Not incredibly related to the reading, but perhaps somewhat . . . I just got off the phone with my best friend who graduated from Tufts last spring. Our standard meandering conversation took us a great deal of places, but one I wasn't expecting was to the topic of favorite professors who have made big impacts in our intellectual/identity formation . . . her most memorable prof is Lee Edelman of the Tufts English Department, a.k.a. Lee Edelman of this week's reading.
I don't know why this convergence of my friend's life-molding experience and the theory we're reading in class was jarring; perhaps it enabled me to see that while these authors we read probably identify a great deal with the books/articles they've written, there's a whole other aspect of their identity that might mean more to them than their written words--one rooted in impacting people in a solid/"real" way. In a sense, hearing Katie say in a very off-the-cuff way that Edelman (the person, the guy who was so passionate about certain moments in Hitchcock, the prof who had his unique quirks) is so meaningful to her really gave me a great perspective on the identity of these (often inaccessible) writers we've been sorting through this term.
I think the biggest wrinkle I'd love to iron out is: how can people who are so articulately aware of the shortcomings of our world (i.e. Edelman, Agamben, Butler, etc. etc. etc.) actually make a change?? . . . And perhaps even more relevant in my self-view, how can I make a difference?? I think that is the question that has been bouncing around in my head for so many weeks, and it has been fueled by many of the authors we've read as they describe a world in dire need of something new, be it a new aesthetic, politics, or identity structure.
The three are definitely interrelated in my mind. To continually fashion and re-fashion one's aesthetic selfhood - in the small-elite-college, "art of living" sense - leads (clearly) to new identity structures, but also new ways of relating to each other - and what's politics if not relationality. Jacques Ranciere talks about aesthetics in the broad sense of the "distribution of the sensible," i.e., the totality of what we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell etc., as circumscribing the totality of what we can belief, imagine, and create. This theory - like all kinds of historicism - has some clear shortcomings (for one, how in the world is change explicable within this framework?), but its valorization of artistry inspires me. Artistry as life; life as artistry; re-distributing the sensible by being-in-the-world beautifully. Clearly, this is wide-open, but in many ways, that's what's so great about postmodern ethics, aesthetics, and politics: Why should we expect theory to point us to definitive channels of practice? New contingencies are emerging all the time, forever fluctuating, deterritorializing us, deterritorializing themselves, visualizing new lines of flight. So, we act. Unjustifiably, aporetically, "impossibly," sure - but never carelessly.
In terms of non-fluff, here are my thoughts thus far:
1) Since problems are systemic, solutions must be as well. I.e., you can't do it alone.
2) And you can't hope to change anything without questioning the structural premises of the contemporary social field. If we imagine political economy as a network of "empty" positions existing in some complex web of interconnectivity, it doesn't much matter which individual bodies occupies which individual position unless we're willing to question the "empty" distribution itself. Sure, it would be nice if more disenfranchised peoples occupied positions of economic well-being, institutional power, etc. (and this is certainly something to fight for), but if you're not questioning Capital, your project will most likely lose out. Consider the following thought experiment. Suppose every laborer in the world had an education from Pomona - what kind of social, economic, and political changes would this bring about? I think there's a strong case to be made that in effect, nothing would change. We'd have an extremely well educated contingent of wage-laborers, but there are deep, structural barriers to realizing any legitimate increase of non-alienating work (an oxymoron?); for every individual "professional" job, many more "non-professional" jobs are required.
3) Law underpins all economic systems, which would suggest that legal reform/revolution might be an important front of socio-economic struggle.
4) Don't be one or multiple; be multiplicities.
5) And please, let's do away with the signifier "non-violence."
That's so ironic that your best friend mentioned Edelman this week! I also wonder how these authors who are so articulate and meticulous with their thinking can actually affect the world. Particularly because most of the time it seems that they are not providing any answers, but simply making everything a lot more complex by bringing up so many more questions!
However, no fear. At least when similar situations like this distress me, my scientist father is someone who always reminds me to realize the significance of good questions and how much of an impact they have towards the progress towards the truth. A good question is sometimes better than an answer.
But it makes me wonder, what is this "truth" that we are striving towards? It makes me think of Foucault and his discussion of how people are misled into believing that there is a "truth" behind our whole discourse of sexuality. Apart from the scientific, mathematical realm, can there be a truth? Is there a truth?
Perhaps we are all floundering around to create some sort of meaning for us in our lives. Sounds kind of depressing that these truths are all socially-constructed, however, maybe that is the beauty of it. We are creating our world and our meanings. Baudrillard's simulacra! It really does dominate our world in this sense.
Definitely went off on a tangent there...Oh well.