``I believe that Reed/Michaels/Zizek are addressing an element of the current scene which, moving with sinister majesty, gains greater and greater strength..'' .d.
``I think so too. But I think Zizek and Reed do it way better. So why is that?
I also haven't read or heard anything that I think makes Michaels deserving of the prick and asshole jibes he's been getting here. So why is that happening?
I think these may be related questions but I don't have time for more than that just now.'' Dennis Claxton
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This exchange interests me. Why am I willing to listen to Zizek and Reed and not Michaels?
I tried to pose a similar question, as a thought experiment. I tried to imagine Michaels delivering his lecture to a class at Laney College and laughed. If some young woman of color didn't jump up and start yelling at him, I'd worry what's gone wrong with youth in Oakland.
Then I imagined somebody like Reed or Davis saying something similar to Michaels, but in their particular way. I thought, hmm, the students might sit back and start asking questions.
Here's my provisional answer. What's said and by who carries different weights and meaning in the intersect of race, gender, and class. These are real, concrete divisions of society and carry different weights and meanings of power to those speaking and listening.
For example, I don't want to talk about race, except in relation to the white construction of race. It helps a lot to deconstruct the neoliberal and neoconservative propaganda. I see this propaganda as white male identity neurosis. The IMF might look nice and diverse. The line up of US banking CEOs sure doesn't. People know what they look like.
If I want to put down the `diversity' concept, then I'll go back to the material history of its origins through the legislation and language of the era. I think I could present a pretty compelling picture to a very diverse classroom. They might sit up and listen.
They might, because I don't intend to insult their intelligence by telling them that race, gender, and cultural heritage don't matter. They already know money is green and economic class counts for everything.
Now the next issue to trivialize here is multiculturalism.
However, you reach people by telling them stories and showing them pictures of their own heritage of struggle. Most people own a heritage of struggle they've never been told. They are already aware that those struggles are not over.
The Mexican Muralist movement does a pretty good job, since they were straight up communist. They were designed as teaching tools
How can I put this? It's the talk of race, the talk of gender, the talk of heritage and struggle that pulls people into an awareness of class war and the oppression of the neoliberal machine.
Here are a couple of slides from art class to illustrate the above.
What the global power of capital, neoliberalism, and what saving the bankers means while working families rot:
http://www.humanities-interactive.org/splendors/ex048_21f.html
Here's were the Merit Academy of neoconservative teaching the basics fits in. You can add charter schools and no child left behind if you want:
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/701.html
Here's what's going on in imperialistic wars to spread the free market from Iraq to Honduras:
http://xxxicana.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/orozco.jpg
And then why there is hope in joint (race, gender, heritage) struggle:
http://channel2.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/12/orozco.jpg
The last one Hombre de Fuego, Man of Fire takes more development. It is a combination of the promise of the Enlightenment of an unfolding eqalitarian utopia and the Communist Manifesto of unity in struggle of to get there. You need more slides for the vertical panels below the dome that also develop these themes
Red and black. Euro figure and Native figure. These represent science technology, and reason joined with the organic cultural knowledge of the earth, going hand in hand into fires of the struggle for creation, conception and birth of the future.
Yeah that sort of sounds like neoliberal propaganda, the diversity of the IMF and some vague green politics thrown in. Of course you have tell it right.
So now inject the meaning of red and black. Much neoliberal confusion falls away. Because then you have to explain black is the traditional color of anarchism which about breaking down capital's death grip on society. Red is the traditional color of socialism, which about re-building society for economic and social justice. Then you have to get into the iconography of the hammer and sickle, the union of industrial workers, and agrarian reform. What's agrarian reform? Well, for example breaking up California's land owning agricultural corporations and getting agricultural workers good pay, good housing, good schools. What's the hammer about? That's about the unity of labor in manufacturing and industrial production. It means fighting against what's happened here, in Oakland or Detroit were workers have no jobs. That includes us other dispossessed, unskilled and skilled labor educating ourselves, despite the academy of dead knowledge. We are supposed to pay to go to public owned schools that teach us we're stupid?
What can I say? I think you can teach the communist manifesto and the struggle for socialist democracy with Orozco and Sequerios. This is actually how I learned it, since I was an art major.
What can you teach with Micheals? I don't know. I didn't learn anything.
As to the asshole charge? That got started when Joanna told a story about Michaels when she was a grad student. He and another guy were on the hiring committee for teaching positions in the English Dept. Joanna had asked Michaels why nobody was hire. He told her, they were not `sexy' enough.
About ten years before I had been a grad student at UCB fighting to get student representation in department hiring and curriculum policy meetings. I recognized the style of dismissal. Another issue was, the art students wanted the department to keep fresco mural painting on the curriculum. The faculty dropped it as a course. Fresco as a material wasn't `sexy' as against acrylic and air brush?
The main issue in my era, was getting grad student teaching positions. The art faculty used budget as an excuse. The reason the budget was so tight was of course the faculty were making huge sums. The problem was that if you didn't have TA experience, then you had a lot of trouble applying for and getting teaching jobs. Most applications required two years experience. In effect the department handed out useless degrees.
CG
