Knowing the Enemy

I’ve been re-reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed for May’s installment of Radical Book Club, and one thing that keeps striking me is how it’s understood that young people find the educational establishment to be part of “the enemy” in the text.  In fact, in the foreword to my edition, Richard Shaull writes, “the young perceive that their right to say their own word has been stolen from them, and that few things are more important than the struggle to win it back.  And they also realize that the educational system today — from kindergarten to university — is their enemy”  (New York, 2006: 34).

I’m conflicted about this idea.  I don’t think that the educational system is my enemy — at the very least, the educational system is a surmountable obstacle, or maybe a system of surmountable obstacles.  I’ve written before about my deep-seated reservations about entering academia as a research and teaching professional as well as a minority, but I also realize that there are few places in this world where I can fit in the way I can fit into a work and social environment quite like the academy.  And maybe it’s a testament to my ability to seek out and find communities that are more flexible, open-minded and critically aware on both a professional, personal and pedagogical level, but I get the feeling that the times are changing.

Yet I wonder if I would be saying these things if I hadn’t gotten involved in the Program on Intergroup Relations.  Looking back on the past four years, a lot of the people whose ideas and empathy I have valued the most I have met through IGR.  The bulk of the development of my critical consciousness — from a generalized sense of outrage and alienation when I arrived here to ideas coherent enough that I’m working on a small book about it — took place with other IGR folk, whether in class settings or while talking on our own.  Once you get that kind of process going, it’s hard to stop it.  I wonder if I would feel the same way about the philosophy department, or if I would just be more angry and in kind of a smoldering frustration that is hard to put a name to.  I certainly doubt I’d be able to put a name to the things that frustrate me about the philosophical discipline of ethics, for example.

It’s hard to say — because, just as Shaull turns around and immediately points out, “there is no such thing as a neutral educational process” (34).  So, at the very least, I was given the tools to examine the education that I was given under pretenses of neutrality.  The sanctification within the academy of IGR is a big step forward, and my experience with progressive professors like Jennifer Wenzel has made me hopeful that we can’t assume anything.  I don’t think that, as part of the educational system, these sorts of people constitute part of “the enemy.”  Moreover, I can imagine that applying progressive pedagogy to my teaching this fall will separate me from “the enemy,” as well.  I certainly don’t consider myself “the enemy,” and I hope I never do!

De-Fanging Liberation

One of the major reasons that we’re starting AARB Club is that largely, there’s a lot of resistance in our postcolonial theory class to the really hard topics — ones that make us as people in the Western academy come face-to-face with issues of privilege and violence our predecessors have historically tried to sweep under the rug. The act of denying, ignoring, or decrying liberation violence is a common reaction by (predominantly) white Western academe to de-fang liberation: because to recognize the kinds of violence in works of writers like Frantz Fanon is to recognize the history of violence visited on formerly colonized people, past and present.

I suppose it goes without saying that it’s frustrating to see that go on. On the other hand, I think it’s also something kind of fun to navigate. I’ve resolved to start calling people out on their willful ignorance of violence as a central aspect of liberation theory, and of postcolonial theory as a whole. And hopefully AARB Club will equip us a little better to address these things.

I kind of want to invite Jennifer Wenzel, our professor, to AARB Club. Mostly because I think she’d be relieved to see us dealing with these issues she’s trying to push in class, without the same level of resistance she gets there. Also, The Wretched of the Earth is a hard book and it might be nice to have her around to share her thoughts with us.

I have been enormously impressed at her ability to handle the conversations we’ve been having in class, diffusing potential explosive situations and all-around steering us, without our explicit knowledge, where she wants us to go. She is great at mediating conflict and she knows how to frame things in ways that are challenging, but don’t provoke severe reactions from people. I appreciate that she is trying to get the class to come to terms with violence — and the violence of colonialism — and it’s too bad she’s getting so much resistance.

The more I read of Fanon the more I find common threads with the way I think about gender liberation. I think that The Wretched of the Earth is going to be a great stylistic and thematic model for my book. In fact, much of what we’ve been reading lately has resonated with me in this way. Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism is similar, too. This makes me extra-excited about working on my book: I’ve discovered a rhetorical tradition that I fit into pretty squarely. This class was such a good choice.

Stymied

Sometimes I think that just the act of writing might be helpful to creative process.  I haven’t been writing lately because I haven’t felt like I have anything to say.  I’ve been doing a lot of processing of information internally but maybe it would help to write out loud.

In exciting other news, we’re (and by “we” I mean a few other members of my postcolonial critical theory class) starting a radical book club, of which I am (apparently) the de facto leader.  If anybody’s interested, we’re going to start meeting on the first Tuesday of every month beginning in March at 8 pm at Cafe Ambrosia.  (That makes our first meeting March 3, for those of you playing along at home.)  This month’s book is The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.  Radical books, radical readers.  At the very least the company should be good and the book is great.

It’s this kind of thing that I think has been keeping me from writing — I do a lot more talking out loud about what I think lately.  Not to mention the fact that waiting for graduate schools to get back to me just makes everything I do feel like I’m spinning my wheels in a muddy ditch.  Which is to say that all that I get is covered in mud and an overheated engine.

What does matter, though, is I’m getting things done, working on projects, and figuring out what to do with my life.  In lieu of going completely crazy about my grad school applications I’ve been trying to figure out what I’d do if I didn’t get in anywhere (or decide not to go anywhere I get in, for a number of reasons).  Plan #1 is move to San Francisco, get a job bartending, and start an experimental publishing house on my own — meaning figure out a way to harness the internet to publish poetry and experimental fiction, rather than just publish poetry and experimental fiction on the internet.

I suppose that another reason I feel like I’m spinning my wheels is that it looks like my chest reconstruction might have to be pushed back, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Funding might be hard to come by, and I’m waiting to find out what I’m doing next year to pursue finding a loan to finance it — something that seems like a better and better idea.  Because I’ve applied to a pile of two-year programs  (most of which involve moving) I don’t think it’s conceivable that, if I don’t do it this summer, I’ll do it for another two years at least.  Depending on what kind of loans I’m going to have to take out for my master’s, I can and will take the money out as a loan to get the surgery done.  I’m sure my mom will co-sign and I’m sure I can get the couple thousand I’ll need.  If I don’t get it done this summer I’ll explode.

Of course, if I don’t, that means I’ll have more time to enjoy my last summer here.  I’ve started playing music with a couple guys and we’re thinking about trying to get together a tour over the summer — which is something else that would be fun and interesting to pursue in lieu of going to graduate school.  And nobody said I had to move to start an experimental publishing house.

I suppose I just don’t like not knowing this much about the future.  Luckily, I don’t think I’m alone — plenty of others who are graduating with me this year feel the same way, stuck in one place, and that place is neither here nor there.  And it’s not like I’d be completely unproductive if I took some time off.  (Maybe I’d finally get this goddamn ARG off the ground…)