Well, no offense to Jim because I think he's a great guy and I respect him, but I think 'convert' was the wrong word. I'm not sure, and Jim can correct me, but what I also hear in his words is the notion that it's *good for* isolated metropolitan leftists to get down with the peeps. That is, they have something to "teach" us, something latte sipping leftists in Berkeley need to learn or have forgotten...or something.
Sometimes, what I hear is a little twist on Grasci's notion of organic intellectuals -- and that would be a misreading if it is -- that there is something more genuine or in touch with the need for social revolution about the peeps. (This wouldn't be surprising, such thinking was deeply infused in the lit of the 60s and many people took it quite seriously. e.g., The Combahee River Collective seriously believed that there was something about being in a marginalized social status -- black, lesbian -- that meant that they could take "revolutionary leap" at a moment's notice because their social position gave them that kind of insight.
This, most people agree these days, is hogwash.
Perhaps Doug has a copy on hand. What it reminds me of is Michael Moore's essay in 'The Nation' or 'Dissent' where he argued that leftists needed to go bowling with the peeps. Now, I have/had some sympathy with that argument, not so much because the salt of the earth can teach leftists something. And not because the salt of the earth supposedly have some insight into the need for revolution or some such.
Rather -- and I'm not sure how to put this -- but what I did experience in the 80s with the crew that came to my town and tried to see if they could bring social revolution that way, was that they harbored a lot of nasty stereotypes. They were hurtful and insulting people at times, not realizing their assumptions that were off base. Probably more to the point, was that when they saw in us, say, racism or xenophobia or sexism(we're talking fear of Asia 80s here), there was no corresponding reflection on their own part of the world -- a theme taken up by Barabara Ehrenreich in _Fear of Falling_. They reflected a dominant American trope that racism, sexism and xenophobia emanates primarily from the working class: she analyzes popular film, for instance, to show how films projected a professional-middle class imagination where the PMC was absolved of its own racism, xenophobia, sexism etc. by projecting it on to the white working class. She uncovers the same examining popular textbooks where, in chapters on race, it's the guy in the hard hat who was the racist. When looking at families, it was the guy carrying the black lunch pail who has a haggard wife sitting next to him, mutely looking up at him, perhaps slightly in fear. There were no corresponding examples of, say, the upper middle class wife waiting on her husband when he got home from work. (These photos would be depictions of the 60s).
There was another guy who wrote a similar article, before Moore's, and that _was_ in decent. It was more sociological in the sense that it examined the way the daily lives of more academic-oriented and well-off lefties were structured so as to isolate them from the daily lives of those they claimed to want to ally with. I see this happen on this list a bit. Not too long ago, and there've been similar examples, I mentioned something like, "Who spends $150 on sneakers?" I got offlist mail informing me that they did.
What happened there was a reading of my incredulity as a moral judgement. It wasn't. It was incredulity that people had the kind of disposable income to spend that kind of cash on sneakers of the sort I mentioned: they were a ked-style sneaker with no support. It was all about style.
My incredulity comes from the fact of my financial circumstances and it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm putting down people who have the money to buy $150 shoes. This is a popular trope in the US -- to assume people are resentful of those who have money.
I bring this up because, as some of you know, I've been contemplating spending $120 on shoes b/c I'm now in a position to do so -- and because my damn feet hurt! :) And it's been making me wonder what it would be like to have the kind of cash for, say, 20 years or more, where $120 on shoes was like $20 on a CD or $15.00 for fastfood for two. I realized that, for that long and without associating with others who aren't in that position, I would probably not realize that other people would find that $150 jaw-dropping. I would maybe chalk it up to "jealousy" as so many non-lefty USers do. I would forgot that it isn't jealousy -- it's shock. And this isn't surprising if you think about how we live, about Bourdieu's writings on distinction, about how we orient ourselves to our reference group, etc.
I've also been working around people who take that kind of income for granted. On a whim, for instance, a co-worker bought an iBook the other day. It's became really clear to me that, to discuss shopping for bargains, or to mention how much the designer handbag costs is declasse. IOW, what's become really clear is that you are encouraged to spend and to not balk about the price because this would indicate ... what -- I'm not sure. perhaps this is peculiar to this workplace, b/c I've never seen anything like it -- but then I've never worked in anything like it.
At any rate, it's this consumerism and conformity to status items and the demand not to mention expense or concern about money that is most starkly different. In other workplaces, people surely buy things and there are consumer pressures, but no one is frowned on for discussing how to save money or complaining about price or how to get a better deal.
And you also don't get the feeling that anyone necessarily frowns on you for not having certain consumer goods. And yet, what I'm experiencing in this workplace is that, if you don't have a new car or a cell phone or an iPod, don't even mention it's b/c you can't afford it -- or couldn't. This is a revelation of your failure and, thus, a revelation of your incompetence. You can only say that you *chose* not to have a cell phone or that the inability to afford the new car was due to decisions made as, say, a single mom. To ever reveal that you haven't always made this kind of money is to reveal one's status as failure, as undeserving, as having something wrong with you. It's really quite interesting, if you detach yourself and observe the comments that are made about those who don't dress in the right clothes, groom themselves in the socially acceptable ways, and most of all have disposable cash to do just about anything at the drop of a hat.
Again, this may be because the people I work with are very young, early to late 20s.
All of this has made me wonder... what would I be like were I like my co-workers who, from their mid-20s spent the next twenty years living this way. What is it like to be a lefty in such a circumstance, where the pressure is on to always buy finer things, drink the finer beers and wines, where you always have money to eat lunch out, that taking lunch in is seen as a little . . . odd, excusable only if you have special dietary needs.
And all of this, if it's more than a unique experience, has made me think that, yeah, sometimes lefties are isolated.
But can their souls be redeemed by bowling with the peeps?
I don't think so. If it's thought of that way -- as something to do because it's good for you and that you might be cleansed of the evils of upper middle class life by hanging with the peeps -- then it's just using those people for your own ends. That's downright rude. That's why I said that the country folk don't exist for the redemption of lefties. That's not a whole lot different than anthropologists have sometimes spoken of immersion in the culture of the "noble savage". That somehow, the noble savage, being isolated from the sins and evils of modernization, has access to some kind of knowledge or morality that is untarnished. And maybe if you hang around the noble savage you'll learn something. This is not unlike the way that such folk, especially black men and women, are treated in film: the noble, wise ones who still practice the old ways.
And it was the title of the thread, which I changed, with reference to 'noble savage' which was the more important keyword -- convert, bad word choice.
and yeah, if you've read this far, i completely agree with you about the sanity saving character of places like this for those of us who don't teach on campuses where there are like-minded folk. And the analogy with specialized tech discussion list is perfect.
bl
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