Calling Into Question

A post on Wendy's blog today brought back my previous life as a grad student of literature. She commented on students' overuse of the pretentious phrase, "as it were," in their speech. Back in my day, the phrase of choice was "call into question." "Doesn't Foucault's use of the prison icon paradigmatically call into question the predominant theory of Baudrillard's metasequoical randomness?" one would ask, parenthetically of course. No arguing with that. (Extra points for bringing Baudrillard into the nonsense.) Theory was the hot approach -- the right theory, of course. Deconstructionism was in the past. Post- deconstructionism (anything is better if you toss "post" in front of it) was better, if not exactly up to the minute. The meaning of literature (and, of course, "meaning" itself was called into question) was only worth talking about if it was a political discourse on the inequity of the blah, blah, blah -- I usually dropped off about here.

It's not as if I weren't interested in studying inequalities in literature. I was as critical of the white-male-dominated canon as anyone else and have a distinctly feminist viewpoint when approaching any literary piece (and by literary, I mean anything written). I'm probably more left-leaning, politically, than anyone I know, and my circle includes a whole host of left-of-democratic granola-crunchers. I am the proud owner of Birkenstock sandals. (Well, knock-off Birkenstocks. I'm cheap.)

But what I'm getting at here (yes, Virginia, there is a point) is that these well-meaning students were, in the end, poseurs. It didn't take any deep thought to call something into question. Zefrank noted just a few days ago that you can put down any argument with, "Well, it's more complicated than that." It makes you sound knowledgeable without actually adding anything to the discussion. Calling something into question achieves the same end.

And when a nationally-known and controversial speaker came to campus, these students boycotted her. They urged their students not to attend, and sat outside the lecture hall, encouraging people to go away. When I questioned their own political correctness in refusing to listen to another point of view, furthermore telling other people not to listen to it, they looked at me like I had two heads. I didn't get it. Simply listening to her was falling under the influence of the dominant paradigm. We couldn't be trusted to critically examine her arguments.

I remember an amusing incident one slow day down in the bowels of the grad students' basement offices. There was an old sports magazine lying around with a picture of a college-age woman in a bikini. My friends and I, tired of grading papers, were flipping through the magazine. "Huh," I said. "She has really big boobs." (And she really did. Either she had one heck of a plastic surgeon, or she was substantially endowed.) One of the sharky grad students came in just then, examined the picture, and chuckled. "We examine things on such different levels," he said. "What I see is how she is being forced to agree with the dominant paradigm of female sexuality." Oh, really? That was your first thought?

I left grad school, though not because of that incident. I got married, then pregnant with our first child, thus submitting to the ultimate expression of the dominant paradigm of my female sexuality.

A Bit of Russian

You'd never know that I took four years of Russian language classes at university by the way I speak or read it now. I was never good enough to read a book or converse easily, but I could negotiate menus and signs and make myself understood on basic topics.

No more. But even lacking the most rudimentary Russian skills, I could enjoy this movie poster for The Matrix. Fun stuff!
(via Inner Bitch)

Fun Stuff for Friday

Klaus Kinski
Actor Klaus Kinski had this to say about director Werner Herzog:

Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep...he should be thrown alive to the crocodiles! An anaconda should strangle him slowly! A poisonous spider should sting him and paralyze his lungs! The most venomous serpent should bite him and make his brain explode! No panther claws should rip open his throat--that would be much too good for him! Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes and gobble up his balls and his guts! He should catch the plague! Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It's no use; the more I wish him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me.

from a David Jennings web page, David Herzog Quotes
via futuregirl's craft blog

Independence Day

declaration_of_independence
Originally uploaded by
Keven OShaughnessy.

Yesterday I had the privilege of celebrating Independence Day with an extraordinary group of people. The retired Episcopalian minister (and former bishop) down the street invited some neighbors over along with a handful of friends from his church. Among the gathering were a beekeeper, a retired nurse, an accountant, a web site operator, a Canadian (I know, not an occupation, but I forget what he did for a living) and a stay-at-home mother (me). I struggled to keep up with the conversation, which ranged, naturally, over political issues and the state of our union, as well as its history.
We read the Declaration of Independence and mused over George Washington's character. Immigration was a central topic, and since the entire group had a strong left-leaning bias, the talk was not of halting, but of understanding it. Clearly, the United States promises a better living for the poor who come here illegally, and whose wages sent home (speaking of Mexico here) comprise a major part of their country's economy. Physically stopping them from entering the U.S. is likely impossible, and anyway, it doesn't address the issue of why they come. We agreed that spending our war money on helping Mexico solve its problems might be a better use of our resources, but how we, as individuals, could help brought a silence over the table.
It wasn't until long after the fireworks were over and I lay sleepless in bed that I realized that the answer was, quite literally, at that table. The beekeeper spends his winters on the Arizona-Mexico border picking up litter left by the stream of illegal immigrants. (It's not a small task: the culture of poverty these people live in has little regard for proper trash disposal. Literally tons of it is strewn across the landscape, and it is difficult work to remove it.) The web site run by one of the dinner guests is a clearing house for political action. The retired minister himself worked for years as a mediator, helping local people to solve stubborn disputes too expensive to pursue in court for those involved. The accountant works for an organization that resolves difficult Medicaid coverage cases too expensive for hospitals to pursue themselves.
These people left me humbled. What am I doing to address the problems Americans have with each other and with their world neighbors?
What are you doing?