"Frances Bolton (PHI)" wrote:
> I tend to be a bit suspicious when I hear leftist academics insisting that
> teaching makes them a part of the working class. I wonder if they are
> perhaps making this claim simply to deny their own privileged position.
i'm suspicious too - best to be suspcious of most things, especially our own presentations in a context where to be working class is often defined as a mark of authenticity, immediate access to the truth of the matter, etc.....
i wouldn't say teaching makes anyone anything for sure, in the same way that the distinction b/n manual and intellectual work doesn't necessarily - or just doesn't - parallel a distinction between classes.
anyone remember where in 'theories of surplus value' marx talks about teaching and whether or not the teacher is a productive labourer?
there are significant distinctions within the working class, and whilst i would agree that there is a need to inists on a unity against capitalism, insisting on this theoretically or polemically doesn't make it so. part of the reason there is a real hostility to academics, one that is taken up gleefully by the right, is perhaps a resonance of a history in wherein the division between manual and intellectual labour did actually conform more closely to a class distinction (here class in marxian rather than weberian terms). but that resonance cuts both ways, me thinks. there is a real sense in which many academics immediately begin their thinking from the prspective of a surpervisory or managerial position. and, this managerialism is i think not particulalry in evidence amongst less 'traditional' disciplines or theoretical adventures- economists tend to do it, sociologists.... . it does pervade a certain kind of marxism though, one where the masses are seen as 'over there' and something to be manipulated, steered, led, etc.
there are numerous levels to tehse 'debates between pomos and marxists' ( -- forgive me for repeating the lingo of staging whihc i think is certainly not the case). and, it's occured to me that a siginificant elelment of it, at least for those who go on about 'butler disorienting students' etc, is actually a pitch for a certain kind of leadership over the masses. as far as some are concerned, pomo has displaced the leadership of marxism, and thus the need ot take it on in the way that they have.
where they miss the boat me thinks is that the assault on pomo is actually one of the most effective vehicles for the right to reshape the academy in their image, to make the very process of questioning off limits. in this debate, leninist marxism is quite marginal, and it certainly won't be a more central player by aligning itself with the right against 'pomo'. so, even accepting the permise of leadership over the working class as the basis for polemic (whihc i don't), you would think leninists would think more seriously about the balance of forces in all this.
angela