experience).

I wanted the students to think about the relationship of masculinity to violence. Why do men continually have to prove their masculinity through violence? (In the back of my mind I had Kerry's observation about the normality of drunken fights and brawls among our students).

Brandon, played brilliantly by Hillary Swank, continually puts himself in risky and violent situations. At one point, Lana (Chloe Sevigny) asks him why he was willing to be tied like a dog to the back of truck (referring to "bumper skiing," wherein drunken guys hang onto the back of truck bed with a rope, while the driver twirls in circles). Brandon's response: "it just seemed like what guys do here."

The film gets to the heart the rituals--painful ones at that--men go through to prove they are men. Proving you are a man, means proving you aren't gay. That is why you have to talk a lot about fucking and get into fights and engage in risky behavior.

In any case, I started directing some of my, admittedly, pointed questions to the men huddled together in the back row. One kid was chewing his pen, and so I dubbed him "pen chewer." He didn't want to answer my question so threw it to his buddy. His buddy lowered his eyes, hoping I wouldn't call on him. Didn't work. Then a third guy said: "look, women haze as much as men."

I turned back to others in the class. But, I returned to huddlers again and finally the women started "protecting" them. One woman said: "they think you are picking on men." Another: "they feel attacked."

I found this phenomena fascinating. The women were rushing to protect the "fragile" egos of these men, because I was asking them the same questions I was asking everyone else? Sure, I was mocking pen chewer a little bit to get him to lighten up and answer the question. But, he further retreated into himself.

Clearly, these three guys don't analyze homophobia or masculinity much. That's the point of the film. They get punished--violently--if they do. But, I am still bemused by the womens' reaction to my attempt to get these guys to think about these connections.

I have to go back on Wednesday. Any ideas what I could do to make this observation worthy of discussion in relation to the film?

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Friday, November 14, 2008

The Fragility of Commitment

My new Thursday night ritual--once the little one is snuggly in her crib--is to watch a movie. I don't have to prepare for class. I give myself a break from grading. And, I don't have cable TV to distract me with tons of superfluous channels. Because we are so isolated up here in the way Northern part of the country, Netflix is the only way to survive. (There isn't even a video rental joint!)

Last night I watched a relatively recent film, directed by Helen Hunt entitled Then She Found Me. I chose the film because it had Colin Firth as one the main characters and looked like a nice melodrama. I can't help it. I like girlie films sometimes when I am burned out from lots of abstract thinking and arguing.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by this gem of a film. What I loved most about was its realism in the case of human relationships. It did a great job depicting not only the giddiness of new love, the pull and attraction of the wrong lovers, the selfishness of our desires, and the fragility of commitments.

Having just written that list above, I guess other films touch on this. But, the moral of this film is that commitment is a sort of leap of faith. Here is some dialogue from the end of the film, when April (Helen Hunt) tries to get Frank back"

“I miss you, do you?”
“What do you want, April?”
“I want to look at you, for a long long time.”
“What else?”
“There’s a chance that my life may change in a few hours or may not. But it may. And before it does, I wanna say two things. I know what I did to you, to you in particular, was a nightmare kind of thing, right?…I knew that. Even at that time, I knew that.”
“What else?”
“I would do it again. I will. I will hurt you again and again. Not like that. You would have to leave me if I would hurt you like that. Even if we were together, you would leave me if I would hurt you like that again and wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes. I would.”
“Good. But I would hurt you in other ways, little ways. I wouldn’t mean to. But I will. And sometimes I will mean to.”

“You would hurt me too, you know? You would hurt me and change on me. You might even leave me after you promise you won’t. How about that?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“But you might.”
“But I wouldn’t.”
“But…You might.”
“Yeah…I guess I might.”
“So?”
“Oh, god.”
“I know. I am sorry.”
“So?”

I guess I don't have a lot of smart things to say after that dialogue. For me, this is commitment.

How do the rest of you see it?

You can watch the trailer to the film with the link above.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Existentialists Get Laid More, That's Why

Steve G asks today why existentialism is so attractive to young intellectuals. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question myself and I have a few guesses. This year, at my new job, I am teaching Existential Philosophy. I was always welcome to teach it at Gettysburg, but I chose not to do so because I don't tend to like the kind of student it attracts. Yes, I am going to be crass, but what I think it attracts is: an alienated, white boy, who feels compelled by family to live a sort of proper bourgeois life, but wants to rebel, smoke gauloise, watch black and white french films, drink a lot of wine, and womanize.



In fact, let's take Camus.



He just oozes a certain kind of bad ass masculinity. My current student says: "He is so cool." What do these male existentialist writers write about? Do they take on racism (no, with the exception of Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew). Do they tackle poverty? (n0) Do they tackle sexism or homophobia? (no). What do they write about? Individualism, Self-expression, freedom, atheism and authenticity. What does this translate into?

That I don't have to live up to my parents bourgeois expectations of my life. I don't have to grow up, get a job, pay a mortgage, get married, and pay taxes. That I can be a sort of free spirit (think Michel Poiccard and Breathless). [No one really wants to look like Sartre, but they wouldn't mind getting laid as often as he did!]

The other focus of white male existentialism (you could read Simone de Beauvoir, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Frantz Fanon, Aimee Cesaire, Steve Biko, Lewis Gordon, Cornel West) is liberty. And, the way these writings, particularly Sartre, get translated into the American idiom is a "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" and stop whining way. My father loves existentialism. He also loves Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. What appeals to my dad and the libertarians who love existentialism is a romantic view of the self: the idea that anyone can transcend their dire circumstances and become great.

This sort of narrative appeals, in my view, more often to white boys of a certain class. Maybe it says: look you don't just have to be a provider or a cog in the machine (think Office Space). You can be great. Really great. You can change the rules. Hell, the rules don't even apply to you. What matters is that you are true to yourself, your desires, and your vision.

This, I think, is why existentialism appeals to young intellectuals. I think it appeals to a certain level of cognitive development, i.e. when students stop believing that anyone has the answers and therefore think that there are not answers. In other words, relativism. It also encourages narcissism and egoism.

And, as Steve G has often theorized. Existentialist boys get laid more than the pocket protector analytic types (with comfortable shoes).

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Resist the Storm

A wise friend of mine wrote to me yesterday and said that a valuable way to think of relationships with others is to think of them as relationships with yourself. I have been mulling this over quite a bit and thought I would put it out there to see what the rest of you think.

I take her to be saying--and this follows on the discussions we have been having about teaching and the logic of victimization--that if one always looks to the other's behavior, actions, and words as signs of the health of the relationship--the betweenness--then one will inevitably find him or herself regularly unfulfilled. The idea here, again, is that happiness is not to be found in Others. In fact, happiness is not to be found in other things.

Happiness is a more mysterious process. Perhaps happiness is a by-product of engaging in activities that justify your life, that bring you health, and that make the world a bit better. Happiness, therefore, comes to us when we stop demanding it. This theme was explored well in a film by former philosophy major, Jill Sprecher, 13 Conversations about One Thing. In this film, Sprecher borrows quite a bit from Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness.

Back to my wise friend's view about relationships--that one should view a relationship with another as ultimately a relationship with oneself--I cannot help but think that she is right about this. We have so little control over the lives of others. This is abundantly clear in my attempts to mold my daughter's life. Already her personality is emerging with its own ideas, preferences, and attitudes towards things. We have more control over our own ideas, attitudes, and actions.

I do not mean to endorse an overly stoic view of relationships. I am not really a very good stoic. I am too passionate about life. But, I think that the challenges that arise in all relationships, particularly in the student-teacher relationship, invites us to reflect not on how to exhort the needy other to pull his or her own weight, but rather on what is required to sustain us and weather us through the storms of others.

The attraction to be drawn into the dance of anger and the logic of victimization is too great. It requires constant vigilance to ward off this temptation. The student who wants to pick a fight with us because she overwhelmed or frightened is better served by our resolve to "will cheerfulness" in the face of her storming. If we don't get pulled into her drama, if we stand firm and perhaps offer a model of weathering a storm, she is ultimately better served. But to be able to do this is to give up a need or expectation that others need to be someone else to warrant our concern.

Others are who they are. They are on their own paths of becoming and their own rates. Our job is to perhaps be the "resistance" to their more destructive acts. I am borrowing this notion of resistance from both Sartre and De Beauvoir, who argue that our nature, as humans, is to negate what is given and move beyond. In this act of negation, we inevitably run up against resistances--either people, events, or things. And, some resistances might present us with a helpful invitation to reorient our direction.

I wonder if in relating to others by relating to ourselves, we are posing ourselves as a kind of important resistance to threatening projects.

What do the rest of you think?

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Victimization and Anger

71 encouraged me to keep on this line of thought by asking me why I would frame the reaction of professors who feel exhausted by needy students as adopting the "victim" narrative. I am not sure I have a good answer to 71's question, so instead of answering his question, I will think out loud a bit more about the relationship of the logic of victimization to anger.

Part of what I would need to better work out is what the logic of victimization is. In part, I see victimization as a particular expression of anger. For those who are physically overpowered by others or who are politically oppressed in various ways, feeling a victim is a wholly "natural" and comprehensible response. One feels without power in the face of their oppressor. Victimization is an expression of powerless. But, victimization is also an expression of anger, e.g. one is angry precisely because one is powerless to change his or her circumstances.

The particular way that anger can express itself is either in a self-injury or self-hatred or in hatred toward the other. The hatred toward the other, it seems to me, can be expressed in a variety of ways. The particular expression of anger that interests me lies in how victims come to characterize those who they perceive to be injuring them.

At this point, I want to move away from discussing victims of physical violence of political oppression, and back to discussing people who perceive themselves as being injured by another party. The precise nature of this injury is to rob the victim of his or her "happiness" (or pursuit of happiness?)

These sorts of "victims" are what I have in mind in my notion of a "logic of victimization." The idea here seems to be that one can adopt a view of oneself as a victim as an expression of anger toward someone who seems to be robbing one of his or her happiness. The teacher who has to slave away at bringing students up to a certain skill level and thereby spend so much time that he or she feels exhausted (perhaps guilty as Laura in the comments said to yesterday's post) and thereby unhappy because his or her labor, as teacher, is not turning out the desired product.

We see this unhappiness in personal relationships or in our attitudes toward drug addicts or the poor. We see many people as undeserving of our love, our respect, and our help because "they are not taking responsibility." What I am suggesting is that the logic of victimization adopts that particular rhetoric as an expression of anger. The anger follows from the frustration in not being able to change someone into an idea of what would make me happy.

I dunno. What do you think? I just wrote this up . . .

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Monday, November 10, 2008

The Dance of Victimization and the Demand to Take Responsibility

I am someone perpetually fascinated by the labor of teaching--the psychological and emotional toll of teaching as well as the absolute joy and life affirmation that follows from a good class or a great student. Lately, in my new teaching post, I have been reflecting quite a bit on the "individual responsibility" attitudes that some colleagues have toward their students. What always fascinates me is that many of my ultra ultra left wingers take this attitude toward students and these are folks who may very well be sociologists. They find themselves exhausted by the endless labor of teaching--labor that is not unlike a long term relationship or raising children--and they decide that the students need to start stepping up to the plate and "take responsibility" for their learning.

Such faculty will often cite the "millennial kids" mantra and then argue that we need to stop coddling these students and begin to teach them to be "responsible" adults. Now look, I am a fan of taking responsiblity and for being accountable to others. But, where I differ from the groans of my colleagues is this view that "failure to take responsibility" is what at the root of our students' learning problems. No doubt this is true for many slacker types, but in my experience, the slacker types don't really complain when you give them bad grades. They get it. They don't have any interest to do better.

The students that complain a good deal about their grades are often neurotic and panicked. They probably haven't obtained to what William Perry calls the skill of "procedural knowledge." These students believe either that all knowledge is true or false facts that authorities teach us or that there is no truth. The latter are a real bitch to teach. The former, I believe, are the neurotic students that drain us and send many of my colleagues into the "they need to take individual responsibility" mantra.

So, what I started thinking about in relation to this dance between the burned out professor and the needy student is how it echoes another discourse in American culture: the "individual responsibility" discourse of cultural conservatives. What hit me like a train wreck was that those who decry that their students, or their partners, or their children, or their co-workers, or poor people, or drug addicts (you get the point, right?) aren't "taking responsibility" for their lives are most often people who feel "victmized."

That's right. The discourse of individual responsibility flows from the sense of victimization. And, it is the latter that interests me the most. The assumptions that victimized folks make about the world and relationships. I am interested in working those out and so I am very keen to hear what the rest of you think of my partial list:

  • All relationships depend on each person "holding her own"
  • Relationships should not involve a lopsided caring for others when others are sick, hurt, or in need of help
  • Human happiness is a right
  • My time and freedom to control my time is paramount
  • If individuals that I am in relationships with are making mistakes, bad choices, or sick and they do not seek help, then I can cut them out.
  • My sense of well being comes from relationships with individuals who never make mistakes, act badly, or demand too many of my emotional or financial resources
  • If I am feeling hurt or drained by another person who is in some way needy, I will be better off breaking off the relationship and surrounding myself with people who are more self sufficient

So, these are just what came off the top of my head. I am still interested in working this idea out, because if I am right, this means that the disintegration of families and communities are more likely the result of a hard line ideology of "individual responsibility" that emanates from conservative pundits (i.e. Dr. Laura), than "liberals." Moreover, if I am right, this means that the rhetoric of "individual responsiblity" flows from folks who continually feel victimized by others and thereby do not recognize their own resources for finding happiness despite the fact that relationships with others are fraught with inescapable tragedy.

Thoughts?

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