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THE PROBLEM WITH PLUCKING YOUR EYES OUT [A]
The modern university is forever giving me reasons not to respect her. Why only today, she asked me to believe that the destruction of the subject is a possibility. And not only that, but a desirable possibility. And not only that, either—but an inevitable possibility! The subject will be destroyed and there's nothing we can do about it! It's out of our hands! No subject! Oh dear! Thankfully, each one of us in this room is smart enough to see that this is 100% bullshit. I mean, so long as predication remains a cornerstone of English grammar (e.g., "The dog is male"), we can sleep well at night, knowing that the destruction of the subject is linguistically impossible, and therefore actually impossible insofar as we conceive of nothing without the use of language. In English-speaking countries at least, the subject is safe, for now. Although you'd never know that at NYU. [B]
I pray I'm not conservative, but I fear that I am. Not compared with the people of Idaho, mind you. Or Utah. Or Georgia. It's that I'm more conservative than every person who opens her loud mouth in this class. Because there are literally zero people more conservative than me, of the people who open their loud mouths in this class. And what's more: (1) there are zero people even slightly as conservative as me, and (2) zero people who possess even a scintilla of the conservatism I possess on a pretty non-conservative day, of the people who open their loud mouths in this class. Finally, there are zero people in this class whose liberality I could share or even come close to in my wildest dreams, or while on drugs, while being tortured, chased by hungry dogs, etc., of the people who open their loud mouths in this class. Which means that every single person who's ever spoken here, without exception, is way more liberal than I've ever thought of being under any circumstances, ever. To recap, except for me, is there a single conservative-minded person in this class? Actually maybe. If she's in here, she's learned to keep her mouth shut. [C]
He assigned us a number of readings, each written about the educational experience of a different ethnic group in 20th-century USA. One was from a Jewess in 1912, chronicling her struggles with the English language and slow assimilation into American life and culture. Another reading concerned the education of Asian immigrants and the anti-Japanese sentiment in California in the 1910s and 20s. There were many others. The teacher asked us to place these readings within a spectrum...
AMERICANIZATION
Soft <-----> Hard ...with soft Americanization representing values like respect for foreign cultures; and hard Americanization, values like teaching English to school children. A few patterns emerged right away. First, the more racist the tone of the reading, the harder the force of Americanization. Second, in the absence of real racism, any instance of hard Americanization would be said to be racist anyway. You'll recognize the scenario: Start with race or ethnicity X. Add whites. Add hard Americanization. Now you have oppression, insensitive treatment of minorities, systemic intolerance, the whole nine yards. So the prejudice of white Californians in 1920 is automatically a case of hard Americanization, whatever the circumstances. And if a Jewish girl assimilates voluntarily there's got to be racism in there somewhere. Alternatively, and in the words of one of my classmates, she might be "brainwashed." Because in a pinch, with no racism in sight, mental coercion or psychosis will do. I raised my hand and suggested that we alter the spectrum as follows:
AMERICANIZATION
Good <-----> Bad ...which makes up for the loss in elegance with a refreshing dose of honesty. [D]
The problem with plucking your eyes out and then high-fiving your friends in celebration is twofold: (1) plucking your eyes out is nothing to celebrate in the first place; and (2) it's hard to execute a proper high-five without eyes. No need to worry! The good news is that the modern university hasn't really plucked her eyes out. She only thinks she has. That's why universities continue to do good work (sort of). They can see! They're merely pretending to be blind. Though it's sure annoying that they spend all day high-fiving their girlfriends just the same. [E]
Curiosity #1: Is it possible for an immigrant to listen to American popular music, or to eat at McDonald's, or to learn English on purpose(!), without also being considered morally or intellectually deficient? Curiosity #2: If the Japanese were encouraged to keep their language, while being simultaneously classified as vermin and killed on sight, then is this kind of Americanization soft or hard? [F]
Ours is a world of bodies, objects, people, things. All this we can see. What we can't see is the stuff the Ph.D.'s talk about: systems, structures, institutions, expressions. We see men working in factories, families living barely within their means, children studying from progressive curricula in school. Do we see industrialization, poverty, the fabrication of knowledge? A myopic person is someone who can't see the forest for the trees. This condition is common enough—"You're missing the big picture," we often say. The modern university has somehow managed the opposite. It's quite a feat, really. She has a big picture but it's a picture without content. She can't see the trees for the forest. [G]
A conservative error, very common, is the all-look-same fallacy. This is a crime of oversimplification. It's brought to our minds afresh night after night on cable television, and wherever loud opinions are sold. A liberal error, just as common, is the flee-from-specification fallacy. This is a crime of underdefinition. It's endemic to the university (naturally), though it too is available on TV or wherever loud opinions are sold. Which is everywhere. Did you know that political correctness—the liberal strategy of intellectual avoidance bar none—is a form of censorship far more permeant, far more corrosive to learning, than book burning ever was? More on that. Have you ever considered why glossaries, when they're present at all, are located in the back of the book? Tucked away and separated from the body of the text? It has nothing to do with the efficient organization of ideas on paper. They're at the back of the book so that you never ever look there! Glossaries are not nearly slippery enough to be useful. They're dangerous and we'd be better off expunging them altogether. A glossary is a fucking knife. Says the liberal mind: "Definition is control." [H]
By far the strangest thing about anti-Asian sentiment in California was the immigrant response to white oppression. In a 1919 letter to President Woodrow Wilson by the Japanese Association of America, Japanese immigrants pleaded for an end to mistreatment and injustice, and for the inauguration of social harmony and understanding. In that same letter, we find passages like these: "We point out to our fellow-countrymen the better elements in American civilization, urging them to strive for their own improvement and better fit themselves for American life..." "We tried to teach them [Japanese-Americans] that assimilation was the first step for their success." What?!? So I raised my hand to press the double irony that (1) not only is assimilation here seen as a positive good; but (2) the incorporation of foreign cultural elements is being advocated on behalf of the Japanese, to the Japanese. In other words, it suggests that a Japanese interest in American culture, which today we say was forced from without, was back then a vibrant force from within. In California in 1919, Japanese willingness to assimilate was itself a part of Japanese culture. I pointed this out. The response, predictably, was the ire of my classmates. They all fiercely objected to me talking this way. Who was I, of all people, to say what Japanese culture is like, or isn't like? What do I know, anyway? Am I Japanese? A dissenting opinion came from perhaps the only student who was even slightly as conservative as me, of the students who open their loud mouths in this class. One lovely, half-Japanese student raised her hand, and agreed with me. Now consider the following:
Is anyone uncomfortable yet? I know we shouldn't say that Mexican labor builds our highways, or that black people eat fried chicken, or that Chinese parents pressure their children to perform well on standardized tests. But what if all of these things are true? Can we say them then? More importantly, more pointedly, back to where I started, if predication (the use of subjects) is now forbidden, as modern universities would have us believe, then how can we say anything at all? -murrayjames 11/02/08 |