[lbo-talk] Some thoughts on BTN

[Sean Andrews]

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i haven't heard this week's episode either, and haven't heard what it's on,
but as I mentioned last week, I've been reading a book about this by a
previous guest, Catherine Liu.  She draws heavily on Hofstader's critique
and elaborates a fairly complex matrix of elements that seem to be
associated with a particularly virulent kind of anti-intellectualism in the
United States.  I use virulent here intentionally because the way she
tracks it is almost like an epidemiologist would, watching a plague work
its way through various sectors of the society over time.  I wouldn't say
she ever quite articulates a coherent, single statement that sums up what
this anti-intellectual strain is, and it is true that she doesn't provide a
third order production of it in a theoretical dimension.  But she draws
significantly on works by Adorno - first his Authoritarian Personality,
which he was only co-author, and then several of his and Benjamin's essays
that are at least tangentially related to the topic.  I don't have the book
in front of me and am deep in the final chapters, trying to finish it in
between other obligations; otherwise, I might try to find some pointed
examples.

It is sloppy in some places, polemical in many and occasionally slips into
tangent recesses that seem only dimly lit by the same flame. but overall,
it gives a glaring picture of some of the most elemental features of
anti-intellectualism qua anti-elitism.  The latter is probably the most
obvious features of our own preoccupations and political frameworks today:
e.g. the Eggheads Rush Limbaugh calls out.  As with most of the
characteristics she mentions, it is easist to see in relation  to a binary:
anti-elitism is a kind of populism. This populism infuses education by
supposedly making it a meritocracy, largely through the magic of testing,
which was meant to be more objective than elitist notions of culture and
privilege.  But as we could predict, once it is adopted as a technology of
assessment, testing is effectively rigged to reward those same notions in
similar proportion using a differnent, supposedly more liberal and
scientific method.  I can't do justice to her argument here as there are
many supporting pieces of evidence here, such as the discourse of the
people inventing and deploying the tests in their pseudoscientific fashion.

 In any case, she provides an updated vision of this idea which both
employs and goes beyond other dichotomies - like rural vs. urban, theory
vs. experience, etc. - that are far more familiar as guideposts in the
discussion of this idea.  In places, there are noisy parts, which don't
really fit into the point she is making, but are certainly on the hazy
outskirts of the abstraction she's trying to build.  I don't know if she's
planning a follow up, but it would likely be a place for her to go one
further step in providing a more theoretical approach to the concept.

Right now my feeling is that, as interesting as it is, she is missing a
huge piece of this puzzle.  As I said last week, (and apologies for missing
much of the discourse on the list during the week - my time is now very
limited and I can only rarely scrape some time for interaction) her
argument will probably find some sympathy on this list as one of her
arguments is that there was a flimsy sort of "activistism" to much of the
Left (sic) which was infused by a contention that experts were too powerful
in post war society, all knowledge should be questioned, and there is a
limit that should be placed on the power of intellectuals.  Her argument is
that this led, if through a circuitous route, to the thorough absence of
intellectual power in early 21st century society, a populist celebration of
ignorance, an education system that produces it and reproduces it on a
grand scale and so to the mandarins who are now running the show.

On the one hand what she seems to miss are the very intellectual jargon in
which most of this discussion took place - so much so that it would find
completely foreign the conversations we've had on this list about the use
of jargon and theory in general, i.e. that its a snooty thing for leftists
to do if they want to inspire the masses to revolt, even though many of
those on the left have done it almost since the beginning, e.g. Marx, etc.
In her account, these two sides are uncomfortably pasted into one, as if
there is no tension between them.  THis is largely because the field she
draws upon to make this point - Cultural Studies - has had these two
tensions alive in its work since it was established as a field at
Birmingham.  On one side there was the more experience, anti-jargon, almost
anti-intellectual, but certainly populist in a more direct way, often
employing ethnographic methods, but even histories such as Thompson's
Making of the English Working class is proudly untheoretical - long before
Thompson wrote his screed against the other side, represented for him by
the high structuralist theory of Althusser.  In any case, there is
something of a moving target on this front (again justifying Comrade Cox's
insistence that the article "the" not precede the noun/adjective "Left.")

 Again, I'm getting to the end, and this final chapter on Cultral Studies
promises to be illuminating in the positions she's staked out, but this
seems a reasonable assessment so far.

More problematically, I am sort of stunned by her leaving to one side the
rather swift business the right made of setting up their own "counter
establishment."  This seems to be one of the crucial features of the 1960s
onward, one charted by many intellectual historians.  Now maybe it is true
that some of this "counter establishment" is or has become less
intellectual in its diction or jargon, but they are no less powerful than
that class as it was in the 19th century.  I.e. The Heritage foundation,
paid for with bloody capitalist lucre, is one of the premier authorities on
capital hill.  Add to them the AEI, Cato, the folks at George Mason and all
the other right wing fanatics that find such welcome homes in the houses of
power they denounce as illegitimate.  Their rise might owe something to the
lack of a confident, vociferous, monologue from the Left, but it was also a
calculated effort to redefine what intellectuals were meant to do - the
answer being that they are supposed to serve the interests of power.

In any case, I agree that the terms should be clearly defined, but I also
think it is worth having a general conversation about something that
appears to exist in order to create a clearer image - rather than
denouncing anyone for using the term unless they've written or can cite the
appropriate dissertation written on it.  This is, after all, a list serve
where the purpose is discussion not publication

Now I'll have to go read Chuck's question closer...

Now I'Now I


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> ---------- Original Message ----------
> From: 123hop at comcast.net <javascript:;>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org <javascript:;>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Some thoughts on BTN
> Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 01:33:42 +0000 (UTC)
>
> Hofstader?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> I don't think it true that the u.s. can be characterized as an
> anti-intellectualist society. The label seems a mere kneejerk grounded in
> random evidence. No one, in fact, has ever attempted a _theoretical_
> analysis of what "anti-intellectualism" even means. It is a pretty empty
> swear word, avoiding matters of substance.
>
> Carrol
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