The Left at War

Tapped has a review of Berube's new book, The Left at War. Review begins with the closure of the Birmingham School:

In June of 2002, a British university dissolved one of its smaller departments. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was shuttered, and students eager to research the culture of soccer hooliganism or the effect of teen-rag advice columns on adolescents' burgeoning sexuality were effectively cast adrift. Officials at the University of Birmingham cited low marks on research evaluations as reason for the closure. The centre's defenders cried foul, speculating it was punishment for the department's history of radicalism. Nine months later, the United States would lead an invasion of Iraq, setting in motion a war still not over. Could the prevention of the former have helped stop the latter -- save the cultural theorists, save the world?

Liberal blogger and "dangerous" academic Michael Bérubé would like us to at least consider it. In The Left at War, Bérubé links progressives' inability to control the conversation on national security during the Bush administration to cultural studies' failure to deliver on its promise of a vibrant New Left. And in the process, he also tries to imagine a newer and better one -- a left that both knows what is worth fighting for and how to fight for it.

Possible good last reading for CP, since it gets to some of the problems with cultural studies, and the possibility of creating anything in the real world.

Professionalism and PhDs

Ugh. Great article though. Louis Menand in Harvard Magazine: "The PhD Problem. On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy's self-renewal."

The history department does not ask the mayor or the alumni or the physics department who is qualified to be a history professor. The academic credential is non-transferable (as every Ph.D. looking for work outside the academy quickly learns). And disciplines encourage—in fact, they more or less require—a high degree of specialization. The return to the disciplines for this method of organizing themselves is social authority: the product is guaranteed by the expertise the system is designed to create. Incompetent practitioners are not admitted to practice, and incompetent scholarship is not disseminated.

Since it is the system that ratifies the product—ipso facto, no one outside the community of experts is qualified to rate the value of the work produced within it—the most important function of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduction of the system. To put it another way, the most important function of the system, both for purposes of its continued survival and for purposes of controlling the market for its products, is the production of the producers. The academic disciplines effectively monopolize (or attempt to monopolize) the production of knowledge in their fields, and they monopolize the production of knowledge producers as well.

Very interesting observation that CP kids would really like this - systems of knowledge, power-knowledge, its production, and the like.

Crusades

Final link of the morning: Harper's scaring the shit out of me with another analysis of the Christianization of the military. The most horrifying example in this story lends it its title: "Jesus Killed Mohammad" -- taken from an incident when these young fucks thought it would be hilarious to paint that on the front of their Bradley, then ride through the holy city of Samara yelling that from their bullhorns. Both print and voice in Arabic, so the people would know they're being insulted and provoked. And what do you know, a massive battle begins against "a city full of terrorists." It's just too depressing.

signposts

Acephalous writes with sarcastic hilarity about signposting. ("In what follows I will write about signposts.") Might be good for students to see - but they might also miss the point. Hopefully though the end would make it clear:

In the previous paragraphs I have defended the usefulness of the signpost in academic prose. The inclusion of that headline demonstrates that signposts are both useful and awesome. Now I will transition to the conclusion of this post by telling you that I am transitioning to the conclusion of this post.

And here I am at the conclusion like I told you I would be. In this conclusion I will recapitulate what I have I already proven in the paragraphs above. The words I wrote in the above paragraphs prove that people who use signposts are perverse old chestnuts who are so hot shit they can include articles about whores in anything they write and that they are awesome. I will now conclude my conclusion with the period I place at the end of this sentence.

Over the top! But might be good to show them that they need to combine signposting with real content - it's a mix.

Remember remember 11 November

LGM argues that 11/11 shouldn't just be a day for veterans, but for WWI. But that will never happen.

Uses the post as an excuse to link Robert Bourne's 1918 essay that gave us the famous quote "War is the health of the state." I had not read that in a long time - would make a fantastic pairing with Weber for week 2 of CP.

The gist: In republics, the state fades - or at least we think that it does. In reality it lies dormant waiting for war to allow it to take over again.

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle. Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.

The moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government's disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.

The patriot loses all sense of the distinction between State, nation, and government.

LGM commentary reminds us of Bourne's own situation when he wrote this - destitute, because he was driven from opinion journalism by the Wilsonian insanity of WWI.

1989: End or Beginning?

Financial Times: "Victory in the Cold War was a Start as well as an Ending."

Anniversaries are a good time for taking stock. The collapse of Soviet communism was a glorious moment. It remains so, despite mistakes and disappointments along the way. But today’s crisis tells us of the failings of a euphoric capitalism. Capitalism will not now perish, as communism did. But the signal ability of liberal democracy is to learn and adapt. We learnt from the 1930s. We must now learn the lessons of the 2000s.

Good assignment for the final WC week, when matched to other thoughts about periodization.

Multicause!

Too many reasons that this happened. From TampaBay.com:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

Police say Bruce offered several reasons to explain his actions:

The man tried to rob him.

The man grabbed Bruce's crotch and made an overt sexual advance in perfect English.

The man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses said the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week.

"That's what they tell you right before they blow you up," police say Bruce told them.

So he may be gay, have roid rage, and be worked up by right-wing rhetoric in the wake of Ft. Hood.

feminism, gender, masculinity, etc

TAP gives a double dose of gender this morning, dovetailing nicely with Joan Scott et al for today's class.

First up: "What's the Alternative to Tucker Max?", with descriptions of cute activist college kids trying to brainstorm alternative masculinities. Makes the good point that most feminist masculinities have so far defined themselves negatively, and not offered programs of their own.

While it's thrilling that there is also a movement of young men all who want to tear down the patriarchy right alongside women, it's dangerous that they don't have a clear picture of what they want to build in its place. At the conference, one young man spoke up against the notion of a new "feminist masculinity," explaining that he feared it would be one more box that young men felt they had to fit into. There's a lot of validity to his argument, but I fear that the old adage is true: We can't be what we can't see. Models help us try on various identities and find one that is truly authentic. The more publicly feminist-aligned men we have, the more opportunities the next generation has to find a positive, masculine gender identity that actually fits.

Many young men, it seems, are stuck in stage one of gender consciousness. They want to prove that they are one of the "good ones" and separate themselves from all the gendered behaviors and beliefs that they now see as oppressive. That, or they wallow in guilt. (This is not unlike the stage many white kids get stuck in upon fully realizing their role in perpetuating racism.) At worst, this point of view is paralyzing. At best, it leads to burnout. It's not until privileged folks, men in this case, can own the ways in which they have a self-interest in resisting systems of oppression that their work becomes sustainable.

Also a story about Kathleen Parker ("Constant Comment: How Kathleen Parker became America's most-read woman columnist"), which points out some ironies in her rise. First, it tracks all the traditional gender stuff she's put out over the years - a very strong theme in her work. Then, the story presents her deviation from other aspects of Republican orthodoxy. Yet she took off because she fit the "Republican woman" checkbox - and because her strong position on traditional gender was enough to trump:

One would be hard-pressed under these circumstances to label Parker a loyal Republican. Indeed, she maintains that she is not and has never registered as such. It was in 1995, when Parker's column was picked up for syndication, that she became a designated voice of the right. "The way the market is set up," Parker says, "there has to be a left, there has to be a right, there has to be a conservative, there has to be a liberal, there has to be a man, a woman, a black, an Asian. Blah blah blah blah."

This political packaging came as a surprise to some. About six years ago, Keyes, Parker's former editor, was managing editor of a paper in Hawaii and searching for a right-leaning columnist to round off the op-ed page. "I called a friend of mine who's an editorial-page editor and said, 'I'm looking for a good conservative columnist,'" Keyes says. "And this person said, 'Oh, Kathleen Parker!' I said, 'What?' I thought, 'Oh, that must be another Kathleen Parker.'"

But Parker's focus on traditional gender roles and impatience with political correctness were enough to sell her as a conservative in a market where a right-leaning woman was an appropriately diversifying oddity. (Which is not to say being a woman was an advantage. "When my syndicate tried to sell me," Parker recalls, "they often heard: 'We don't need Parker, we have [Ellen] Goodman.' Meaning, we already have a woman.")

And it was as a nominal conservative, not as a Palin-bashing would-be liberal, that The Washington Post hired her -- just weeks before she wrote the column advising the vice-presidential nominee to step down.

Goes to show how central traditional gender concepts are to the whole array of rightist politics - even when she deviates in other areas, she covers herself through traditional gender. (Not that she is as crassly opportunistic as that phrasing implies - she writes her thoughts, and others place her work in the larger politico-social gender framework.)

Nazi history of HH

From book blog "Tatty Jackets". Doesn't give the title unfortunately. His translation of an interesting passage:

The historical development of our city could easily create the impression that Hamburg had placed her own interests over those of Germany. However, we must not overlook the fact that it was only through this political independence that the Hamburg’s inner strength of purpose, enterprising courage, tenacity in the face of set-backs, and flexibility in the conquering of new markets could develop, and could blossom among Germany’s ranks. The successful utilisation of these qualities for the city simultaneous meant service to the interests of Germany; Hamburg’s profile in the world was Germany’s vindication, Hamburg’s economy was the German economy. The fact that Hamburg, despite all her international connections and despite the various points of contact with foreign ways and customs, remained truly German at heart, is proven by the inscription on the memorial columns in Adolf Hitler Square: “40 000 sons of this city gave up their lives for you!” (p.62-3)

Has original German too. Would be nice to get a real copy and check it out.

come on, IL

Illinois English teacher suspended for assigning his students an article from Seed Magazine -- "The Gay Animal Kingdom," which describes homosexuality in animal species. The problem (besides just the fact that it's downstate Illinois), is that the article starts out really... sexy:

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called “homosexual societies.” They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males “effeminate.”

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

So some parents freaked, and he is now suspended (with pay). Article on the story from Psychology Today has some good summaries of the state of play regarding homo- and heterosexuality. Apparently this teacher is straight, but very into showing his students how heteronormativity works. Can't have that!