Deans & Provosts Re: Deleuze & Guattari...

[jimmyjames at softhome.net]

At 09:47 PM 1/26/03 -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>At 11:24 AM -0800 1/26/03, Gar Lipow wrote:
>>So you need a class in between labor capital, a middle class, a 
>>bureaucratic/technical/managerial/academic class. This class performs a 
>>great many functions. There is directly policing workers to extract work 
>>from them. There is shaping the work environment, both to increase 
>>productivity per hour, but also to deskill labor and make it more 
>>measurable, easier to police. There is the shaping of the workers, 
>>suppressing some types of creativity while encouraging others - with the 
>>aim of making obedient little agents, but something more than drones, 
>>something that does not require micro management.
>
>Is Catherine a dean or a provost or some such thing?  In that case, I 
>might agree with you that her main job is to police "workers to extract 
>work from them."

what about shaping them to make them obedient agents, etc? I mean, it's 
right there, in the quoted passage. How can you miss it?

the theory doesn't support the Yeshiva decision. It intends to explain it 
by asking _why_ people perceive themselves as professionals and not 
workers. It is no different than observing that racism and sexism exist, 
that they manifest themselves as systemic forms of oppression--and that 
these exist in and through the actions, beliefs, ideas, etc of people in 
their everyday lives as well as in informal and formal norms and laws--and, 
as such, these phenom prevent people from seeing their shared oppression 
and exploitation. To study those processes is not supporting racism.

So, no, your cut'n'paste doesn't cut it.

Kelley