Catherine Driscoll wrote:
>
> I've avoided contributing to this thread, but now I'm drawn in because
> I want to say something in response to Jordan's 'dead wood' theory, so
> I'll say something small, and probably already said better by someone
> else in a post I missed, about the larger thread as well.
>
> larger thread --
> It seems obvious to me that the group 'working-class white men' that's
> being discussed here do not have 'working-class-ness' as their sole
> primary identification -- most of the time being men and being white
> seems just as and very often far more present to them, so
> their 'interests' are not automatically seen as lying with the
> interests of some generalised 'working-class'. Moreover, the most
> urgent issues often lie in decreasing the pool of people vying for
> scarce resources -- and those that can be eliminated are most clearly
> identified by other than class means.
>
> Thus so many 'working-class white men' in Australia find it all too
> easy to see as major issues (not taxes but) immigrants and women taking
> their jobs or, in the case of women, removing their prior economic
> support in the form of domestic labour; or things like the additional
> pittance given to indigenous people looking for work as evidence of
> some resented disenfranchisement. It seems to me so naive to rail that
> this is a false consciousness of some sort -- yes it is, fine, ok,
> we're all smarter than them, hooray for us, but it is true to their
> present reality as well, and treating it as false consciousness just
> doesn't seem enough.
>
> I know I'm not actually suggesting anything more helpful but until they
> can afford to see racism/sexism as an issue for them they won't. Their
> interests *are not* wholly determined by being working class in this
> present socioeconomic situation. So why expect them to act as if they
> are? Can 'they' be brought to see the injustice of racism/sexism/etc?
> Yes, of course. Will that change the fact that in the present
> system 'their' interests are in some concrete ways served by racism and
> sexism? No. That, I would think, needs to be addressed at the same
> time, if not first.
>
> on dead wood --
> Now Jordan I do know what you mean. It can be very irritating to look
> around and see incompetence that makes your job harder, most
> particularly in people paid a great deal. It's easy to want to demand
> that X, Y and Z do more for the twice what I get that they are paid.
> But, in the end, it's not the fact that they do as little as they can
> that makes difficulties in the place where I work -- it's a set of much
> larger questions about how the money is spent and what is seen as a
> priority in current academic structures.
>
> So in the end I can only see them as doing what they can to enjoy their
> jobs in a situation that's deteriorating in many respects and which
> certainly doesn't serve them either. (Although I'm not talking about
> upper management here, which might inspire me to different thoughts.)
> I'll confess that some days I feel very differently about them and am
> more consumed by outrage at their whining laziness when our position is
> so much better than that of so many other people. But today is Sunday,
> and I am feeling generous. In general though I know, and I'm sure you
> do too, that sacking all those instances would not change the
> structures that produce and sustain them. Mostly I feel like at present
> academics are almost trained to abandon investment in their work.
>
> Catherine