tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36069225045818118262024-03-05T14:48:57.240-08:00Leviathan And You: A Blog About Big ThingsLeviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-32427598815106499922019-03-01T16:31:00.001-08:002019-03-02T13:07:59.497-08:00Airbnb v. The Housing Question<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">By <a href="https://hls.indiana.edu/about/directory/mitchell-kerry.html" target="_blank">Kerry Mitchell</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">Part 2 of 2 </span></span></div>
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The gilets jaunes or “yellow vests” protests, driven by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/a2e3r9/-/eaxh8h7/" target="_blank">rural poverty and general economic stress</a>, continue across France more than three months after they began. Policy adjustments put forward by the government have not succeeded in quelling the unrest. Rejecting these measures as insufficient, protesters contend that French President Emmanuel Macron is blind, uncaring, and/or out of touch with their concerns. Macron’s nationally televised address on the protests only reinforced this perception. He gave it from the ornately decorated salon doré, the “golden lounge” of the Élysée Palace, formerly a residence of French nobility. <br />
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This image of Macron parallels the one discussed in <a href="https://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2018/12/ceci-nest-pas-un-selfie.html" target="_blank">part one</a> of this series (see below also). There, a smiling woman sat in a Burger King looking out onto the riots as she supposedly snapped a selfie. That image spread widely and was identified as emblematic of the “spirit of the times.” Likewise, Macron’s choice of setting was considered remarkably tone deaf and indicative of his inability to grasp the true scope and nature of the tensions driving the protests. In both cases, figures that should be quite aware of what’s going on around them appear hopelessly blind, rooted in a perspective that reflects their own position rather than engaging those they purport to see. <br />
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This blindness is not visual or informational. Rather it is a self-seeing that is both all-encompassing and impoverished. Such self-seeing sees the riots in the streets perfectly well. It may even understand the perspective of the rioters. But even when face to face with the rioter, or face to numbers with sophisticated socio-economic analyses, such seeing does not change the position of the seer. The other remains the other and the self remains the self. Self and other, even and especially in their collective dimensions (e.g., class), can communicate and empathize with near perfection and still remain in fundamentally different places with different conditions. Macron calmly explains his thinking from the salon doré of the Élysée Palace while the woman sits smiling under the protection of the Burger King. They both see quite clearly.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgquniYwz7lrZpKuXqOb3ByuoQnqPANRyBSNMjapy0o0kGzuFNXU2kSmPkQXfQWaLC9VYsqSznKeUjyn-ZngynJTO4EZc4jTGPxc4oerLNnRzqYztJDEdLSaKVmjfF3b2pA1EcyOgZewJU/s1600/Macron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="1221" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgquniYwz7lrZpKuXqOb3ByuoQnqPANRyBSNMjapy0o0kGzuFNXU2kSmPkQXfQWaLC9VYsqSznKeUjyn-ZngynJTO4EZc4jTGPxc4oerLNnRzqYztJDEdLSaKVmjfF3b2pA1EcyOgZewJU/s640/Macron.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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What to do? How to get through to those who see themselves, or at least through themselves, when they look at others? How can one understand the blindness of such self-seeing in such a way as to transform it? By way of answer, a question: where else to start but with the self itself? Perhaps I am just as blind as those whose blindness I decry. Perhaps I sit within my own salon doré, my own Burger King. If so, that would be a good place to start.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXecpZdd-BnxS9K5CtGqC3jHCpX2kZ-L3_KZ5efhisuUkzIGG7bcVBc57IQG_-ykUXzq8ckUR3jtD2r122p_UMLW6xG9sOaCXbt_uGJhoXHc3_1z6Ov93bK1URh7_v0BuiUeCp1fj0N5U/s1600/Room+One.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1021" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXecpZdd-BnxS9K5CtGqC3jHCpX2kZ-L3_KZ5efhisuUkzIGG7bcVBc57IQG_-ykUXzq8ckUR3jtD2r122p_UMLW6xG9sOaCXbt_uGJhoXHc3_1z6Ov93bK1URh7_v0BuiUeCp1fj0N5U/s400/Room+One.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaXBoWWJkuPkT1KnAITV_M38sEwtbSTY3IW5mXgMdJfjNiRxSF28csWqaYhB3WEHWZph-f2EZv5lIJCM3Och8QbC-x62RraXYHTvTu6mHYrZg-Jo9vJwsQx7AlJ06bqtOk2Kc5oMxK16c/s1600/Room+Two.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaXBoWWJkuPkT1KnAITV_M38sEwtbSTY3IW5mXgMdJfjNiRxSF28csWqaYhB3WEHWZph-f2EZv5lIJCM3Och8QbC-x62RraXYHTvTu6mHYrZg-Jo9vJwsQx7AlJ06bqtOk2Kc5oMxK16c/s400/Room+Two.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The images above portray the apartment I occupied for a short stay as I observed the protests in Paris. Located in the 20th arrondisement, I found it through Airbnb. With respect to the question at hand, this condition of my seeing opens up a line of investigation, for it shows that I may well participate, if only in a small way, in the social dynamic driving the protests. <br />
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One of the criticisms of Airbnb is that it has exacerbated the rise in rents in urban tourist destinations by encouraging the conversion of long-term rentals into short-term ones. In cities such as Paris, New York, and San Francisco, among others, thousands of short-term rentals have opened up, competing strongly with hotels for price, location, and quality and taking potential apartments off the market for those who live and work (but cannot afford to buy) in those and similarly cosmopolitan cities. This dynamic magnifies pre-existing trends of gentrification that make housing in major metropolises increasingly unaffordable. That’s part of the reason why people move away from the city and become dependent on cars. Cars are a relatively inexpensive way to match affordable housing with employment opportunities. But as driving becomes more expensive (e.g., fuel taxes, emissions requirements) and jobs scarcer at lower wages and/or fewer benefits (whether privately or publicly provided), those of a certain class feel increasingly squeezed. Such a dynamic is exacerbated by rising rents in places where one can more easily utilize public transportation. <br />
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Does this decision to stay in an Airbnb in Paris blind me to the experience of others whose well-being is affected by my decision? With respect to one particular other, the answer is no.<br />
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Hotels sometimes put paintings up on the wall to give the rooms the feel of a human touch. They never fool anyone. But this apartment is undeniably, overwhelmingly, someone’s apartment. It has a certain distinctive personality that hotel rooms cannot have no matter how artfully and conscientiously they are designed. Numerous touches indicate the kind of sustained nest-feathering that a designer cannot approach when outfitting twenty rooms. Cardamom, a Tibetan prayer bell, a lamp made from a vintage Lucas headlight, spherical thumb-push salt and pepper grinders, and so many other similarly tasteful possessions that one can acquire only with years of attentive concern. But, for me, the books offer the most telling indicator of personality. Treating only the books in the living room, and only four of the eight shelves, here is a list of the titles and authors with whom I have some familiarity (these are all in French; I have provided the titles of English versions where available for the convenience of anglophone readers): <br />
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Helene Cixous, <i>Hyperdream </i><br />
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Milan Kundera, <i>Testaments Betrayed and another whose title is obscured </i><br />
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Hannah Arendt, <i>Between Past and Future </i><br />
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Michel Foucault, <i>The Discourse on Language and The Order of Things</i> <br />
<i><br />Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred </i><br />
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Claude Levi-Strauss, <i>The Savage Mind </i><br />
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Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Mauvaises pensées choisies and Antichrist </i><br />
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Frederic Pajak, <i>Nietzsche and his Father </i><br />
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty, <i>Eye and Mind </i><br />
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Sogyal Rinpoche, <i>The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying</i> <br />
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Susan Sontag, <i>On Photography </i><br />
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Georges Bataille, <i>My Mother </i><br />
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Mikhail Bulgakov, <i>The Master and Margarita </i><br />
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J.M. Coetzee, <i>Disgrace</i> <br />
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Herman Hesse, <i>Éloge de la vieillesse </i><br />
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Michel Houellebecq, <i>The Elementary Particles </i><br />
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James Joyce, <i>Ulysses </i><br />
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Franz Kafka, <i>Letter to My Father </i><br />
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Rabindranath Tagore, <i>De l’aube au crépuscule </i><br />
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Alain Robbe Grillet, <i>The Erasers </i><br />
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The degree to which some of these works and authors have influenced me, my desire to know these works and authors much better than I do, and the knowledge that all this is only a fraction of the library in this apartment, all leaves me with an impression. I have a PhD, have studied continental philosophy, and consider myself relatively well-read. This person may be more well-read than I am. Put another way, according to my own standards, this person is classier than I am. Not only do I now have a personal connection that I could never have in a hotel, and not only do I have an experience of culture and class in my lodgings and not just when I leave my room, but my temporary housing gives me an experience and possibility for upward class mobility. The classiness of the whole apartment is above me. I am elevated by it. And I won’t give it up--i.e., pay for a generic hotel room so as to not contribute to the reduced availability of long-term rentals—out of abstract solidarity with the français moyen.<br />
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With respect to the housing question, my experience of Airbnb is both interpersonal and specific as well as general and class-based. The second is grounded in the first. Whatever value commitments I have with respect to class-based inequalities (e.g., the ones that say “not everyone has been in the position to study continental philosophy and literature, so I will not consider knowledge of such as justification for economic inequality”), when met with the commitments that come from personal connection, the latter take priority. I want to support the person who reads Kundera and Foucault and Bulgakov. <br />
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Moreover, that sense of personal connection is based in economic inequality, i.e., class. I have the economic means to travel for short periods of time, both domestically and internationally. I have had the privilege of a university education in the humanities, including foreign language training. I can travel to France and get a lot more out of the experience than a person who does not speak French and who has no prior knowledge of French history and culture (e.g., “Ah! The grand boulevards—in the nineteenth century Hausmann destroyed the working-class neighborhoods and replaced them with monumental architecture and grand mansions”; “Ah! Pere Lachaise—the communards lost their revolution and made their last stand here in 1871.”) My knowledge and personal history make a trip to Paris more worthwhile for me, makes my life richer in a way unavailable to those who have not had my privilege. In this way I am invested in the social structure, including Airbnb, that affords such travel opportunities to me and people like me (people of means with a certain education), even as I see clearly that the rioters have a point. This is why I can see the protesters, even see the world through their eyes, and still remain right where I am. <br />
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All of which brings me to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Housing_Question.html?id=xqyUAQAACAAJ" target="_blank"><i>The Housing Questio</i>n</a> itself. The social and economic tensions currently playing out in the streets of Paris are not new. They are not ancient, either. They can be traced to the industrial revolution and the advent of market capitalism. As industry mechanized and capital accumulated through trade, millions of people had to give up their lives in the countryside and come to the city to work for a wage. Housing was expensive—almost always rentals—and the living conditions were cramped and unsanitary. In this context reformers in the nineteenth century debated the question of housing: how can the social order adapt or be reformed to more equitably provide for all its members? This debate played out in periodicals, for which Friedrich Engels had taken the responsibility of articulating the communist position (thereby freeing up Karl Marx to work out the more comprehensive, long-form analysis that appeared in <i>Das Kapital</i>). <br />
<br />
Readers reading <i>The Housing Question</i> for an answer to the housing question will encounter a certain ironic frustration as they delve into the complexity and detail of Engels’ analysis. There is no answer to the housing question. Or more properly, there is no answer to the housing question that is separable from a much larger question of the foundations of society as a whole. Arrange for all workers to own their own homes? It doesn’t work and makes their situation worse. Arrange the laws to reflect universal justice rather than the economic interest of any one class? That’s not how law has ever worked and it won’t start working that way now. Appeal to the moral conscience and care for the collective good among the powerful? Now you’re just being silly. While often vituperative, Engels was by no means flip or casual in his dismissals. On the contrary, he brought a strict sense of analytical rigor to each of his arguments. These include a granular engagement with the social and economic geography of industrializing Europe as well as a broader theoretical and rhetorical insistence on conceptual clarity and consideration of counter arguments. He applied his analytical deconstructions as rigorously, and with just as much vitriol, to the (in his view, misguided) proposals of those who stood on the side of the working class as much as to those who represented the bourgeoisie. <br />
<br />
Engels’ answer to the housing question, such as there is one, came in remarkably brief statements not meant to stand on their own, but on Karl Marx’s analysis of economy and society to which Engels reverently directed the reader. Of these statements, the most voluminous is only two sentences long: “As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated settlement of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the lot of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of subsistence and instruments of labour by the working class itself” (74). <br />
<br />
The validity of the Marxist analysis and prescription is, of course, arguable. I cite it here not for its particular validity, but for the scope of its call. Engels’ argument boils down to the contention that the entire system is at fault and must be replaced. The call to replace it, however, is not primarily moral and by no means individual. Marxist analysis claims that the resolution of social tensions is inexorable, even if individuals can hasten or delay that resolution through their actions. When social tensions are this radical, arguments concerning the proper way to view and perhaps ameliorate these tensions take on a particular character. First, there is a level at which one’s behavior and point of view don’t matter. Sure, it might be more moral to work against one’s class interest so as to pursue a vision of universal justice. But so long as the system is set up to favor one class over another, the vast majority of people will behave in accordance with their class interest and not in the interest of society as a whole, and this tendency is decisive. Second, and correlated to the first, proposed solutions that address small fractions of the larger problem are doomed to fail no matter how rational and caring they may be. That’s why Macron can’t get past this. He still represents a social order that favors certain people in certain situations rather than others. When those others start to kick in the way that they are doing now, communication (and least of all a “national conversation”) will lead to nothing, at least not to resolution. Those involved in the communication may come to see themselves and their interests more clearly. That’s fine, but it still leaves them right where they are. Clear-eyed rationalists as the French are in their most sophisticated mode, they see the futility of such conversation even if they are not ready to offer a productive alternative. <br />
<br />
So what does all this have to do with my choice to stay in an Airbnb in Paris as I wrote about the protests of those who cannot afford the rents in Paris? Nothing and everything. Nothing in that ethico-moral calculation never escapes the penetration of socio-economic structures into individual experience. Everything in that those structures are reinforced by the individual experiences that they make possible—until the strain and imbalance of the system reaches a tipping point and everything changes. <br />
<br />
This is not to say that all of this is a wash for the question of individual action. Rather it is to say that radical critique of the socio-economic order shifts the terrain from the question of proper behavior to the question of proper analysis. Individual choice can flow from there. <br />
<br />
Analysis is itself a form of behavior and it is available to all, especially in self-reflection. If there is an ethico-moral call that stems from analysis of these protests, it is a call to self-analysis of one’s socio-economic being. Put in imperative form, don’t worry about what you should do in terms of the righteousness of your actions. Worry about who you are in your interests and relationships with others. You can still be moral when you do this. You can go against your self-interest in the interest of the greater good of all. But don’t invest such decisions with the weight of responsibility for particular outcomes with respect to the general order of society. Yes, those decisions and the decisions of millions of others will combine to determine such outcomes for greater society. But in the amalgamation and concatenation of those decisions, made by thousands or even millions of people, concern for the greater good will not outweigh the concerns to please and be pleased by intimates, or at least the familiar—those who more than likely are of the same class.<br />
<br />
There is much room to argue this point. Some may say that collective self-sacrifice has historically been an effective agent of social change. I would very much like to see analyses of historical examples that support such a position. But adjudication of the validity of such arguments is tricky and very involved. Even more than such debate, I would love to see how people analyze their own self-interested place in the broader social movements currently on the rise. Simple confessions of bias are the cheapest and least sophisticated forms of such analysis. Self-interest is by no means a simple calculation! Self-reflection requires questioning, narrative, details of experience—of pleasures, insecurities, decisions, indecisions—all the stuff of life. These, too, are keys to understanding what is going on around the world, if such self-reflection identifies which side the self is on as tensions play out in larger society. <br />
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Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-84043672404651443662018-12-19T10:42:00.000-08:002019-03-02T13:08:26.890-08:00Ceci n'est pas un selfie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6pDQqnnpK7ovmJXqi4_v5wtUt37OGIkOmSb1FQG30yGiCash8XmwkzLZEvpKXoq7qggzf7c_e2rDDY3NZjP0eSaDhVymosJ5WQYLrXo-dYxY9Pyp7ZAZEy8popf1r5EiFVcWaVGKNgUk/s1600/Mitchell+Paris+Burger+King.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6pDQqnnpK7ovmJXqi4_v5wtUt37OGIkOmSb1FQG30yGiCash8XmwkzLZEvpKXoq7qggzf7c_e2rDDY3NZjP0eSaDhVymosJ5WQYLrXo-dYxY9Pyp7ZAZEy8popf1r5EiFVcWaVGKNgUk/s400/Mitchell+Paris+Burger+King.jpg" title="Burger King Selfie" width="400" /></a></div>
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By <a href="https://hls.indiana.edu/about/directory/mitchell-kerry.html" target="_blank">Kerry Mitchell</a><br />
<br />
Part 1 of 2<br />
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France has recently seen its most significant social unrest in decades, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets since November 17. The “gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests” protests, named for the reflective vests that vehicles in France are required to carry, ostensibly erupted from the planned imposition of a new fuel tax. Designed to push people toward greater use of public transportation and the purchase of more fuel-efficient, lower-emission vehicles, this tax formed part of the administration’s efforts to mitigate climate change by helping France meet its emissions targets as per the Paris Agreement. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to withdraw the planned tax and has offered other concessions, but protesters have indicated that their concerns are much broader than the single tax. They have called for Macron to resign among other more fundamental, wide-ranging reforms. While the protests have decreased in size from their original peak at around 300,000 people country-wide, they have also involved successively greater degrees of violence. <a href="https://varlamov.ru/3204058.html" target="_blank">Burned buildings and cars, looted shops, smashed windows, and general vandalism</a> have accompanied the originally peaceful protests, as have battles between police and protesters. The ongoing protests, occurring predominantly on the weekends, have spread to <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/05/gilets-jaunes-which-other-countries-has-the-french-protest-movement-spread-to" target="_blank">six countries</a>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>In this context, during the protests of December 4 near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov took a photograph that has been shared widely on the internet. Beaming, arm raised, smartphone in hand, a woman at a Burger King window counter snaps a photo or video in face of the conflict raging outside. Marketwatch.com’s headline asks “<a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-selfie-really-this-photo-from-the-streets-of-paris-captures-the-spirit-of-an-era-2018-12-04" target="_blank">A selfie—really? This photo from the Paris riots ‘captures the spirit of an era</a>.”<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_gZl4M3YeQRs8rV7LNJYYrM9u95Jn61zUBiRHVaHmJ_RLD_-ETN0FU-tzPF4SQ2niz9KLUAUkKCtVMq_upNj0x0YsrVZueXi7r4HRozexyC9UsC5VFIQmhUep_gAiaF5jlljQGdT1oIA/s1600/Paris+Burger+King+Selfie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="733" data-original-width="1100" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_gZl4M3YeQRs8rV7LNJYYrM9u95Jn61zUBiRHVaHmJ_RLD_-ETN0FU-tzPF4SQ2niz9KLUAUkKCtVMq_upNj0x0YsrVZueXi7r4HRozexyC9UsC5VFIQmhUep_gAiaF5jlljQGdT1oIA/s400/Paris+Burger+King+Selfie.jpg" width="400" /> </a> </span></span></b></div>
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UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footer"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
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Many echoed the characterization of the image as iconic: “<a href="https://twitter.com/garethstephens/status/1069983536684429312" target="_blank">This perfectly sums up the world in 2018</a>”; “<a href="https://twitter.com/mentalist_nuno/status/1069997214662082562" target="_blank">An image of our time perfectly captured</a>”; “<a href="https://twitter.com/tripgore/status/1069988684252897280" target="_blank">The state of a generation captured with disturbing accuracy</a>”; “<a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewSteinwold/status/1069983145448128512" target="_blank">so perfectly encapsulates our current world</a>”; and many more similar statements. But of what, specifically, does this “spirit of an era” or “state of a generation” consist? <br />
<br />
One clue can be found in the characterization of the photo as a selfie, and precisely because this characterization is so implausible. One can understand how, if one is looking only at the position of the woman in relation to her phone, one could interpret her as taking a selfie. The huge smile, the focus on the phone, on the world of the phone, in the phone, in the network through which a whole world of images, text, communication comes to “life” in the series of flashes, streams, voices, music, noise, regards, taps, and clicks that make up the sensorium of the smartphone—the smile, not so much mysterious a la Mona Lisa’s, but incongruous, always incongruous, defined by being incongruous in the sense that the smile is not for those who physically, geographically surround the smiling person, but is rather for those in the phone through the phone. Distinct from self portrait, which traditionally involves a certain distancing from self in the act of the making of the portrait (self portraits most often do not depict the artist’s body in the act of painting or taking a photograph, and even when they do, they most often do not plausibly represent the specific position, scene, and setting of the body as it constructs or triggers that particular portrait), the selfie captures the self in the exact moment and position in which the image of the self is produced. To qualify as “selfie,” the image must include the arm reaching into the camera and out of the image as if, yes, holding the phone, which is exactly what the hand is doing, but also as if placing the hand in the unseen frame of the image which, for viewers, at least if they view the image on their phones, is exactly where their own hands are placed, their own arms reaching back to their own bodies and connecting to their faces which smile in face of the face on the screen. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OapWdclVqEY" target="_blank">Reach out and touch someone</a> was the slogan AT&T used to describe the telekinetic, telepathic capacities of the phone even before the advent of wireless video technology. <br />
<br />
But that is not what is going on here, at least not plausibly so. It would hardly make sense for her to have been caught completing ignoring the protests, as if she had simply wandered into Burger King in the middle of a riot so that she could peacefully take a selfie that would show nothing whatsoever of said riot. More likely, she is filming and/or photographing the riots, beaming at the fact that she has captured such historic, dramatic, romantic action. Insurrection in Paris! Me, there, here! What a coup! (the photograph, not the insurrection). The shot from that angle in the Burger King Paris Wagram could easily evoke such a wide smile, not as a pose for an image of the smile to be shared, but as a spontaneous expression, a smile of glee at the unique capturing of place, time, and event. Not only would she capture tear gas and rioters mere feet away, but through the clouds, she would also capture both the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Of course, we do not (yet) have her images or voice, but we do have, now, here, images from the same position that she occupied:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt_wcWCVWbDqV3C3qZLSyzUDYx0hl7R1R6GbPcucWW8t7Se_g3nGcN2pv4OzW-oACOr7doReGC4utXESvO-C1Tbsl6xpMx9MdjGI92Uvy0Q-nhUffhgen0ZAx8a5BSFB7kswIDiOWVPOE/s1600/Mitchell+Paris+II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1089" data-original-width="1600" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt_wcWCVWbDqV3C3qZLSyzUDYx0hl7R1R6GbPcucWW8t7Se_g3nGcN2pv4OzW-oACOr7doReGC4utXESvO-C1Tbsl6xpMx9MdjGI92Uvy0Q-nhUffhgen0ZAx8a5BSFB7kswIDiOWVPOE/s400/Mitchell+Paris+II.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
The image on the left, filled with such a scene as on
December 4, would much better explain such a smile than the image on the right,
filled with her face and not mine, but looking just as ridiculous given the
utterly mundane, generic character of the image. Only if she was facing the
interior of the Burger King, lining up the photo so that her face would appear
in the foreground with tear gas, protesters, and monuments in the background,
would the interpretation of selfie make sense. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Why th<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">en call it a selfie? What might lead one
to advance such an implausible interpretation? Consider the relationships
displayed in the image. Outside the window, black-clad, gas-masked, armored,
shielded police have deployed a chemical agent that causes significant physical
distress. Their target is represented here by a protester, also clad in black,
a mask covering the mouth and nose but not his eyes. The medals on his chest
display pride. His red beret does, too, for its style, but also as a symbol of
nation (French). Contra the line of uniformed police, the protester stands
alone (brave), carrying all that he needs on his back (self-sufficient). His
bravery will not protect his eyes (self-sacrifice). Inside the window, mere
feet but another world away, stands a Burger King. In the context of
insurrection in Paris, the logo and its associated branding evoke monarchy and
the bourgeoisie: a caricature of a king (overthrow of the monarchy) serves the
public in the most pedestrian operation of commerce (triumph of the bourgeoisie).
The woman sits (comfort), smiles (satisfaction), and watches with no sense of
danger or stake in the scene she is viewing (voyeur, spectator). The glass
protects her from the tear gas (insulation, security). Most centrally, the use
of the phone suggests that, in face of all this, she is producing an image for
personal benefit in terms of social status. The social conflict represented
outside the window is thereby transformed into a good to be consumed, and not
even with the excuse of pursuit of livelihood. Her production serves the ends
of personal entertainment within a social circle. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The explicit interpretation of the woman
as taking a selfie betrays, by virtue of its error, an implicit interpretation,
an intuition of the ethos of the selfie: self-enclosure and self-satisfaction.
The context of emphatic expression of discontent with respect to general social
conditions yields the dialectical character of the image. The woman sits
contentedly in her own (bourgeois) world, blind to the fact that that world is
crumbling around her (to her left, only feet away and scant hours later, the glass
doors of that Burger King did indeed crumble and shatter, </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=116&v=wK8b4plAlJQ" target="_blank">as did the safety and security</a></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"> that they had hitherto provided
(warning: graphic violence)). Moreover, such blindness to social discontent has
been cited as a motivation of the expression of that social discontent. Thus
the perfection of the image: it represents in microcosm the dynamic of the
macrocosm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
So what to do with the self-satisfaction that blinds one to
others? How to get past this self-blindness, the failure to see how
self-enclosure relates one and alienates one from others? How to understand the
social character, the social dynamic in which this blinding relation to self
participates? One response pursues objectivity: discover what empirical
conditions have given rise to the protest. Recognize these, spread that
recognition, and the blindness will be dispelled, or at least it will erode,
right? By way of such an approach, I highly recommend <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/a2e3r9/-/eaxh8h7/" target="_blank">this relatively concise explanation</a></span> of the causes of the protests. That
said, I do not have faith that it, or any other social communication, can
mitigate the fundamental condition of self-enclosure that characterizes
contemporary society. Suffice it to say that we do not appear to be living in
an era in which the dissemination of <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2017/01/not-just-facts.html" target="_blank">factual information</a> and grounded analysis
yields social consensus and harmony. This is not to say that there is nothing
to be done. Indeed, I would rate this self-blindness itself as a fundamental
social condition that calls for analysis. Seeing this aspect of society, which
is also an aspect of self and relation to self, is far from an objective
affair. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
To be continued...</div>
<br />
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</div>
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<br />Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-89808687880668724842018-10-02T15:01:00.002-07:002022-06-25T09:58:03.664-07:00Georgetown Alumnius<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumQi-w4jXYpktt82g05BRCmpyD15lRTt9oMcc6QxWbjFgoMl9Umw7yWnkUIYWjvYppMN0tOm2kW4-RNVeroDAHveID_XktxXWUtN-MgkAvhWLOFrBcL0C0eGi3ENujKhMg_wy_TDx6ko/s1600/Georgetown+Prep+Logo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="498" data-original-width="500" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumQi-w4jXYpktt82g05BRCmpyD15lRTt9oMcc6QxWbjFgoMl9Umw7yWnkUIYWjvYppMN0tOm2kW4-RNVeroDAHveID_XktxXWUtN-MgkAvhWLOFrBcL0C0eGi3ENujKhMg_wy_TDx6ko/s400/Georgetown+Prep+Logo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
By <a href="https://cah.georgiasouthern.edu/philosophy/current-faculty-staff-2/finbarr-curtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
One lesson we have learned from the current president is that an effective way to defend implausible statements is to make more of them. By the time your critics have earnestly debunked one false claim you've moved on to ten more. This becomes overwhelming. People get worn down as political debates lose focus and any sense of proportion. For that matter, when the investigators and fact checkers start to scrutinize every single thing you say it can look like a conspiracy of those out to get you.<br />
<br />
Most importantly, doubling down on implausible assertions makes clear that you are not playing a truth game. You are playing a power game. A power game is a test of will. Harnessing the sheer force of bluster and a refusal to concede any point, you are playing to win.<br />
<br />
Supreme Court nominee, archetypal 1980s high school movie villain, and semi-sentient beer keg Brett Kavanaugh followed this playbook before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Critics have begun to <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/09/28/the-lies-senators-must-tell-themselves-support-brett-kavanaugh/3Jy8vwnRx5PUwQtVHN3M5O/story.html" target="_blank">list</a> the <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we-know-kavanaugh-is-lying" target="_blank">false claims</a> Kavanaugh made in his testimony. These include his desexualized redefinitions of "boof" or "<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/devils-triangle-rules-brett-kavanaugh-drinking-game.html" target="_blank">devil's triangle</a>," his assertion that the society of vomiting enthusiasts known as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/brett-kavanaugh-ralph-club.html" target="_blank">Beach Week Ralph Club</a> was about his intolerance for spicy food, and so on.<br />
<br />
Rather than sort through all of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opi8X9hQ7q8" target="_blank">lies</a>, I want to focus on one. I was struck by Kavanaugh's explanation of the words "Renate Alumnius" in his yearbook. Several classmates identified this as a cryptic reference to a group of boys who claimed to have slept with a student named Renate. After learning about the yearbook, the woman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/business/brett-kavanaugh-yearbook-renate.html" target="_blank">stated</a>: "the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and
simply untrue."<br />
<br />
Kavanaugh could have apologized. He could have agreed that the insinuation was untrue, and was instead a crude secret joke among boys pretending to have sexual experiences they never had. But he didn't say this. Instead, he offered the following explanation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One of our good female friends who we would admire and went to dances
with had her name used on the yearbook page with the term ‘alumnus.’
That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and
that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the
term is related to sex. It was not related to sex. </blockquote>
Wait. What? Stop. This is absurd. To believe Kavanaugh is to go to cuckoo land. It's not just the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who did not believe this; no one did. There is no way on God's good earth that these Georgetown Prep students used their blurbs full of innuendo about sex and alcohol to express their mutual admiration for the intelligence and good manners of a friend. <br />
<br />
Kavanaugh's explanation for Renate Alumnius was not intended to persuade anyone. Rather, it is a useful public story. Such stories are often banal conventions that allow people to save face, as when powerful men who are pushed out of leadership positions explain that they need to spend more time with their families. No one believes these stories, but they avoid an indelicate subject in public.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The stakes are much higher, of course, when the subject is
Kavanaugh's willingness to lie about the kind of sexual being he was in
prep school and college. But if there is one thing that Kavanaugh learned during his time in at an elite Catholic prep school, it is the extraordinary lengths that powerful people and institutions will go to keep embarrassing behavior from becoming public. This ethos is epitomized in the slogan Kavanaugh fondly quoted: "What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep." In addition to polishing his Latin, his prep school years provided an extensive education in how the mandate to protect familial and
institutional respectability welcomes any story that can make embarrassing information go away.<br />
<br />
When Kavanaugh states that "Renate Alumnius" was "clumsily intended to show affection," he knows he's lying. You know he's lying. He knows you know he's lying. But he is betting on your inability to completely prove it, and that due process will protect him. <br />
<br />
For a time during and immediately after the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, it seemed like this protection might be teetering. You could tell that Senator Hatch, Senator Graham, and the commentators on Fox News knew that Ford was telling the truth. But after staggering for a moment, the GOP regrouped when they were steeled by Kavanaugh's dogged display of his willingness to fight for his family's "reputation."<br />
<br />
A culture in which reputation must be protected at all costs depends upon a sense of decency that rigorously polices the line between private behavior and public decorum. What made Ford's testimony so dangerous was not that she was lying, but that she was telling a truth you are not supposed to tell. She turned what should have been a high-minded discussion of legal principle into an exploration of the seedy underbelly of the sexual habits of privileged men. This made her indecent.<br />
<br />
What is also striking about the Renate Alumnius story is how it inverts what happened to Ford. While adult Brett denies his sinful behavior, teenage Brett pretended to do things he never did. In a televised interview, Kavanaugh cited his teenage virginity as evidence that Ford's allegations were false. But the allegations against Kavanaugh are not necessarily inconsistent with the behavior of a virgin. His classmates paint a portrait of a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality in which sober Brett appeared to be a somewhat shy, studious Catholic boy. In the company of drunken men, however, his repressed libidinal energy exploded into displays of hyper-aggressive masculinity. It was this display of aggression that left Ford traumatized for life.<br />
<br />
Kavanaugh's portrayal of himself exclusively as a good Catholic boy shows that, even as even as a 53-year-old-man, he has never come to terms with his animal self. What this means is that sex, unless domesticated for reproduction, is a dangerous, unruly, and sinful force that requires rigorous policing by families, churches, and the state. Indeed, the rules are so strict that no one is realistically expected to follow them. Boys will be boys. What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. In this way of thinking, a boy's assault on a girl or consensual sex between two adult men are both sinful behaviors that should be kept private. For that matter, LBGTQ advocates pose a greater existential threat because they ask for public recognition and affirmation of diverse forms of sexual identification. For a conservative Catholic like Kavanaugh, his critics are indecent both because they want to change the rules of public decorum and because they want to expose the private behavior of powerful men. <br />
<br />
This matters because what Kavanaugh thinks about sex is what the law is going to think about sex. Furthermore, Kavanaugh has based an entire legal philosophy on the principle that institutions should protect the interests of powerful men at the expense of vulnerable others. The effects of these rules will be felt far beyond the confines of Georgetown Prep.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-56709588338488570772018-08-30T11:33:00.000-07:002018-08-30T12:26:38.492-07:00The Best People<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw8-giOyC3CM3l0_LfUTuK1V7kHU_fMFIGmbzWrzQY4j_LS8Nv0hbeOX7RUF8ttz1rfvvHt15eCbROXsQzi1Zdm0UwE37SclwbYPqEt0vK_fOqFe-4nUET0JZqf_IgmHMUU4Ad7RLPLAU/s1600/Prisoners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1187" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw8-giOyC3CM3l0_LfUTuK1V7kHU_fMFIGmbzWrzQY4j_LS8Nv0hbeOX7RUF8ttz1rfvvHt15eCbROXsQzi1Zdm0UwE37SclwbYPqEt0vK_fOqFe-4nUET0JZqf_IgmHMUU4Ad7RLPLAU/s400/Prisoners.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, aka The Best People</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By <a href="http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/current-faculty-staff-2/finbarr-curtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<br />
The "best people" are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU" target="_blank">breaking lots of laws</a> these days. It's not every day that multiple people from a sitting president's campaign team are found to be felons. August 21st was special, however. Michael Cohen, the <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032247043992023040" target="_blank">Trump lawyer</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpDraws/status/971808439805423622" target="_blank">porn-star whisperer</a>, and wannabe Sopranos consigliere, fessed up to 8 felony counts of tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/08/02/paul-manaforts-ostrich-jacket-pretty-much-sums-up-paul-manafort" target="_blank">Ostrich fetishist</a> and Trump campaign chairman <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpDraws/status/925019426994380800" target="_blank">Paul Manafort</a> got the bad news that a jury convicted him on 8 counts of tax fraud, bank fraud, and failing to report a foreign bank account.<br />
<br />
Oops.<br />
<br />
All of this is ironic if you took seriously Donald Trump's boast that he hires the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2016/09/15/trump-ill-choose-the-best-people-for-my-administration.html" target="_blank">best people</a>. The lawlessness of Cohen and Manafort, following on the catch-me-if-you-can brazen illegality of past appointees like <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/politics/michael-flynn-white-house-national-security-adviser/index.html" target="_blank">Michael Flynn</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/us/politics/tom-price-trump-hhs.html" target="_blank">Tom Price</a>, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/05/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-resigns/index.html" target="_blank">Scott Pruitt</a>, would be yet more evidence of <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2017/12/moore-values.html" target="_blank">hypocrisy</a> from a man who ran on a law-and-order platform. <br />
<br />
But that depends on what you mean by law. The Trump team might be hypocrites if you believe that law should be a set of predictable, consistent, and transparent rules that apply to everyone in the same way. In American history, however, calls for law and order mean almost exactly the opposite of this. Rather than treat everyone equally, law-and-order advocates want to harness the force of law to maximize protections of their own security and property. Law that provides equal protection for all citizens requires the sort of methodical, bureaucratic administration that law-and-order proponents hate. This kind of law appears slow and weak to people who demand swift justice. It's the red tape that reigns in the would-be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xjr2hnOHiM" target="_blank">Dirty Harry</a>'s of the world. <br />
<br />
Trump clarified what he meant by law and order when Lester Holt, the moderator of the first presidential <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/09/26/495115346/fact-check-first-presidential-debate" target="_blank">debate</a> with Hillary Clinton, asked the candidates how they would heal racial divisions in America. Trump responded: "Well, first of all Secretary Clinton doesn't want to use a couple of
words and that’s law and order. And we need law and order. If we don't
have it, we’re not going to have a country." This answer was remarkable because the question did not ask how the candidates planned to address crime. Law and order was Trump's response to racial divisions.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In other words, law and order is about deciding who is <i>under </i>the law and who is <i>above</i> the law. This is why it has been a code for white supremacy. But it is also why law-and-order conservatives break the most laws. They do not want to follow the law as much as they seek to make use of the law's authority and power. This helps to account for the Trumpian <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/" target="_blank">admiration of Russian oligarchs</a> who can line their own pockets with government money while killing their critics with impunity. Reducing law to pure power fits within a politics of winners and losers, or friends and enemies. Members of the Nixon administration, famous for keeping an "enemies list," anticipated the current administration's appeal to law and order coupled with a sense of entitlement to break whatever laws they needed to consolidate their hold on power. Indeed, Nixon's aides broke laws even when they didn't have to. Part of the appeal of corruption is the feeling of importance that comes when you have the power to reap benefits that others cannot. It is the ideology of cutting in line. Line cutters do not appeal to fairness to defend their actions; they do it because they do not want to have to wait like everyone else.<br />
<br />
On the flip side of the person above the law is the undocumented immigrant, known simply as "an illegal." To be a person outside of the law is to become a dehumanized body stripped of any rights or protections. It is the kind of arbitrary exercise of force that strips children from parents, or houses people in camps. No amount of statistical evidence demonstrating that illegal immigration has been on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/fact-check-trump-border-crossings-declining-.html" target="_blank">decline</a> or that immigrants <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.96bfba4e3675" target="_blank">commit fewer crimes </a>than native-born Americans can assuage the anger stoked by individual stories of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/mollie-tibbetts-murder-family-racist-false-narrative-716255/" target="_blank">criminality</a>. "Illegals" play an important role in the law and order imagination not because of any objective threat, but because they represent the perfect reduction of law to a politics of identification.<br />
<br />
It can be an exciting, heady thing to be above the law, to be able to
dominate other human beings who cannot fight back. For this reason, calls
for law and order are really consistent with the pattern of
flagrant lawbreaking that we see across the Trump administration. People like Cohen and Manafort hoped to reap the rewards of Trump's promise of so much winning. Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-79827878729082068142017-12-12T14:43:00.002-08:002017-12-17T17:32:37.219-08:00Moore Values<div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zRAZ8G1DzxThLkvURKGiSfjvIe8RjeUDGn6aetst-gsq11t8a7b1SaG4GbuWZnbd4pwmPE5i64mlsIxF2UQEYEazjlzLn4kRUCk5SLWZdjj_kCzpYN8E_KlAF4N-t6IrTN7PEXcanvg/s1600/Moore+Horsey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="229" data-original-width="239" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zRAZ8G1DzxThLkvURKGiSfjvIe8RjeUDGn6aetst-gsq11t8a7b1SaG4GbuWZnbd4pwmPE5i64mlsIxF2UQEYEazjlzLn4kRUCk5SLWZdjj_kCzpYN8E_KlAF4N-t6IrTN7PEXcanvg/s400/Moore+Horsey.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;">By </span><a href="http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/current-faculty-staff-2/finbarr-curtis/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888;">Finbarr Curtis</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">In a recent twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/936323360694222848" target="_blank">exchange</a>, the former judge, current senate candidate, and perpetual sexual predator Roy Moore accused Jimmy Kimmel of mocking "Christian values." In response to Moore's challenge to come to Alabama and settle things "man to man," Kimmel said: "Sounds great Roy - let me know when you get some Christian values and I'll be there."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the language of the internet, Kimmel's response is generally referred to as an "<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jimmy-kimmel-owns-roy-moore-in-twitter-fight-im-leaving-my-daughters-at-home" target="_blank">own</a>." The ownage was only further compounded when Kimmel noted that he would make the trip but leave his daughters at home. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">In the politics of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/08/welcome-age-anger-brexit-trump" target="_blank">resentment</a> that drives Moore and his supporters, however, this brief exchange was only further evidence of "Hollywood elites' bigotry toward southerners." By inviting Kimmel's condescension in order to stoke a feud between Hollywood and the South, Moore performed the rhetorical alchemy that transforms the content of all political criticism into nothing other than an assault on white Christian identity. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The reason that Moore's brand of <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/on-white-identity-politics-and-american-terrorism/" target="_blank">white identity politics</a> needs the Kimmels of the world is that there is nothing about Moore that is indigenous to Alabama. As a former Alabama voter myself, I can attest that Alabamans do not routinely attend formal political events dressed in cowboy costumes while waving a gun. Rather, Moore is a coastal liberal's caricature of Alabama. He has spent a lifetime imagining all of the things that liberals hate, and then crafted himself in this image. This negative identification gives Moore's political performances their hyperbolic, over-the-top quality. The more he offends liberal civility, the more he triggers the sort of condescension that validates his image of a spokesman for victimized white southern Christians railing against a shadowy establishment comprised of economic, political, media, and educational elites.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">During the 2016 presidential campaign, a remarkable number of commentators took these self-identifications of white victimhood at face value. This resulted in an array of stories that portrayed Trump supporters as fueled by "economic anxiety." But a lawyer and judge like Moore is hardly poor or powerless. Like many vociferous Trump supporters, Moore is best described as a local elite. Local elites are the district attorneys, small business owners, and insurance salesmen who make a comfortable living in places like Gadsden, Alabama.</span></span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Elites like Moore hold a great deal of civic sway in the communities in which they live, and are committed to protecting what they imagine to be a threatened "way of life." This life is the idealized small-town world of family and neighbors who attend the same churches, patronize the same small businesses, and cheer for kids in the same little league and high school football teams. All of this makes Moore feel safe. It is what allows him to leave his doors unlocked, or to know that he can get out of speeding ticket because he is old friends with the sheriff's dad. Maintaining these relatively homogeneous social spaces depends upon tightly shared norms and a commitment to racial and sexual hierarchies in which everyone "knows their place," and this in turn requires submission to the forms of authority that produce and govern these norms. For this reason, Moore is strongly committed to symbolic displays of submission to visible representations of authority like the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-thinks-protest-is-a-worse-offense-than-treason/" target="_blank">flag</a>, the police, the military, or the ten commandments inscribed on a big <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/alabamas-ten-commandments-judge-is-running-for-senate.html" target="_blank">rock</a>. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The fixation on authority confuses liberal commentators who read the ten commandments for their ethical or theological content. According to Moore's critics, rules are reasonable propositions people agree to follow. This leads to charges of <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2017/01/and-he-doeth-great-wonders-so-that-he.html" target="_blank">hypocrisy</a> leveled against those who cherish monuments of the ten commandments but cannot themselves list <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/tlf8t3/the-colbert-report-better-know-a-district---georgia-s-8th---lynn-westmoreland" target="_blank">them</a>, or to the repeated spectacle where people like Moore engage in private sexual behavior at odds with their professed public morality. The gap between private behavior and public image is what leads Kimmel to mock Moore for his hollow Christian values.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The reason that Kimmel's jokes fail to sway Moore's most ardent supporters, however, is that for them the point is not to follow the rules but to have them. What Moore finds so frightening about contemporary liberalism is that liberals want to redraw rules to accommodate diverse forms of private behavior in ways that appear to eliminate shame and sin. By doing this, liberals challenge the authority of the social norms that make local elites like Moore feel safe and powerful, and then threaten to replace these values with regulations produced by a government accountable to religiously, ethnically, and sexually diverse publics in an increasingly urban nation. When Moore talks about "the establishment," he means urban liberals who claim to welcome this diversity, or at least a gentrified version of it. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">None of this is to say that Moore's politics are the organic expression of an Alabaman way of life. Rather, Moore's values are shaped by an exaggerated fear of outsiders, a paranoid conviction that diabolical liberal enemies will manipulate diverse sexual, racial, ethnic, and religious groups to undermine white Christian social power and privilege. In his defense of local elites against national elites, Moore is the embodiment of the current <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/" target="_blank">Trumpian</a> movement to reduce the GOP to nothing other than anti-liberalism. He follows an electoral strategy crafted by people like <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2017/01/we-apologize-for-nothing-here.html" target="_blank">Steven Bannon</a> who mobilize intense support from small town and suburban white Christians and no one else. While Trump's campaign managed to squeak out a narrow electoral college victory with 46 percent of the vote, this approach has a bleak demographic future. Taking a page out of the Jim Crow playbook, the current GOP has accepted that it is the party of minority rule and needs to undercut democratic institutions in order to survive. Strategies like gerrymandering, voter suppression, immigration restrictions, and even cooperation with fellow ethno-nationalist movements abroad are felt to be existential necessities among a minority who seeks to keep power by any means necessary. Once you decide that these are your values, it is easy to feel persecuted.</span></span>Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-53427601010841918302017-05-09T10:54:00.000-07:002017-05-09T12:34:57.568-07:00Hard Things<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By <a href="http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/current-faculty-staff-2/finbarr-curtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
Paul J. Griffiths is a very busy man. How busy is he? He is so busy thinking about the triune Lord that he is "thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread." Apparently, when you get thrumming-level busy you have no time for petty distractions like racism.<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
So when Griffiths, the Warren Chair of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School, was <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/09/duke-divinity-school-professor-objects-diversity-training-request-and-sets-debate#.WRHFQKERHlI.twitter">invited</a> to attend a Racial Equity Institute that hoped to provide "foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism," he sent an <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/duke-divinity-crisis-griffiths-documents/">email</a> exhorting his colleagues to avoid what he confidently predicted would be "intellectually flaccid" event full of "bromides, clichés and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty."<br />
<br />
Griffiths cannot be distracted by flaccid stuff like institutional racism because he is preoccupied with hard things like Christian theology. As he explains:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Our mission is to think, read, write and teach about the triune Lord of Christian confession. This is a hard thing. Each of us should be tense with the effort of it, thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread with the work of it, consumed by the fire of it, ever eager for more of it. We have neither time nor resources to waste.</blockquote>
Ok. <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>It is possible that some scholars might object to the word "training" as this implies that there is some set task to learn rather than a set of contested issues to examine and discuss. Though it is also possible that the language of training communicates that institutional racism is not only a matter of academic debate but also involves practical employment issues that need to be addressed to ensure an equitable workplace.<br />
<br />
When people who think like Griffiths serve on hiring or tenure committees, they can preemptively judge scholars who study racism and sexism to be intellectually flaccid and unworthy of inclusion in the academy. These decisions have real consequences. Griffiths's email, by coding work for racial equity as soft and trivial in comparison to the hard and serious labor of reading texts from the western canon in order to reflect on the triune Lord, conveys the kind of message that allows institutional racism to flourish. This would be easy to recognize by anyone who has, say, participated in even the most remedial diversity training. If you were looking for a textbook definition of prejudice, you might find it in an ability to "predict with confidence" that an institute would be a waste of time based on a brief description of an aim to dismantle racism. This is not to say that Griffiths is opposed to racial equity, but he does seem to think it is a goal that requires little time, effort, and critical reflection.<br />
<br />
Griffiths's email also presumes the obviousness of the intellectual merits of his own scholarship. Not everyone values research that tells you what someone thinks about God in reference to a tradition, but Griffiths does have an audience for his work. His prominence as a scholar of religion, however, has a lot to do with who he is. That is, Griffiths is a former scholar of Asian religions who shifted to write defenses of Christian truth from the perspective of a conservative Catholic theologian. There are not a lot of scholars who take that track. When liberal practitioners engage a conservative Catholic like Griffiths in conversations about religion, they get to affirm virtues of tolerance, inclusivity, and diversity. In contrast, Griffiths brands the Racial Equity Institute as "illiberal" and "totalitarian." In what has become a familiar double-move in attacks on political correctness, critics of diversity and inclusivity invoke those same virtues in defense of their right to speak.<br />
<br />
In other words, Griffiths has built a second career out of his being a skilled practitioner of identity politics. One of the privileges of whiteness is that your form of identity politics also happens to make up the same criteria for intellectual seriousness. Assumptions about what counts as serious scholarship, however, can be so deeply embedded that learning to see them can be a hard thing.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-73186442926542594652017-02-06T18:33:00.002-08:002017-02-06T18:33:12.092-08:00Habermas Is Dead (He's Not, But Still)<div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jürgen the Bear</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;"> By </span><a href="http://nyupress.org/author/7486/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">Kerry Mitchell </a></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ever since Jürgen Habermas, the public sphere has been pretty boring. I’m not talking about the drama that plays out in the public sphere. That drama can be as exciting as anything that happens. But the public-ness of the drama, the way in which the drama is given shape as public as opposed to private, that is a boring process. To be clear, I’m not talking about the process being boring. One can be excited to look at how that process works or not. Rather, I’m talking about the process doing the boring—not being boring, but boring. I’m talking about the process of making public as a process of boring.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Often such a line of thought highlights the civility of public discourse, the rationalization and sanitization of its subject matter, the seriousness and normalcy that it lends. Of course one could counter that making public often sensationalizes, shocks, or calculatingly manipulates to generate interest. To one who would argue in such a way I say, Jesus, God! Are you completely fucking stupid?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Notice how the counter to the counter does not bore. It excites with outrage, transgression, aggression, not so much appealing to the passions as slapping them—completely inappropriate for the public sphere. To employ such vulgarity does not bring the question into the public in an operable way. One can only leave those who utter such vulgarity to work out whatever issues they have with whoever volunteers to engage them further. But whatever and whoever are not the public. The public is everything and everybody. Vulgar exchanges are for private disputes, and their place in public is transgressive: the ones who shout death threats at each other beneath one’s window on an early morning city street. No, the proper counter to the counter, the counter to the counter made public, made appropriate for the public, belonging to the public, is the one that says yes, of course, the process of making public also excites, but within limits, is a balance of sanitization and excitement, but weighted more toward one side than the other.</span></div>
<div>
<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now that’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0GfTXuagY0" target="_blank">boring</a>. Or more precisely, that bores. In the tradition of public discourse any tension that arises is enveloped and mitigated in a self-replicating and self-mollifying series of argumentative involutions. All of which brings me to the <a href="https://twitter.com/BadlandsNPS" target="_blank">Badlands National Park Twitter Feed</a>. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">First, a journalistic caveat: I did not, do not, and do not plan to follow this feed. I read these tweets in news reports like virtually everyone else did, and like virtually everyone else did, I read more about the tweets than I read the actual tweets themselves. Honestly, I don’t even remember exactly what those tweets said—something about climate change. I failed to read these tweets because the feed is, in the tradition of public discourse, boring, and I don’t need to follow it to know that it’s boring. To those who would say that such failure to read indicates a lack of journalistic or scholarly rigor I say, Donald Trump is President. Everything is different now, and not boring, and reading is beside the point. All of which brings me to the way that the Badlands National Park Twitter Feed stopped being boring. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To be clear, the feed did not stop being what it had been. Its content, at least in terms of its thematic focus on environmental science, did not change. But in remaining what it had been (environmental science) it stopped being what it was (boring). In transforming itself in such a paradoxical way, the feed participates in the structural transformation of the public sphere that Donald Trump’s inauguration inaugurated (inaugurate here means not beginning, but celebrating the ascension to power). The public sphere, as infused with communications in Trumpian style, does not bore. Such communications are neither civil, sanitized, rationalized, serious, nor normal. Rather their function in the public sphere is aesthetic, gestural, evocative, provocative. Pundits have struggled to engage such communications from within the tradition of public discourse (e.g., <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2017/01/not-just-facts.html" target="_blank">fact checking</a>). But such traditional approaches deal only with the tip of the iceberg: the ideological content of the utterance. Meanwhile, the style and subtext have remained largely unchallenged at the level of style and subtext—until the Badlands National Park Twitter Feed remained what it had been and thereby stopped being what it was. By continuing to tweet in defiance of Trump’s executive order, and by tweeting on a subject out of line with Trump’s political agenda, the feed added style and subtext to information and text. In this way the feed cast a shadow underneath its series of bland recitations of the signals of impending apocalypse that everyone has heard and that no one reads and that should be terrifying and exciting in a horrible way but that somehow through rational and insistent repetition became boring and ignored but that now through rebellious and recalcitrant repetition becomes exciting and heroic in a wonderful way by virtue of the vulgar, irrational, gestural subtext of each rational, informative tweet: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZ5e94QnWk" target="_blank">Fuck you, Donald Trump</a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A strange shadow for a 140-character recitation of scientific fact. A paradoxical message. But the public has always cast shadow. Now, strangely, the bare vulgarity of public discourse has brought that shadow into the light. </span></div>
Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-65224901477701520762017-01-31T15:41:00.000-08:002017-02-01T13:22:19.774-08:00We Apologize for Nothing Here<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45-3SeU7Py-vAWz-XZspqizxbC8QUOgvsITzi-3odruP6v_2b8hNQe0jf6n7HCpkPo8ec0Nx3_loo_5XIVuYheYUJcVfJ6O_mnRqOGPpBXEsbujognUSOPRAsX5RSFByjDr0UJlYpbdI/s1600/CrusaderBannon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45-3SeU7Py-vAWz-XZspqizxbC8QUOgvsITzi-3odruP6v_2b8hNQe0jf6n7HCpkPo8ec0Nx3_loo_5XIVuYheYUJcVfJ6O_mnRqOGPpBXEsbujognUSOPRAsX5RSFByjDr0UJlYpbdI/s400/CrusaderBannon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
By <a href="http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/litphi/current-faculty-staff-2/finbarr-curtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<br />
In <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/priebus-we-apologize-for-nothing-about-travel-ban">response</a> to critics of President Trump’s <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/text-of-trump-executive-order-nation-ban-refugees/index.html">executive order</a> on immigration, White House Chief of Staff and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoxCkySv34">Count Dracula</a> impersonator Reince Priebus stated: “We apologize for nothing here.” While he was referring to chaos at airports, his statement follows a broader pattern of refusing even a potential apology. This is unusual. Human beings make mistakes. Apologies are ritualized practices that repair social damage and reestablish relationships among people. To never apologize is to be something other than fully human.<br />
<br />
Priebus is aware that Trumplandia is out of the ordinary. His usage of “here” is one of a number of rhetorical moves where spokespeople have imagined Trump's White House as a new space set apart from ordinary politics, a zone where things work differently. Priebus knows that people usually feel accountable to each other, and what makes this administration exceptional is its aspiration to act without reciprocal obligations to the popular will or other branches of government.<br />
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The administration's efforts to rule by extraordinary means recalls Walter Benjamin's “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in which he <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html">wrote</a>: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” Following Benjamin's outline, the immigration order begins by citing the events of September 11, 2001 as grounds for suspending existing immigration policies. That 2001 was almost 16 years ago indicates that this emergency will last as long as Steven Bannon’s imagined war to defend “Judeo-Christian civilization” persists.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Bannon frequently <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world">invokes</a> the language of “crisis” to describe the “beginning stages of a bloody and brutal conflict” between the “church militant” and the forces of the “new barbarity.” The immigration order is an opening salvo in this Holy War. The logic of crisis informs the bases for exceptions to the policy. The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security have the discretion to admit refugees on a “case-by-case basis” and are instructed to give preference to members of “a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution.”<br />
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It is not clear what “religious minority” means. We all know this is designed to privilege Christian immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Rudolph Giuliani <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316726-giuliani-trump-asked-me-how-to-do-a-muslim-ban-legally">clarified</a> that the text did not make this preference explicit because it would violate the first amendment’s establishment clause. But identifying a religious minority opens up a can of definitional worms. Paralleling Bannon’s assumption that he can identify broad entities called “civilizations” is his belief that religions are bounded things like Christianity and Islam, and that head counts can make majority/minority status clear. But would Shia Muslims from Saudi Arabia be allowed to apply for refugee status or are they part of a majority religion called Islam? Would Catholics in Northern Ireland constitute a religious minority or are they classified as Christians? Could Muslims from Myanmar apply for refugee status? Or what about Muslims in France?<br />
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Such questions only make sense, however, if you are concerned with law as a transparent and predictable institution. The executive order deliberately flouts not only the Constitution, but the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It also <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/donald-trump-travel-ban/">appears</a> that Bannon overruled the Department of Homeland Security’s recommendation to exclude existing green card and visa holders.<br />
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The executive order, therefore, deliberately sought to provoke legal and popular resistance. It came as no surprise when multiple federal courts granted stays that suspended the order. It was a surprise that the administration directed the Department of Homeland Security to ignore the court orders and continue to enforce the new policy. This is an unprecedented challenge to the basic principle of the separation of powers. For the executive branch to be in contempt of court marks the biggest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. By any measure, this poses a far greater threat to American democratic institutions than the danger posed by a terrorist act.<br />
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The fuzziness of the identity of religious minorities is no accident. The purpose of the order was not to clarify the law, but to create a zone of uncertainty and insecurity in which existing legal rights are unknown. The "case-by-case basis” that allows for arbitrary exceptions without regard to institutionalized policy guidance creates a crisis of identification. If the legal status of green card holders can be challenged on the basis of religion or national origin, then who is exactly is protected? The act is designed to make Americans who do not identify as native-born white Christians to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/30/opinions/how-to-be-a-refugee-twice-khakpour-opinion/">wonder</a>: “Am I next?”<br />
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Bannon is hoping that such orders will provoke a face-punching response, and that this will lead to a national security crisis. The executive order has less to do with safety, then, than with producing a state of <a href="https://thewayofimprovement.com/2017/01/29/historian-heather-cox-richardson-on-trumps-muslim-ban-its-a-shock-event/" target="_blank">emergency</a> that suspends existing law so that a strong leader can violate existing social and legal norms in order to act decisively to protect the nation from threatening Others. From such a leader we can expect no apologies.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-52949850717994881262017-01-23T11:51:00.003-08:002017-01-23T15:42:46.259-08:00Not Just the Facts<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtg_9sT31xmhx8LnJTNDDA2mRCuJUoJZqzZ932x8_zC5LqcNwgxZERUFrCJqqTDAaU5HU0-AuDx9Snyzpogef596EgJ3LaRbF_cmeSHrutdRJVJX2iBN9eSSmf9Um21wXlqmcyNwLWu4w/s400/Scales+of+Bannon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steven Bannon, Keeping it Fair and Balanced</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtg_9sT31xmhx8LnJTNDDA2mRCuJUoJZqzZ932x8_zC5LqcNwgxZERUFrCJqqTDAaU5HU0-AuDx9Snyzpogef596EgJ3LaRbF_cmeSHrutdRJVJX2iBN9eSSmf9Um21wXlqmcyNwLWu4w/s1600/Scales+of+Bannon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">By </span><a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">While Steven Bannon has problems with Muslims, he does seem to be cool with worshiping Satan, the Lord of Darkness. In an </span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">interview</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> soon after the GOP's electoral triumph, Trump's chief strategist</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> described his political worldview: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Darkness is good," says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While Satanists might take offense at </span>their being lumped in with Trump supporters, Bannon's interest in power for its own sake and his willingness to toss aside concerns about good and evil might tell us something about his approach to publishing. His Breitbart.com's penchant for fabricating news stories has made it one of the most visible examples of the internet medium in a era labeled "<a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth" target="_blank">post-truth</a>." From Bannon's perspective, his site provides a conservative alternative to liberal media. Rather than pretend to be nonpartisan, Bannon accepts that all news is biased and that the difference between his site and mainstream media like <i>The New York Times</i> or <i>The Washington Post</i> is that <i>Breitbart</i> happens to be conservative and the <i>Times </i>and <i>Post</i> happen to be liberal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When Trump supporters decide that mainstream news organizations are full of liberal lies, they are capable of believing a lot of things. <span style="font-family: inherit;">In response, websites like <a href="http://www.politifact.com/" target="_blank">politifact</a> evaluate whether various claims correspond to the real world, an exercise known as "fact checking."</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I believe that fact checking is valuable, but I think that fact checkers are doing something different from what they think they are doing. For one thing, there are no bigger fans of facts than Trump supporters. This might sound like an odd claim after Kellyanne Conway's touting of "<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/wh-spokesman-gave-alternative-facts-inauguration-crowd-n710466" target="_blank">alternative facts</a>." </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What I mean by saying that Trump supporters are fact obsessed is that they subscribe to a common sense literalist view of language that presumes that facts are self-evident certainties. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the biggest contributors to the post-truth dispensation is not a devaluation of facts, but an all-too-fervent faith in facts understood as self-contained, self-evident pieces of information that exist outside of social contexts or human interpretations. T</span></span></span>his leads to the uncritical consumption of information as well as the refusal to do the work that goes into thinking and the dismissal of the perspectives of people who do such work. When I accept the reality of global warming or evolution, this is not because I am convinced by the facts. Rather, I trust the work that scientists do. I share their conviction that rigorous processes of verification and falsification are useful in evaluating knowledge about the world.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Some critics have <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929" target="_blank">noted</a> a superficial similarity between post-truth and what academics sometimes call postmodernism.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> This reading holds that if facts are themselves forms of interpretation, then an</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ything goes. In one recent essay:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838;">Under the terms of this outlook, all claims on truth are relative to the particular person making them; there is no position outside our own particulars from which to establish universal truth. This was one of the key tenets of </span><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy" style="background-color: white; color: #557585; outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">postmodernism</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #383838;">, a concept which first caught on in the 1980s after publication of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s <i>The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge</i> in 1979. In this respect, for as long as we have been postmodern, we have been setting the scene for a “post-truth” era.</span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These indictments of postmodernism often have a blame-the-messenger quality. They admit that French <span style="font-family: inherit;">theorists</span> like Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">were correct</span> about</span> how social discourse works in the mass mediated world in which we live. B<span style="font-family: inherit;">ecause <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">critics</span> do not like <span style="font-family: inherit;">what this means<span style="font-family: inherit;">, however, <span style="font-family: inherit;">they blame</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">postmodernism</span> and insist<span style="font-family: inherit;"> that we should produce alternative facts about<span style="font-family: inherit;"> a <span style="font-family: inherit;">society in which rational actors make de<span style="font-family: inherit;">cisions based on <span style="font-family: inherit;">factual evidence.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Laments about postmodernism are often accompanied by criticisms of theories that hold that knowledge is "socially constructed." The way this works is that unless you can assert that a<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> fact like <span style="font-family: inherit;">"Saturn is a<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> planet"<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span></span></span></span>exists apart from interpretation, then everything is made up. While there is no doubt something in the sky that exists independently of human interpretation, <span style="font-family: inherit;">what we <span style="font-family: inherit;">know about it does not.</span></span></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Saturn did not name itself<span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span>Saturn <span style="font-family: inherit;">is</span> a Roman God. A planet is a form of classification invented by people to understand the universe. The statement "Saturn is a planet" is intelligible because it follows the conventions of English grammar. The production and communication of facts are dependent on a whole host of socially constructed ways of knowing things.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is possible that what goes under the name of post-truth is a familiar feature of human history. Thomas J. Whitley <a href="http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/mrblog-weve-always-lived-post-truth-world-donald-trump-just-made-easier-recognize/" target="_blank">noted</a> that concerns about post-truth have a nostalgic tinge that presumes that we used to live in a world of stable truth claims. As he explains, this ignores the role that social power has always played in producing knowledge:</span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin: 0px;">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fact checking can only be effective when the nature of facts are agreed upon. Too many, especially on the left, believe that they will eventually win the arguments they care about because the "facts" are on their side. No matter what we would like to believe, the struggles that matter, the struggles that have the power to destroy lives and bring down nations, have never hinged on how influential objective facts are. The fight for real power is over what gets to count as a fact in the first place. Truth only matters insofar as you have the power to determine what is truth.</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
People are persuaded by narratives through which they interpret information. <span style="font-family: inherit;">The belief that facts tell their own story might be one reason why the efforts of earnest fact checkers at politifact do not persuade people convinced that all news is fake news. What we are seeing is not a crisis of facts, but a decline of institutional authority among media organizations. With the proliferation of information in the internet age, newspapers like the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Times</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and the</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Post</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">have lost some of the editorial power they used to wield to shape public discourse. Complaints about post-truth overlook this institutional reality in favor of the belief that the free flow of information will correct alternative facts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
I do think there are substantive differences between the information produced by the <i>Times</i> and the <i>Post</i> and that produced by <i>Breitbart</i> and <i>Fox News</i>, and that these differences are not simply reducible to liberal and conservative biases. But these differences have less to do with factual information than with editorial policies that value processes of verification and criticism. <i>Fox</i> does not just have a bias; it has nothing other than its bias. While commentators on <span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Fox</i> attack a lot of things, they rarely engage in the sustained criticism necessary to understand a social problem. Trump supporters do not lack access to facts; they lack the sense of proportion needed to evaluate information in relation to other information. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The trouble with Bannon is not that he</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> fails to be objective, but that he is not subjective enough in that he is unwilling to do the self-critical work required to be a thinking human subject. The work of civic education is not producing knowledge, but of developing habits of critical subjectivity necessary for evaluating diverse narratives in a complex world.</span>Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-73452529725186422082017-01-06T14:57:00.002-08:002017-01-17T10:35:51.874-08:00And He Doeth Great Wonders, So That He Maketh Dumpster Fire Come Down From Heaven On Earth In The Sight Of Men<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666;">By </span><a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" style="background-color: white; color: #888888; text-decoration: none;">Finbarr Curtis</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you type "81 percent" into google, you will find a <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/" target="_blank">number</a> of <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/november/trump-elected-president-thanks-to-4-in-5-white-evangelicals.html" target="_blank">stories</a> about white evangelicals who voted for Donald J. Trump. Like all poll <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-ramey/meaningless-surveys-the-f_b_4225306.html" target="_blank">numbers</a> that measure religious affiliation, 81 percent is a deceptively simple summary of a diverse set of motives and identities. One could argue that few people identify themselves as "white evangelicals" and that this category is an interpretive fiction invented by pollsters. But while 81 percent might not necessarily measure what analysts think it measures, interpretive fictions still measure something. It seems that a lot of people who meet pollsters' criteria for white evangelicals agreed with Franklin Graham when he <a href="http://religionnews.com/2016/12/30/inauguration-speaker-franklin-graham-god-allowed-donald-trump-to-win/" target="_blank">explained</a>: "Even thought Donald Trump has some rough edges, there's something inside of him that desires the counsel of Christian men and women, and I don't know one Christian on Hillary Clinton's team."</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Evangelical Trumpophilia has perplexed observers who have wondered how an impious sexual predator from decadent <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2016/01/anti-new-yorkism.html" target="_blank">New York City</a> captured the hearts and minds of the Bible Belt. </span></span>Many concluded that Christians hypocritically abandoned their religious principles. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">L</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">aments about evangelical hypocrisy <span style="font-family: inherit;">assume</span> that evangelicalism is a belief system. It seems so obvious that evangelicalism is defined by theology that it hardly needs to be argued. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The idea that religions are internally coherent sets of beliefs is part of common s</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">ense about world religions. Self-identified Christians, therefore, are accountable to a religious tradition whose central figure endorsed poverty and humility. Once you decide that the Sermon on the Mount is the essence of Christianity, then you can demonstrate that evangelicals betray their own beliefs when they vote for Trump.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">While the charge of hypocrisy might be useful for theological finger wagging, it is analytically empty. It tells you what you think white evangelicals should do rather than explaining what they do. It might be that confusion over Trump support is a sign that an analytic framework that relies on Christian theological convictions is not effective in explaining how social actors behave.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Of course, concerns about hypocrisy might explain why some people do what they do. There is no doubt that at least some self-identified evangelicals refused to support Trump for what they thought were religious reasons. Republican Senator <a href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2016/07/ben-sasse-donald-trump-and-beginning.html" target="_blank">Ben Sasse</a>, for example, negatively compared Donald Trump to a <a href="https://twitter.com/bensasse/status/728058649902387200" target="_blank">dumpster fire</a>. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Jim Wallis, a Christian political activist and Trump critic, argued for uncoupling "white" from "evangelical." Attempting to use statistics to his rhetorical advantage, Wallis <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/23/evangelicals-trump-white-conservatives-identity-theft-jim-wallis/92355326/" target="_blank">argued</a> that including Latino and African-American evangelicals would reduce overall evangelical support for Trump. As he pleaded: "The truth is that most U.S. evangelicals do not support Trump. These Christians are victims of a sort of identity theft, as the national conversation conflates them with a narrow demographic of mostly older, politically conservative whites." </span><span style="font-size: small;">By identifying evangelicalism by theology and excluding other forms of social identification, Wallis hoped to separate race from religion. If white evangelicals voted because of their whiteness instead of their Christianity, then Christianity is off the hook.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The same analysts who separate race and religion are less surprised when Christian voters focus on sexual regulation. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Because sex and religion are both classified as private and intimate matters, it seems obvious that motives for sexual regulation are religious. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This modern institutional equation of sex and religion is not self-evident, however. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Classifying
sex as religious is no less arbitrary than the classifying race as
nonreligious. </span>The b</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">iblical
texts favored by evangelicals say a lot more about power, authority, and social identity than
they do about sex. I am not saying that
identity is the essence of Christianity nor I am saying that race is
essentially religious. I am saying that the failure of theological essences to explain voting patterns might say more about the weakness of this
analysis than the hypocrisy of American voters. It could bring more
analytic clarity if we recognize that we call religion is tied to a
hodgepodge of different forms of identification.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Trump voters often describe themselves as loyal to f</span><span style="font-size: small;">aith, family, and country in ways that draw on visceral associations of whiteness. Faith, family, and country are the basis for a stable social order in which people know their place and respect Christian social norms. These Christian norms appear to be under attack from forces of political correctness advanced by liberal elites in alliance with religious, racial, sexual minorities in an increasingly urban and diverse nation. Confronting this existential threat to faith, family, and country requires more than piety; it demands a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/11/opinion/campaign-stops/the-evangelicals-and-the-great-trump-hope.html?_r=0" target="_blank">figure</a> with the courage and strength to violate multicultural norms about inclusion and tolerance.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">The more that Clinton portrayed Trump as someone who attacked Muslims, racial minorities, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGPbl-werw" target="_blank">women</a>, and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QUYQUd0Qh8" target="_blank">disabled</a>, the more she played into Trump's narrative that he was someone strong enough to withstand public censure for violating norms of political correctness. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As Christian psychologist and spanking enthusiast James Dobson </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/october/james-dobson-why-i-am-voting-for-donald-trump.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">explained</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, someone as strong as Trump was necessary to fight back against liberal assaults on Christian institutions:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">I’m convinced that with the wrong president, we will soon see a massive assault on religious liberty. Certain powerful groups and organizations seek to weaken the church of Jesus Christ and limit what pastors and ministers can say and do publicly. They believe some of our teachings represent “hate speech” and must be stifled. They seek to severely restrict the freedoms of Christian schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses, hospitals, charities, and seminaries. With Christian colleges and universities, they want to limit whom their leaders choose as professors and what their students will be taught. Government funding and accreditation will be in the crosshairs, and you can be sure that home schools will be targeted.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: small;">Trump appealed to white evangelicals like Dobson who were convinced that the<span style="font-family: inherit;">ir response to threats to religious liberty has</span> been too weak. <span style="font-family: inherit;">L</span>aments about Christian hypocrisy fail to analyze these sorts of visceral appeals to strength and <span style="font-family: inherit;">power</span>. The metaphor of a <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/12/in-defense-of-dumpster-fires/" target="_blank">dumpster fire</a> might be more apt than we think. While dumpster fires do not smell good, they do appeal to <span style="font-family: inherit;">people </span>who think that the time has come to burn everything down.</span></span>Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-26087070119821970302016-11-15T10:25:00.001-08:002016-11-17T10:55:20.476-08:00Literati for Trump<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a></span><br />
<br />
This week's election of Donald J. Trump did not surprise me as much as it did those who predicted an easy win for Hillary Clinton. The county in which I live voted 59.9 percent for Trump and so I had some idea of the intensity of his support. I watched the final debate next to a man who said he liked Trump because he "talked like a regular guy" and a few seats down from a woman who exclaimed that anyone who didn't vote for Trump was an "idiot" and yelled "You killed those people in Benghazi" as Clinton appeared on the screen.<br />
<br />
The Saturday before the election, I was talking to someone who didn't meet the profile of the archetypal Trump supporter from the rallies. He was a financially successful college graduate who was well-traveled and happy to engage in conversation with African Americans, Latinos, and liberal college professors. He agreed that Trump was a horrible person and had no interest in fabricated scandals about Benghazi or emails. Mainly, he liked Trump's tax cuts and promises to deregulate banks. I asked him if he was such a free trader, did he worry about Trump's call for a 40 percent tariff on China and trade wars against Mexico. He responded: "Trump cannot actually do any of that stuff. There is no way that he could get that through Congress. That's just what you tell the illiterates."<br />
<br />
After hearing this characterization of the mass of Trump supporters as "illiterates," I realized I was talking to someone who echoed the views of the Southern bourbon aristocracy that maintained power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through a divide-and-rule strategy. In towns in the South, you still meet these members of old families whose names you recognize from the local streets named after their grandparents. Wealthy southerners discouraged economic populism across racial lines by helping to persuade working-class white voters that the greatest threat to them was posed by African Americans, and that big government was a tool of northerners who used minorities to exploit southern white men and women.<br />
<br />
My interlocutor's conviction that Trump would not actually do most of the crazy stuff he promised appears to have been the conventional wisdom of Wall Street in the week after the election. In an election night <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2016/11/third-place.html" target="_blank">post</a>, I had attempted to imagine the economic effects of a Trump presidency if he enacted his policy proposals. But investors are gambling that this will not happen. If the markets believed that Trump would follow through on his protectionist platform, they would have plummeted. Instead, investors are <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/10/investing/markets-stocks-donald-trump-rally/index.html" target="_blank">convinced</a> that Trump will be good for business. After all, Wall Street denizens are well aware of Trump's decades of outlandish promises. Trump financed every building project by making fantastic claims to rope people in and then daring his investors to sue when he did not deliver. Wall Street might be okay with this approach to the American voter <br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The "it will be fine" rationale for a Trump vote might have been overlooked in the analysis leading up the 2016 election. I am not a financier, but if I had to reconstruct the thought process of big-business Trump supporters I imagine that they are expecting some scenario like this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The basic bet is that Trump won't do that much. He will be more like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/opinion/what-a-trump-america-can-learn-from-a-berlusconi-italy.html" target="_blank">Berlusconi</a> than Mussolini, and they can live with that.<br />
<br />
Trump won't repeal the Affordable Care Act right away, but will make incremental changes that might lighten the load on employers. It is not good for business for insurance companies to lose 20 million customers. Trump might even be able to fix the ACA in ways that Obama could not. One of the biggest obstacles to the ACA's success is that red states have refused free money to set up the exchanges. If Trump can rebrand Obamacare as Trumpcare, states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia would go along with it. While a reversal this radical might seem unthinkable, it is exactly the kind of logic bending move Trump has made countless times. You can imagine Trump on television when reminded of his promise to repeal the ACA on his first day in office. He will say: "I never said that. I said I would fix it. And I fixed it."<br />
<br />
On the economy, Trump will for the most part leave well enough alone. Unemployment is at 4.9 percent, which is about as low as it can go under capitalism. He'll lower taxes and get rid of banking regulations Wall Street never liked. This might even create a little short-term economic stimulus. The Paul Krugmans of the world will warn that these short-term benefits will be negated in the long term as they will necessitate budget cuts that will further erode American public infrastructure and that cutting public sector jobs will only further shrink the middle class and continue the decades-long expansion of the gap between rich and poor, but this is not a lesson that investors have ever learned or cared about anyway.<br />
<br />
On foreign policy, Trump will also leave the Obama status quo in place. Few Americans seem to be aware that ISIS is losing territory, and if ISIS continues to lose Trump can simply take credit for Obama's strategy as his own. Trump also appears willing to <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/trump-victory-syria-1.3849775" target="_blank">cede</a> Syria back to Bashar al-Assad. That is bad for human rights and human decency as he will be rewarded for genocide, but it might stop the flow of refugees and that was the only reason investors ever cared about Syria in the first place.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
On the environment: it will be completely destroyed. Whatever.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now that Trump has won, he will quietly drop calls to lock up Hillary
Clinton or other political opponents. The vaunted Wall was always a
metaphor for xenophobia rather than a practical proposal. Maybe Trump
will build a few miles of wall in the Texas desert someplace, but there
was never any timeline. Finally, while TPP might be dead his proposed tariffs that would limit global trade will never get through congress. Business, as always, will be fine.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For the hard-core, rally-attending Trump supporters who were looking for a takedown of the establishment and now realize that their votes were the virtual equivalent of giving their bank account and social security numbers to a Nigerian prince, they were just a bunch of illiterate racists who don't matter anyway.</blockquote>
I have no idea if any of this will take place, but for Trump to have won a lot of people must have made this bet. In the focus on Trump's working-class <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/" target="_blank">appeal</a>, what was left out was the banker making a six-figure salary and living in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Detroit, or Philadelphia. These voters' usually reliable GOP support might have wavered as they felt embarrassed by the excesses of Trump's racist and xenophobic rhetoric, his fights with military families, and his misogyny and history of sexual assault. As the election drew closer, however, they decided that these were not their problems. One of the privileges of whiteness is that racism and xenophobia are not felt as existential <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/muslims-immigrants-minorities-lgbt-white-allies" target="_blank">threats</a>. While liberals worried about the vitriol of Trump's rallies, the GOP's electoral victory depended upon the broad willingness of white people to benefit from racism. This is not to say that suburbanite voters completely rejected Trump's appeal as it resonated with their sense that Black Lives Matter disrespected American law enforcement, that political correctness had gotten out of hand, or that they were sick and tired of corporate mandates to consider "diversity" in their hiring practices.<br />
<br />
The literati for Trump came around because, in the end, they realized that his presidency might not be such a departure from American norms. Structures of racial and sexual inequality have always coexisted with the electoral strategies of both conservative and progressive movements in the United States. To call the rise of the Trump movement "unprecedented" simply because of the obviousness of its racism and sexism ignores this political reality. The precedent for the Trump presidency is the entirety of American history. Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-28907177122639995382016-11-04T12:45:00.000-07:002016-11-05T14:05:06.429-07:00Reviewing The Production of American Religious Freedom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a></span><br />
<br />
Some people have things to say about <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479856763/" target="_blank"><i>The Production of American Religious Freedom</i> </a><br />
<br />
Sarah E. Dees in <a href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2016/10/american-religious-freedom-always.html" target="_blank">Religion in American History </a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The case studies that he presents—nodes in a complex web that transcend
time, space, points of view, and specific social concerns—are themselves
impossible to neatly tie together. Yet the book does offer a compelling
contribution to the conversation about religious freedom in America, a
contribution that uniquely highlights economic structures and concerns,
notions of personhood, aesthetic and affective works and workings, and
ideas about private property and public good. Furthermore, <i>The
Production of American Religious Freedom</i>—with its analysis of data at
the micro and macro levels and its focus on how particular beliefs
structure actors’ engagements with others—exemplifies the unique type of
interdisciplinary research that is possible within the field of
religious studies.</blockquote>
Michael Graziano in <a href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2016/09/religious-freedom-is-just-not-that-into.html" target="_blank">Religion in American History </a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
After thinking with this book for several weeks now, I have come to think of <i>The Production of American Religious Freedom</i>
as a toolbox with which you can tune-up your own ideas about religious
freedom, regardless of the time period or geography in which you’re
working. Those of us thinking about a turn toward institutions,
especially public ones, should pay attention. I found myself slowly
taking apart how I’ve used religious freedom in my own work, and then
putting it back together, to see what Curtis’s economy of religious
freedom might do for me. Readers should investigate what it might do for
you, too.<br />
<a name='more'></a></blockquote>
Andy McKee in <a href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2016/11/producing-american-religious-freedom.html" target="_blank">Religion in American History</a> <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Into his assembled series of conflicts, Curtis wants to consider the
“work that it takes to produce religious freedom” (2). It is this idea
of work, of producing something, that is the true value of Curtis’s
essays. Curtis, in short, relates the politics underlying the how, what,
and why something is determined to hold value as either private or
public within the framework of religious freedom. These connections,
fractures, and fights, moreover, “examines how freedom can force people
to make choices or allow them to avoid making choices.” Indeed, what
does happen when someone elses freedom makes people uncomfortable and
violent? What types of individualism are acceptable and accepted when
the organizational and bureaucratic power of the state takes over you, and you, and you? </blockquote>
L. Benjamin Rolsky in <a href="http://readingreligion.org/books/production-american-religious-freedom" target="_blank">Reading Religion </a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Curtis ... engages larger theoretical issues pertinent to the
humanities and social sciences. His discussions of secularism, populism,
and the privatization of public life alone are worth the price of
admission. In addition, Curtis’s prose style elucidates even the finest
descriptive points of complex writers such as Michel Foucault, Lauren
Berlant, Cornel West, and Giorgio Agamben, just to name a few....<br />
<br />
Curtis’s work—which could just as profitably be
titled <i>Genealogies of Secular Liberalism</i>—should not only be widely read this coming school year, but for the foreseeable future.</blockquote>
Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-61244132161896290882016-09-26T14:11:00.002-07:002016-09-27T13:05:00.090-07:00Is Donald Trump a Human Being?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAepP0QklAJazKKJg8AT7z2RR2De9Me29OzHyydxKGMmrMv3a-zj0XzGT1rhS989_sG1HJGNwmsq_LuYYf5IjSFdPrhqKwpFea8mQgIEG9cynf6T-UO0qbY2tFki4dGFSCYpkoTmL49Zk/s1600/Human+Trump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAepP0QklAJazKKJg8AT7z2RR2De9Me29OzHyydxKGMmrMv3a-zj0XzGT1rhS989_sG1HJGNwmsq_LuYYf5IjSFdPrhqKwpFea8mQgIEG9cynf6T-UO0qbY2tFki4dGFSCYpkoTmL49Zk/s400/Human+Trump.jpg" width="365" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a></span> <br />
<br />
Donald Trump will likely win tonight's presidential <a href="http://www.hofstra.edu/debate/" target="_blank">debate</a> against Hillary Clinton. By win I do not mean that he will make more cogent arguments or demonstrate a superior grasp of political reality. He will certainly not do that. Rather, Trump can consider his performance a victory if he can convince 2-4 percent of American voters that he is merely plausible.<br />
<br />
The reason he needs only to be plausible is that his critics have warned of his monstrosity. Commentators have struggled to find a language that can communicate the outlandish quality of the preternatural <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/why-donald-trump-should-not-be-president.html" target="_blank">threat</a> he poses to American democracy. It seems unreal that someone can insult the disabled and prisoners of war, can make overtly bigoted statement after statement, can believe something as extreme as birtherism and disbelieve something as obvious as global warming, can funnel campaign donations to his own businesses, can pattern his campaign after a fantastically corrupt Ukrainian <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/reforming-ukraine-after-maidan" target="_blank">oligarch</a> who made no pretense of seeking power for anything other than his own enrichment, and can inspire a general atmosphere of fascist violence throughout his campaign performances. We are repeatedly reminded that this is not <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/normalizing-trump/" target="_blank">normal</a>.<br />
<br />
But this begs the question of what one means by normal. After each time Trump says or does something that goes too far, you think this cannot be happening. But it does happen. The news cycle goes on, and you get used to it. What was previously shocking then seems like no big deal when the next outrageous event happens. All of this is either terrifying or thrilling depending on who you are. It is possible that the Trump phenomenon is as unbelievable to Trump's supporters as it is to his detractors. He inspires such messianic <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-friedland/jesus-with-a-gun-donald-t_b_11701728.html" target="_blank">devotion</a> because he redeems people who felt like they had to code or conceal their racism and sexism, and now cannot believe their own freedom to speak their minds openly without shame or apology.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>One reason why commentators have struggled to make sense of Trump is they have been so focused on the shocking and spectacular that it is easy to overlook what happens after the shock, when we settle into a new normal, everyday, familiar, conventional reality. Talk of deplorable monsters makes sense when describing a campaign of white supremacy that rewards the loyalties of Nazis and Klansmen. But the focus on the monstrous often neglects to make sense of the ordinary and human quality of hatred. Nazis and Klansmen have jobs and families, and worry when their bills are unpaid or their kids get sick. The things that Nazis and Klansmen do are the kinds of things that ordinary people are capable of doing.<br />
<br />
Trump plays this gap between the monstrous and the human to his own advantage. His supporters often assure skeptics that if they got to meet Trump in person they would have a very different impression of the man. What this means is that they themselves met Trump and had an ordinary conversation in which he listened to what they said, and this was so unexpected as to be remarkable. They then came away thinking that maybe what he said was not so crazy after all.<br />
<br />
The power of spectacle works best when it is followed by the kind of normalization that happens in a debate in which two candidates get equal time to answer the same questions. This is why Trump can win merely by appearing to be a human being. This does not necessarily mean he will win the election. But it does mean that it is possible. The defining lesson of the Trump campaign is not its impossibility, then, but its reminder that sexism and white supremacy are familiar and ordinary features of American life.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-84441323938930877422016-08-26T13:06:00.002-07:002016-08-28T13:13:54.628-07:00Fear and Safety at the University of Chicago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVIheiS1hGB_2GglGHfb_JC1L_dqFA_pVFrGwOtGEjcfcRtERMRxeFJE7UAlEjVV7KdM40SHzbz8YqYKwWeZQDCTV0ipKiVZ30jgm8U3ai1Fm-nt8yDpAetUKVBOGCkbbMQYS9jZ1BeOQ/s1600/U+Chicago+Directions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVIheiS1hGB_2GglGHfb_JC1L_dqFA_pVFrGwOtGEjcfcRtERMRxeFJE7UAlEjVV7KdM40SHzbz8YqYKwWeZQDCTV0ipKiVZ30jgm8U3ai1Fm-nt8yDpAetUKVBOGCkbbMQYS9jZ1BeOQ/s400/U+Chicago+Directions.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a></span> <br />
<br />
On a short trip a few summers ago, I decided to visit the University of Chicago. As I looked for directions on the university website, I found <a href="https://maps.uchicago.edu/directions/masstransit.shtml" target="_blank">routes</a> by bus and light rail but noticed that it said nothing about the elevated subway that stopped close by. As I was staying close to the Green Line, it seemed like a quick route was to ride to the final stop and walk a few blocks north. This worked fine and I was on campus within a few minutes after getting off the train.<br />
<br />
It later occurred to me that it was possible that the reason for omitting the L from the website was that University of Chicago administrators presumed that the neighborhood south of campus would make prospective students and visitors feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Therefore, the two mass transit suggestions directed students east of campus to the Hyde Park neighborhood. In other words, the University of Chicago is a literal safe space within Chicago's South Side.<br />
<br />
This institutional commitment to safety is ironic in light of a recent <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/25/u-chicago-warns-incoming-students-not-expect-safe-spaces-or-trigger-warnings" target="_blank">letter</a> from the Dean of Students to the incoming class of 2020. In the letter, Dean John (Jay) Ellison asserts that the university does not support "safe spaces" and warns students that they need to get tough: "You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort." While the Dean's letter welcomes incoming students as they "continue on their intellectual journey," it does
not recommend that this take them through the areas west and
south of campus<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I have written previously <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-coddling-of-american-think-pieces.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2015/03/kids-today.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2016/07/extremist-common-sensism.html" target="_blank">here</a> about the language of fear and threat that pervades letters like the University of Chicago's. Of course, university administrators would make a distinction between intellectual safety and physical safety. But these forms of safety are unequally distributed. It is a remarkable social privilege to be able to choose to avoid spaces where fellow citizens live and work while still feeling courageous for tackling difficult ideas. The intellectual freedom of the classroom depends upon its protection from uncomfortable social and economic reality. For this reason, academic freedom is expensive. It requires spending millions of dollars to police <a href="http://uchicagogate.com/2014/06/02/a-wall-around-hyde-park/" target="_blank">boundaries</a> that maintain economic and racial inequality. Whether you feel safe within the walls of the university might say something about the extent to which you benefit from these inequalities. As with most usages of <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479856763/" target="_blank">freedom</a>, then, academic freedom deflects attention from the distribution of social resources and power necessary to produce highly regulated institutional spaces like college classrooms.<br />
<br />
Many of the students denounced as politically correct are those who have challenged conventions about who gets to decide what is safe. This isn't to say that all of the different arguments for safe spaces
have equal merit. But it is to say that a preemptive letter written in
response to the mere hypothetical possibility that students might make
such arguments says more about the fears of university administrators
than anything else. In one response to the Dean's letter, the Tattooed Professor <a href="http://www.thetattooedprof.com/archives/650" target="_blank">notes</a>: "I don't think it's a coincidence that the backlash against so-called 'political correctness' in higher education has intensified in direct variation with the diversification of the academy, areas of scholarship, and-most significantly-the student population. Underlying much of the hand-wringing about the state of the academy is a simple desire to have the gatekeepers remain in place."<br />
<br />
If you are wondering where these gates might be, the university website has a helpful map.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-90394292428150120802016-07-20T20:27:00.001-07:002016-07-21T10:35:09.495-07:00Extremist Common Sensism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6zSZImxfqryr3LNE22ZWSuhzjl6ymz1bU0cp3SD76XnyziRSOF8sVsv-_U2MfrkIVibpvpnJKeMmFiR7jPVB5h8OZMS97XJ46sxNUqfh_ZxdEi66ve4b0EpIJ7yDRLnfWYmg58oPhQ8/s1600/Giuliani+Hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit6zSZImxfqryr3LNE22ZWSuhzjl6ymz1bU0cp3SD76XnyziRSOF8sVsv-_U2MfrkIVibpvpnJKeMmFiR7jPVB5h8OZMS97XJ46sxNUqfh_ZxdEi66ve4b0EpIJ7yDRLnfWYmg58oPhQ8/s400/Giuliani+Hands.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rudy Giuliani is afraid that you are not scared</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/">Finbarr Curtis</a><br /><br /> If you see the world as an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, then you are feeling pretty affirmed right now by this week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Various and sundry <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTe3JadO-D0" target="_blank">sitcom</a>, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/antonio-sabato-jr-absolutely-obamas-muslim-rnc-speech/story?id=40687052" target="_blank">soap opera</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R1vT87nrUQ" target="_blank">reality television</a> stars have taken turns warning us of a dualistic battle between "common sense" and "political correctness." The nominee's son,<a href="http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0004406/?ref_=tt_cl_t1" target="_blank"> Donald Trump, Jr</a>.,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tI2CE2ivxY" target="_blank"> extolled</a> the wisdom of those who avoided fancypants schools like Harvard and Wharton (from which his father graduated in 1968) in favor of an education culminating in a "Doctorate in Common Sense."<br /><br /> One advocate for this linguistic theory <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luzajJDsGOY" target="_blank">was</a> former New York mayor and current world-record-holder-for-breaking-blood-vessels-in-his-face-while-he-yells Rudolph Giuliani, who denounced anyone who refused to name the "enemy" of the United States as "Islamic extremist terrorism." According to Rudy, shirking this label denies the obvious violent threat that lurks everywhere. It is this assertion of obviousness, of simplicity in the face of apparent chaos, that gives common sense its force. Rather than accept self-evident reality, those imprisoned by political correctness cannot speak the truth because of their paralyzing fear of hurting people's feelings.<br /><br /> That the truth is apparent to everyone is what makes it common. This idea has its roots in eighteenth-century Scottish Common Sense Realism. In response to idealists and skeptics who offered complicated explanations for how people came to know and talk about things, thinkers like Thomas Reid argued that people's ordinary sense of the world was trustworthy. If you had a table right in front you, then you knew it was a table because you touched it and saw it, not because you had some idea of a table in your head. If intricate philosophical arguments seemed to contradict people’s ordinary sense of reality, it was overthinking that was at fault. As Reid <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-mind-and-language/inquiry-human-mind-principles-common-sense" target="_blank">asserted</a> in his 1764 <i>An Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense</i>:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Poor untaught mortals believe undoubtedly that there is a sun, moon, and stars; an earth, which we inhabit; country, friends, and relations, which we enjoy; land, houses, and moveables, which we possess. But philosophers, pitying the credulity of the vulgar, resolve to have no faith but what is founded upon reason.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Idealistic philosophers offered unnecessary confusion and doubt. For Reid, it was absurd to throw out one’s ordinary sense of the world because theories could not explain it:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But if indeed thous hast not power to dispel those clouds and phantoms which thou hast discovered or created, withdraw this penurious and malignant ray; I despise Philosophy, and renounce its guidance: let my soul dwell with Common Sense.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reid did not despise philosophy as such, but only philosophy that required a choice between abstract thought and everyday experience. Rather than disproving what we see, smell, hear, taste, and touch, philosophy should take this sensory data as the foundation for further inquiry. <br /><br />When convention speakers appeal to common sense, they reassure you that Islamic extremist terrorism is an easily recognizable thing like a table sitting in front of you. This feels good if the world seems to be a confusing and scary place. But this raises a question of what "sense" allows you to see social identities like religion or extremism, or what allows for common sense pronouncements about ethnicity or gender or race. These are not things you can ordinarily see unless what you mean by "seeing" is confirming whatever your initial intuitive impressions are. In other words, what Rudy means by common sense is a visceral, precritical response to new information, what we often call a gut reaction. He relies on immediate, intuitive reactions as a necessary preparation for sudden threats. Refusals to act on common sense leave people vulnerable in an insecure world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Overthinkers who challenge common sense, especially those who Rudy calls politically correct, suggest that these immediate reactions are not reliable sources of information but are instead shaped by prejudices and assumptions produced by social forces. Or to say this in a less fancy way: Trump is the candidate of common sense because common sense is where racism comes from. Common sense offers a visceral feeling of satisfaction that comes from learning that your intuitions, prejudices, and assumptions were right all along. Assuring people that political violence is an inevitable outgrowth of a scary thing called Islam affirms a view of security that cautions against waiting around to analyze complex social problems. Making generalizations about people you don't know is one way of feeling safe in a world that you don't understand. Political correctness, therefore, poses an existential threat to those hoping to "Make America Safe Again."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have written </span><a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-coddling-of-american-think-pieces.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">before</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> about how Trump's rhetoric is liberating to those who feel oppressed by having to consider the sensibilities of other people. In a recent essay on Trump supporters, George Saunders </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/11/george-saunders-goes-to-trump-rallies" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">offers</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> this appraisal of why this feels frustrating: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Above all, Trump supporters are "not politically correct," which, as far as I can tell, means that they have a particular aversion to that psychological moment when, having thought something, you decide that it is not a good thought, and might pointlessly hurt someone's feelings, and therefore decline to say it. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Trump has mastered common sense because he does not advance arguments that cannot be stated in more than three or four sentences. Every Trump <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/134329/american-horror-story" target="_blank">speech</a> is instead a montage of visceral impressions. His lack of conservative ideology has frustrated political <a href="http://gawker.com/the-best-of-new-york-times-columnist-ross-douthat-s-inc-1774768281" target="_blank">commentators</a> who do not know what to make of his apparently eccentric politics. But Trump's populism lines up pretty neatly if you place racism at the center of every policy consideration. His economic protectionism is not a critique of the free market as much as an attempt to protect white labor from foreign competition. His willingness to cede Syria to Bashar al-Assad isn't driven by a rejection of US intervention abroad as much as a lack of concern for Middle Eastern lives. And so on.</span><br />
<br />
Of course, Giuliani and Trump reject charges of racism or Islamophobia. In his convention speech, Giuliani reminded the crowd that he was not talking about all Muslims. A critic might object that this would make the qualifier "Islamic" little more than an imprecise label. But the point of naming Islam is not to provide an accurate description; it is to affirm common sense. That is, Rudy is willing to tolerate some Muslims as long as they allay his suspicions, but it would be dangerous and foolish for him to abandon his prejudices. This is a logic common to the proliferation of "Not all..." exceptions in popular debate, as in the magnanimous concession that "not all Muslims are terrorists." When Trump says, for example, that Mexicans are "bringing drugs, They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people," he makes a double move that affirms the reasonableness of prejudice while allowing that some people might be exceptions to his own rules. For his part, Giuliani will happily agree that not everyone he fears are threats, as long he can stop and frisk them first. Trumpism celebrates the charity and generosity of its willingness to override its own prejudices.<br />
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<div>
<div id="ftn1">
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<div>
The "Not all..." qualifier has become so familiar that it is employed as a defense against criticism labelled as politically correct. Defensive assertions that "Not all men" or "Not all white people" should be subject to critiques of sexism and racism are characterized by their confusion of political critiques of structural inequality with prejudicial assumptions about the essential character of groups. This confusion is a reaction by those accustomed to the privilege of having their prejudices used as the baseline for reasonable fear. The flip side of warnings against the danger of political correctness is the assertion that political correctness is a form of excessive safety invoked by those who cannot handle criticism. In both cases, white feelings are the measure of common sense. Political correctness is too dangerous when it undercuts the scrutiny of threatening others, and too safe when it challenges white scrutiny.<br />
<br />
Common sense does not respond well to criticism. As Mike Altman <a href="http://religion.ua.edu/blog/2016/06/religious-studies-in-the-time-of-trumpism/" target="_blank">points out</a>, attempts to address Islamophobia in an age of Trumpism by fixing inaccurate representations of Islam might have limited effectiveness. While knowing more about Islam cannot hurt, the sources of Islamophobia have less to do with Islam than with phobia. Giving people nuanced information about Islam might not dispel common sense fears as long as these lessons are harnessed to a "Not all Muslims..." discourse. Education might be most valuable not when it replaces bad common sense with good common sense, but when it teaches people to think about their own precritical assumptions, to examine what is so obvious and taken-for-granted that it needs no argument. Fortunately, such habits of critical reflection require no doctorate.</div>
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Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-4452372705123885262016-06-15T13:29:00.000-07:002016-06-15T14:33:09.450-07:00The Trump Campaign Is Not Taking Place<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFPJxD_z2eUGkFJgIUJSdosVdvEzttAJd0HUQlrVcMVwmxTjQJHy27XUXVr69XwIs9dcY6mUejvpIYyhkA4W61pUDNySQSIwr9YUYQTmeRvSQEswm4xzVekg8VbW-bhlwZMmIB8S_bQE/s1600/TrumpBaudrillardMonster.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFPJxD_z2eUGkFJgIUJSdosVdvEzttAJd0HUQlrVcMVwmxTjQJHy27XUXVr69XwIs9dcY6mUejvpIYyhkA4W61pUDNySQSIwr9YUYQTmeRvSQEswm4xzVekg8VbW-bhlwZMmIB8S_bQE/s400/TrumpBaudrillardMonster.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean Baudrillard/Donald J. Trump</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">By <a href="http://nyupress.org/author/7486/">Kerry Mitchell </a> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
have replaced "simulacrum" with "Trump campaign" in the following: "The
Trump campaign is never what hides the truth—it is truth that hides the
fact that there is none. The Trump campaign is true." Ecclesiastes</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">By this I mean not, of course, that the Trump campaign is speaking the <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/tangled-web/">truth</a>,
but that the truth of his campaign—what his campaign is—is true: it is
what it is. And what it is is nothing. There is no campaign. There is
only Trump.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The absence of a conventional campaign was the subject of a recent MSNBC <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-does-not-have-campaign">exposé</a> that wondered whether the Donald could triumph while <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">lacking</span></span> a proverbial "ground game":</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Donald
Trump is a candidate without a campaign – and it’s becoming a serious
problem. Republicans working to elect Trump describe a bare-bones effort
debilitated by infighting, a lack of staff to carry out basic
functions, minimal coordination with allies and a message that’s
prisoner to Trump’s momentary whims. "Bottom line, you can hire all the
top people in the world, but to what end? Trump does what he wants,” a
source close to the campaign said. </span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">For Trump <a href="https://storify.com/case_face/a-trump-rally-in-greensboro-anger-in-here-is-palpa">supporters</a>,
the MSNBC report can be dismissed as a hit piece, a takedown. The
article argues largely that Trump’s is a lousy version of a campaign,
just as some suggest that Trump is a lousy version of a leader (but
without <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/bob-dole-trump-support-224173">the original</a>,
what can you do?). But there are threads within the article and other
media that are much more threatening than disapproval, which is easily
celebrated or dismissed depending on one’s leanings. These threads
suggest not that Trump is being a bad leader, but that he is not being a
leader at all. He is just being him. This suggestion is so much more
threatening than disapproval as it removes the foundation upon which
both approval and disapproval rest. Without such foundation political
statements do not so much speak truth or falsehood as flash images that
affirm or <a href="https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/740973710593654784">negate</a>.
Such statements are immune to argument, gaining their strength from the
sense of confidence, joy, and invincibility with which they are
asserted. If Trump has no campaign, if Trump is not a leader but just
Trump, then the attacks on him will simply affirm this reality, breaking
the feedback loop of claim and counterclaim and coming back again and
again to the <a href="https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/741245771412955137">negation</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
difference between being a good/bad leader and not being a leader at
all is the difference between individual and social being. In an
individual sense, a leader is a person. In a social sense, a leader is
one who simulates him/herself in an organization. Simulation is the
essential feature of the concept. On the other side of the partisan
divide, the simulation is called “<a href="https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-term-Clinton-machine-come-from">the Clinton machine</a>.”
While conventionally a political machine may be understood as an
organization “controlled by” a leader, which is true enough, it is also
an organization that stands in for that leader. A campaign such as
Clinton’s has surrogates who speak for Clinton and, in line with a
certain strategy, repeat talking points across many more media outlets
than Clinton herself could engage. The campaign is thus an extension of
its leader, amplifying and echoing the words that come out of her mouth.
In contrast, the “Trump machine,” such as it is or is not, does not
have <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-wannabes-shake-up-cable-airwaves-221021">surrogates so much as supporters</a>. Their words do not so much amplify and echo a coherent message as they resonate with a sentiment while adding their own <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/you-want-to-come-on-with-big-boobs-trump-supporter-flips-out-and-attacks-fox-pundits-breast-size/">vulgar impressions</a>. No one stands in for Trump except <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/donald-trump-alter-ego-barron/2016/05/12/02ac99ec-16fe-11e6-aa55-670cabef46e0_story.html">Trump himself</a>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Simulation
is essential for leadership in another respect as well. The leader is a
simulation of those s/he leads. This holds across all models of
sovereignty. A dictator does not simply lead his people. He embodies his
people. He is a symbol of his people and stands in for them. This is
equally true in a republic. The president or prime minister represents
the people. But there are very different ways in which this simulation
can work. In the contemporary American form, a leader represents the
people through a modulation of processes (e.g., elections, polls, focus
groups, town hall meetings, meetings with special interests—with much
listening, responding, negotiating, taking positions) and through a
modulation of being (e.g., being whoever s/he is). This dual nature of
representation opens up a certain tension, for the leader can be a
simulation of the people in the sense of being “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/02/01/3745100/donald-trump-blue-collar/">an ordinary guy</a>”
without being a product of the processes of representation. Yes, Donald
Trump won the Republican nomination for President through an election,
but that process, including all the ancillary ones that accompany it,
did not produce Trump in his character as a leader. The electoral
processes were not so much a negotiation and dialogue and positioning so
much as a “here-I-am-take-it-or-leave-it.”</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Curiously,
the simulation of being is often taken to be more authentic than the
simulation of process. The leaders who modulate their positions to more
accurately reflect polling, focus groups, or the positions of certain
organizations are seen as untrustworthy, while the leaders who stick to
their positions because that is who they are are seen as strong,
dependable leaders. But is this not exactly backwards? Shouldn’t the
leaders who adapt themselves to better reflect a polity be regarded as
more faithful representatives, better copies, of the people than those
who simply are who they are?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jean Baudrillard’s 1981 work, <i><a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/9900/simulacra_and_simulation">Simulacra and Simulation</a></i>,
suggests that the question of the fidelity or infidelity of the copy is
an illusion, one that conceals the fact that there is no basis for the
copy. He argues that we inhabit a new historical epoch in which
simulations refer only to other simulations, a play of images and
representations without original running as do computer programs, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6R94keJcHk">hollowed out</a>
simulations that operate and have value, but truth is not one of them.
This play particularly characteristic of the highly complex, intensely
mediated collectivity of the modern nation-state. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Whether
through process or being, no leader is a copy of a people, and this is
one of the more disturbing things about leadership. Underneath the
debates about whether Clinton or Trump more accurately represent the
people lies the possibility that there is no American people to
represent. Indeed, that is what Benedict Anderson’s classic work, <i><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/60-imagined-communities">Imagined Communities</a></i>,
suggests. He articulates how societies are held together not by
demonstrable similarities but by their collective embrace of the
fictions of their collectivity. One can add that such fictions are
embodied in the acclamation of a leader as representative of a society.
From such a perspective, the illusion of simulation serves as the glue
that holds social bodies together.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
rhetoric of and yearning for authenticity in a candidate ostensibly
strives to replace this illusion with reality in the person of the
leader. The rhetoric of authenticity does not, however, simply return to
the cult of personality that informs the strongman, dictator, and
monarch. No one ever acclaimed <a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/96/78/13/9678133247fb4f5b41ca5f9e8e457e80.jpg">Louis XIV</a>
as king because he was being “true to himself.” Such self-simulation
would have been seen at the time as a curious and unnecessary step for
justification of sovereignty. Rather, the modern yearning for
authenticity denies the social altogether. Being true to oneself is
defined by dispensing <span style="font-family: inherit;">with</span> social simulation. Thus it is not simply that
people support Trump because they see themselves in him. That’s a
traditional, if by itself incomplete, path to defining a leader. It’s
that people support Trump because he doesn’t represent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-is-borrowing-the-gop-brand-hell-resist-bending-to-party-leaders/2016/05/26/b503390c-2347-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html">anyone but himself</a>.
This impression of strength of leadership carries with it a destructive
urge vis-à-vis the social. Accusations of inconsistency and outrageous
statements and behavior do nothing to assail this appeal to
authenticity, even when his inconsistency applies to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/how-much-trump-worth-depends-how-he-feels-384720">himself</a>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
this way the rhetoric of authenticity, of the reality and groundedness
of Trump as a leader, is also one of denial, destruction, and nihilism.
It replaces the social simulation of both dictator and president with
the self-simulation of the individual. The emptiness of the leader was
once seen within the Republican party as an <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/2/13/1064417/-Grover-Norquist-on-the-GOP-candidates-All-we-need-is-someone-who-can-handle-a-pen">ideal</a>. It is now seen as the agent of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432770/donald-trump-supporters-burn-it-down-wont-fix-anything">collective doom</a>. </span></span>Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-64298835159399356372016-02-10T10:20:00.000-08:002016-02-11T07:22:09.402-08:00Tell Me About the Bunnies, Simon<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzna6dTA4Sch4BAgAi7FqkVMPiN7A8CG9dxvVGa3Rc80oJ6Ge7_JuQ_CBisb-TR5wnmKBIW4ZhZirbFfoz1NQsEu3OmHtx-R78r5tROF1OdlTh4oRi3k8T65Jq-HVA3npFquRzw0LdPg/s1600/Bunny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="357" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOzna6dTA4Sch4BAgAi7FqkVMPiN7A8CG9dxvVGa3Rc80oJ6Ge7_JuQ_CBisb-TR5wnmKBIW4ZhZirbFfoz1NQsEu3OmHtx-R78r5tROF1OdlTh4oRi3k8T65Jq-HVA3npFquRzw0LdPg/s400/Bunny.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Cuddle Bunny</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
Simon Newman, the president of Mount St. Mary's University and academia's own incarnation of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/06/the-public-hate-them-and-they-love-it-martin-shkreli-is-our-latest-unapologetic-villain.html" target="_blank">Martin Shkreli</a>, recently made a public splash when the school newspaper <a href="http://msmecho.com/2016/01/19/mount-presidents-attempt-to-improve-retention-rate-included-seeking-dismissal-of-20-25-first-year-students/" target="_blank">reported</a> on his proposed plan to improve academic retention rates by encouraging some students to drop out of college. He wanted to administer a survey, identify students with lower scores, and then dismiss these students before the University had to report its enrollment numbers. Newman's theory was that students with lower scores were more likely to eventually drop out and hurt retention rates, so he might as well get rid of them sooner rather than later.<br />
<br />
Predictably, this plan met with opposition.<span style="font-weight: 400;"> While specific details are fuzzy, it appears that the program was never enacted as faculty did not produce names of students to dismiss in time for the deadline. </span>When emails discussing the program were leaked by his critics, Newman promptly sought the resignation of the Provost and <a href="http://dailynous.com/2016/02/09/bunny-drowning-president-sets-sights-on-philosophers/" target="_blank">fired</a> a couple faculty members who opposed him.<br />
<br />
Newman was capable of outside-the-box thinking because he is no educator. His professional <a href="http://msmary.edu/presidents_office/" target="_blank">biography</a> cites his master of business administration degree from Stanford followed by an illustrious 30-year business career that started at Bain Co and and LEK Consulting.<span style="font-weight: 400;"> This career appears to have taught him that human suffering is necessary "collateral damage" of profitable business practices. Newman informed educators that their desire to educate students was a sign of weak will. As he explained, “This is hard for you because you think
of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to
drown the bunnies…put a Glock to their heads.”</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Presumably, Newman was brought in to shake up academic culture, to innovate through creative disruption. Recruiting talent from the corporate world has become increasingly popular among presidential search committees who subscribe to a familiar American myth that corporations are especially well run. The way this narrative goes is that unlike government bureaucracies and educational institutions, private corporations encourage competition and reward <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2014/07/we-are-mooc.html" target="_blank">innovation</a>.<br />
<br />
There is no doubt that Newman has disrupted things. Like many innovators, he
does not actually propose creative solutions to problems as
much as he proposes ways of branding these problems as novel
experiments in success. In reality, private corporations, like all organizations, are efficient in some ways and inefficient in others. What Newman's career teaches is that if you suspend all considerations for human welfare in the interest of a single-minded pursuit of making money, you are likely to make a lot of money.<br />
<br />
There is no pedagogical value to Newman's scheme. However, if one suspended the desire to educate as well as any sense of human decency, there is a diabolical sort of logic to Newman's idea. He hopes to employ Enron-style creative accounting in order to game the numbers, to give the appearance of increasing graduation rates even though a greater number of students are dropping out of school. In other words, you make the school worse if you think a school is a place that educates students. But you make the school better if you think a school is a corporate brand. <br />
<br />
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<![endif]--> Maybe the most illuminating aspect of the bunny-killing ethos is what it tells us about how Newman succeeded in the corporate world. He did not succeed by being good at his job. He succeeded by giving the <i>appearance</i> that he was good at his job. People climb corporate ladders for diverse reasons. Sometimes, they show up and perform well. But another path to career advancement is to become an expert practitioner of games of smoke and mirrors. These kinds of corporate operatives understand the power of confidence and bluster, and they develop expertise in taking credit for other people's work and shifting blame for their own failures.<br />
<br />
The corporate veterans who take leadership positions at universities come entirely from the confidence and bluster school of management. What all hot-shot MBA presidents, whether at the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/09/university_of_iowa_names_new_president_no_experience_no_ideas_flubbed_his.html" target="_blank">University of Iowa</a>, the <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/09/455324174/amid-controversy-university-of-missouri-system-president-resigns" target="_blank">University of Missouri</a>, or Mount St. Mary's, have in common is the chutzpah to demand large compensation packages for jobs for which they are entirely unqualified. The only people who would be willing to do this are those convinced that qualifications and job performance have nothing to do with advancement and compensation.<br />
<br />
To someone whose success depends not on doing a job but on appearing to do a job, critics like the faculty and provost at Mount St. Mary's pose an existential threat. Rather than conscientious and engaged critics, the corporate-style university president seeks to instill the organizational culture immortalized in the classic film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank"><i>Office Space</i></a>, in which good employees <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0NNVm5ajMQ" target="_blank">ask</a> "Is this good for the company?" What Newman fails to understand is that what might be good for the company is not always good for the school.<br />
<br />
<br />Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-61923501769332948592016-01-16T14:27:00.003-08:002016-01-17T17:58:26.680-08:00Anti-New-Yorkism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWMKr-9MCKEOrJxIudl3FdBzOOlp9Sh2Qw6xkoWrH7aHrEV2liaX5_qyZTfe4roPhpjDRQnbdl7SGXHmZkT5gAqm3MzxIKkY70yT4Kz4w58hxpRSYfQ9ZSjderVAZCXxnmoiie5SuL3eg/s1600/New+York+Hates+Ted+Cruz.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWMKr-9MCKEOrJxIudl3FdBzOOlp9Sh2Qw6xkoWrH7aHrEV2liaX5_qyZTfe4roPhpjDRQnbdl7SGXHmZkT5gAqm3MzxIKkY70yT4Kz4w58hxpRSYfQ9ZSjderVAZCXxnmoiie5SuL3eg/s400/New+York+Hates+Ted+Cruz.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<br />
Everyone understands that Ted Cruz is a <a href="http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/ted-cruz-has-been-riduculed-years-his-former-college-roommate-who-turned-successful" target="_blank">terrible</a> human being. Even Ted Cruz seems to think that Ted Cruz is a <a href="http://www.cc.com/video-clips/c6usaz/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-nobody-likes-ted-cruz" target="_blank">horrible person</a>. You can see it in the knowing smirk he makes when he says some outlandish thing designed to offend do-gooders, the twinkle in his eye he gets when he talks about carpet bombing civilians, the wry chuckle he lets out when he makes fun of women who cannot afford contraception, the sense of smug satisfaction that oozes from every pore when he calmly informs the American public that he will reduce economic inequality by cutting taxes on the wealthy, and the look of serenity that appears when he nourishes his soul by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2016/01/08/3737265/ted-cruz-daca-confront-iowa/" target="_blank">informing</a> a nervous working woman that he would happily deport her.<br />
<br />
Cruz is a representative of a peculiar species of conservative often found sporting bow ties on the debate teams of Ivy League schools. This breed of conservative cites his argumentative prowess as evidence of great intelligence. What this means in reality is that they have just enough intelligence to formulate arguments that are perfectly designed to get people to hate them, but do not have enough intelligence to do the more difficult work of persuading anyone. Designed to provoke rather than convince, the pontifications of Ivy League Young Republicans produce a feedback loop of ubiquitous loathing that perpetually confirms their elite superiority. Nothing makes them happier than their being hated. <br />
<br />
Cruz's grin was stretching ear-to-ear in Thursday's GOP debate when he was <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/01/14/trump_parries_ted_cruzs_new_york_values_attack_with_passionate_911_reference.html" target="_blank">asked</a> about his accusation that Donald Trump represented "New York values." Answering a question from Brooklyn-born Maria Bartiromo, Cruz stated: "I think most people know what that means." When Bartiromo said she did not know although she was from New York, he explained: "You might not know because you are from New York." <br />
<br />
At first glance, this is a paradox. Common sense would tell us that New Yorkers, those who have the experience of the Big Apple in their bones, would best understand New York values. But Cruz is not one to shirk from logical contradictions. Right after saying that Bartiromo might not understand because she was from New York, he upped the ante from his claim that "most people" know to "everyone" understands. According to Cruz: "Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially
liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, focus around money and the
media." There is a literal paradox here as well. A dictionary <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/everyone" target="_blank">definition</a> of "everyone" as "every person" would include people from New York. But New York values are comprehensible to everyone except New Yorkers.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Such mysterious references to what "everyone understands" led some <a href="http://marksilk.religionnews.com/2016/01/15/by-new-york-values-did-cruz-mean-jewish/" target="_blank">commentators</a> to assert that Cruz was employing coded Anti-Semitism. His allusion to "money and the media" certainly sounds like the kind of oblique language that would have resonated with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaPBhxXhprg" target="_blank">Annie Hall</a>'s Alvy Singer, who observed that New York was viewed as a collection of "Left wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers" and insisted: "The failure of the country to get behind New York City is Anti-Semitism." <br />
<br />
As someone born in Manhattan's Beth Israel hospital (which I guess is about as far into enemy territory as one could get), I also have no idea what New York values are. But Cruz's exchange with Bartiromo clarifies that this is to be expected. New York values are not things New Yorkers understand because these are not what we talk about when we talk about values. While there are a number of technical ways to define the world value, in popular usage values have no content. Ask someone to name "family values," for example, and the usual answers are to identify what they are not. A family values crusader opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and sex education in schools. Attempts to identify support for health care or world peace as values do not gain much political traction because they fail to resonate with this kind of negative identification.<br />
<br />
Values are one of a number of fuzzy words like "<a href="http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/08/10/circles/" target="_blank">spiritual</a>," "sacred," "<a href="http://religion.ua.edu/blog/2014/07/misdirection/" target="_blank">conscience</a>," or "<a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479856763/" target="_blank">freedom</a>" that people use to mark a vaguely intuitive sense that something is important when they cannot offer any precise analysis of what that thing is. Labeling things as values can lend a sense of depth and profundity to what would otherwise be ordinary social and political positions. Values are understood to be different from other viewpoints because they are taken to represent some core or essence of a person. Someone with good values is someone who was brought up the right way by good people in a God-fearing part of the country. Invocations of family values or value voters or New York values, therefore, are strategies of identification rather than descriptions of political views. <br />
<br />
What Cruz's exchange with Bartiromo demonstrates is that most usages of an "everyone" depend upon the exclusion of someone. Intuitive negative identifications allow you to covertly appeal to what everyone knows about "them." While Cruz probably does not have any personal animosity toward individual Jews, Anti-New-Yorkism follows the same logic as Anti-Semitism by creating universal inclusiveness through particular exclusions. By appealing to what everyone knows about the moral defects of some
people, values-speak helps to produce common sense assumptions about who
good people are and where they are from. Will this help Cruz win the GOP nomination? Who knows? Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-45875401174698698482015-10-16T14:48:00.001-07:002016-02-14T14:15:42.624-08:00It's Not the Size of the Tent; It's How It's Constructed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimODlpfsJTLIJH_TvKrBsF86e4C_M3H6r3wP2hcFiluley8y6fSdS5kXKz4ynsDs5qkZQPybGqvqSHMdDONPpvlI9s7HB0aHq0Q5aai0D-Mj6Kj5UJ68bDR-IM-EpQQj8uJ1hbyu7ou_c/s1600/AAR+Tent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimODlpfsJTLIJH_TvKrBsF86e4C_M3H6r3wP2hcFiluley8y6fSdS5kXKz4ynsDs5qkZQPybGqvqSHMdDONPpvlI9s7HB0aHq0Q5aai0D-Mj6Kj5UJ68bDR-IM-EpQQj8uJ1hbyu7ou_c/s400/AAR+Tent.jpg" width="332" /></a></div>
<br />
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
Elections are in the air. Alongside the far more colorful contests for the American presidency, the American Academy of Religion put forth David P. Gushee and R. Kendall Soulen as candidates for the vice presidency of the organization. While lacking controversy of Trumpic proportions, the AAR did face criticism <a href="http://www.equinoxpub.com/blog/2015/10/an-open-letter-to-members-of-the-american-academy-of-religion/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://michaeljaltman.net/2015/10/15/the-aar-vice-presidential-election-and-the-illusion-of-choice/" target="_blank">here</a> from scholars who noted that the two candidates both <a href="https://www.aarweb.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/About/Elections/2015VPStatements.pdf" target="_blank">advocate</a> for more theological reflection in the study of religion. In his statement, Gushee expresses concern that the "AAR is seen as not particularly hospitable to, say, confessional or constructive theology, or more conservative religious viewpoints."<br />
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Gushee and Soulen reopen some old debates in religious studies and appeal to American senses of fair play and inclusion. In their view, the AAR should be a big tent that includes lots of different perspectives. I am not persuaded that their tent building requires any changes in organizational direction, however, because it strikes me that the AAR is a big tent right now. Ironically, this means that everyone feels excluded. Evangelical theologians lament that secular approaches to religious studies have squeezed out faith while critical theorists see Christian theological categories everywhere.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I am a big tent kind of guy and am comfortable with people studying something they call religion from perspectives other than my own. I am less comfortable with the language of inhospitality as well as the suggestion that religious studies keeps people out when it identifies methodological principles that make it possible to study religion.<br />
<br />
One reason I am skeptical of charges of exclusion is that I already work in a big tent. It's called the classroom. At a regional state school in a part of the Deep South that considers the AAR's hometown of Atlanta to be Yankee territory, I teach classes in which a majority of my students identify as evangelical Christians. I often exchange friendly waves when I run into them at the ubiquitous Bible Study sessions that make up our college town's coffee shop culture.<br />
<br />
Part of why I get along with my students is that they understand that I am not trying to convert them to a more enlightened theological perspective. I suggest instead that the college course in which they are enrolled will be more productive if they play along with an intellectual exercise in which we ask some possibly unfamiliar questions about what they know as religion. We can broaden our range of questions if we consider what would happen when we think about religion the way we think about any other subject matter. I tell students that the purpose of our intellectual exercise is not to demonstrate that religious studies courses teach the Truth whereas what they talk about in Bible study is false. Rather, religious studies asks a different set of disciplinary questions, and that learning to ask disciplined questions is not a unique feature of the study of religion but is the reason that they are in school. Learning how to work within academic disciplines teaches students habits of scholarly rigor that can help them to be precise when they talk about the various ways that human beings go about being human.<br />
<br />
Asking students to suspend their personal investments in religion in order to think about scholarly questions might sound like naive objectivity, but I am not claiming that we need to find some ontologically disinterested position in order to perceive objective reality. When we teach we often employ pragmatic pedagogical tactics that we could deconstruct if we made them the subject of scholarly criticism. So this is what we do. I ask students to consider our courses as data in the study of religion. We ask questions like: Why are we reading what we're reading? Why do we make distinctions between religious studies and Bible study? What kinds of assumptions and questions do scholars from different disciplines make when they study religion? Why study anything at all?<br />
<br />
One thing I ask students to think about is what people are saying when they make general claims about religion. An example we might consider could be candidate Soulen's analogy between the AAR and "religion itself":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Like religion itself, the AAR is a precious and fragile mixture of body, mind, and spirit. It is worth cultivating for its own sake, and for the light it can offer in difficult times.</blockquote>
When you study religion you notice that people often invoke general religiosity when they mean something more specific. A way to illustrate this is to examine how this same statement works if we substituted "religion itself" with a particular example from the various and sundry phenomena classified as religion. I wonder how many AAR members would subscribe to the following statement:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Like the Westboro Baptist Church, the AAR is a precious and fragile mixture of body, mind, and spirit. It is
worth cultivating for its own sake, and for the light it can offer in
difficult times.</blockquote>
Or instead of substituting groups, we could suggest religious practices. We could swap out "religion itself" with, say, Wendy Doniger's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/opinion/banned-in-bangalore.html" target="_blank">description</a> of religious censorship:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Like the "vilification of my books by a narrow band of narrow-minded Hindus," the AAR is a precious and fragile mixture of body, mind, and spirit. It is
worth cultivating for its own sake, and for the light it can offer in
difficult times. </blockquote>
Of course, fundamentalist churches and religious censorship are not the sorts of things that Gushee and Soulen want the AAR to include. When Gushee says he wants the AAR to be more hospitable to "more conservative religious viewpoints," he doesn't mean <i>too</i> conservative. Calls for a bigger tent that includes theologians, then, are analytically coherent only if we realize that they are actually calling for a restricted view of what counts as religion. In other words, in order to expand the tent you have to shrink it.<br />
<br />
My concern isn't that such proposals shrink the tent. My worry is that people are not even aware that they are engaged in tent shrinking projects because they have not developed sustained habits of reflection upon how and why tents are constructed. Where theological liberals run into problems is when they see tents constructed in their image and on their terms and with their own admissions policies as somehow inclusive of everyone.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, this is where religious studies can come in handy. Instead of producing good religion, we can help students to think more carefully and precisely about how religion is produced.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-54192936360340659802015-09-07T11:52:00.000-07:002015-09-22T10:54:02.076-07:00The Coddling of American Think Pieces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt want to protect you. Or more precisely, they want to protect you from people who are harming you by trying to protect you. Their recent <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/" target="_blank">piece</a> on the coddling of American students warns of political correctness on college campuses. In its recent incarnation, political correctness damages young people's psyches by protecting them from the inevitable harm we all must face in the harsh real world. Hypersensitive students invent increasingly subtle forms of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism, and then seek to protect themselves by asking professors to make these threats visible through markers like trigger warnings on course syllabuses.<br />
<br />
Critics of political correctness are not just talking about college. Victims of hypersensitivity nationwide have found their most prominent spokesman in current Republican front-runner Donald Trump. When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y9_LJj7A68" target="_blank">questioned</a> by debate moderator Megyn Kelly about his disparaging comments about women, Trump responded that the "big problem this country has is being politically correct." Trump is the perfect anti-trigger warning. Liable to say anything at anytime, his supporters are drawn to his honesty, his willingness to tell it like it is, his refusal to cower in the face of fraudulent liberal niceness, his insistence on giving offense as a much needed lesson to losers who take offense. Speaking truth to sensitivity feels liberating to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated" target="_blank">people</a> tired of having to politely self-censor in order to avoid charges of racism and sexism. The Trump-For-President Movement is a twenty-first century free-hate commune where you can express all your deepest, darkest, pent-up frustrations and everything is groovy and there are no judgments. <br />
<br />
Many who decry political correctness
on college campuses are mystified by Trump's rise.
There seems to be a difference between Lukianoff and Haidt's
attacks on hypersensitive students and Trump's attacks on hypersensitive
journalists. But it is worth considering whether people making the same arguments for the same purposes might have similar motives.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In an earlier <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2015/03/kids-today.html" target="_blank">post</a>, I discussed laments about protected students. I did not weigh in on whether mechanisms like trigger warnings on college syllabuses were a good idea. I just noted that images of sheltered college students contradicted social reality. It is analytically incoherent to portray a generation with unprecedented access to images and information as protected from negative images and information. While diagnoses of infantilization and coddling might work as polemical put downs, they offer little explanation.<br />
<br />
The question of how to address the sensibilities of diverse students seems like a hard case, the
kind of issue about which there are a number of reasonable points supporting different positions. Lukianoff and Haidt could have acknowledged that students were trying to do something about harmful forms of injury while still suggesting that mandated trigger warnings might not be the best way to achieve their goals; or they could have pointed out that administrative procedures that investigate Title IX complaints are designed to protect institutions from lawsuits rather than meaningfully address discrimination; or they could have questioned whether pscyhoanalytic language about trauma is the best way to talk about social harm. Lukianoff and Haidt chose none of these options. Instead, they double-down on psychoanalytic diagnoses and speculate that fragile psyches are causing a rise in mental health problems. Rather than argue against what proponents of trigger warnings <a href="http://dailynexus.com/2014-03-11/trigger-warnings-at-ucsb/" target="_blank">say</a>, Lukianoff and Haidt construct a self-referential psycho-socio-historical theory and then argue against that.<br />
<br />
Their theory is that sometime around 1980 parents began to protect their children: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The surge in crime from the ’60s
through the early ’90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than
their own parents had been. Stories of abducted children appeared more
frequently in the news, and in 1984, images of them began showing up on
milk cartons. In response, many parents pulled in the reins and worked
harder to keep their children safe. The
flight to safety also happened at school. Dangerous play structures
were removed from playgrounds; peanut butter was banned from student
lunches. After the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, many schools
cracked down on bullying, implementing “zero tolerance” policies. In a
variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a
consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do
everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from
strangers but from one another as well.</blockquote>
Quasi-histories of coddled generations often fail to keep their <a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/271497" target="_blank">nostalgia</a> straight. They tell us that once upon a time, the world was less dangerous so parents did not protect their kids. Students who grew up in this simpler time, however, were also toughened up by a Darwinian survival pit. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSTdHClwwSg" target="_blank">Opie</a> of Mayberry would fish in the morning and get bullied into maturity in the afternoon. This is a curious inversion of 1960s "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html" target="_blank">culture of poverty</a>" theories that warned of declining families. Now the families are so
strong and the parents are so protective that children are
incapable of confronting the world. The coddling hypothesis also flips the focus from the poor to the wealthy without discussing class. After all, the term "millennial" rarely describes poor or working-class people born after 1980. Although their analysis could work only for parents who have the resources to protect their kids, Lukianoff and Haidt lump together the parenting experiences of an entire generation <br />
<br />
Fretting over coddled youth is nothing new. As this Ngram chart tracking the word "coddled" suggests, we might not have reached the peak coddling periods of the mid-twentieth century.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv3FzHPeKk5RPyi8ypMoqJ2l5d5OyGBbykW5KOFg5gD5IaBamEykZKR2yfc8PcqYSUYbLNpow7nlSqSAWxVq7cJ2cM92I2vrrbtIp3HmGlZm-m1MYPxh5lNuwISthRjqjs_v27C90e3zs/s1600/Coddled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv3FzHPeKk5RPyi8ypMoqJ2l5d5OyGBbykW5KOFg5gD5IaBamEykZKR2yfc8PcqYSUYbLNpow7nlSqSAWxVq7cJ2cM92I2vrrbtIp3HmGlZm-m1MYPxh5lNuwISthRjqjs_v27C90e3zs/s640/Coddled.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
While google charts are hardly empirical proof for historical trends, they suggest that contemporary reports of coddling have still not reached the levels that spiked during World Wars I and II. This might mean that you tell people they are coddled not because they are protected but because you feel vulnerable. <br />
<br />
Lukianoff and Haidt feel vulnerable when facing the possibility of unwittingly offending someone. This threat has grown with new policies:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Until recently, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights
acknowledged that speech must be “objectively offensive” before it
could be deemed actionable as sexual harassment—it would have to pass
the “reasonable person” test. To be prohibited, the office wrote in
2003, allegedly harassing speech would have to go “beyond the mere
expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds
offensive.” But in 2013, the Departments of Justice and Education greatly
broadened the definition of sexual harassment to include verbal conduct
that is simply “unwelcome.” Out of fear of federal investigations,
universities are now applying that standard—defining unwelcome speech as
harassment—not just to sex, but to race, religion, and veteran status
as well. Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective
feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student
is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional
reasoning is now accepted as evidence.</blockquote>
There is a fair point to be made that legal solutions implemented by administrative bureaucracies are poor arbiters of offense. Because abstract principles cannot consistently govern what counts as offensive, nervous college administrators will likely react by generating time-consuming procedures that will enrich lawyers while discouraging discussion of potentially controversial subject matter.<br />
<br />
But Lukianoff and Haidt don't stop with practical objections; they take an extra shot at emotional people. The easily insulted are those who Trump would call "losers," the bleeding hearts whose thin skins render them unable to deal with the rough-and-tumble world of economic and military competition. Because offended people are unreliable sources, we should instead appeal to a "reasonable person" standard. But who would this be, exactly? Apparently, the best people to judge offense are those who have never been offended. <br />
<br />
One hypothetical candidate for reasonable person could be the paragon of reason, Thomas Jefferson. At the conclusion of their essay, Lukianoff and Haidt cite Jefferson's comments about the founding of the University of Virginia as the gold standard for intellectual freedom: "For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to
tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." One irony is that if they had searched through all of human history, they
could not have found a more perfect example of how a brilliant political
and scientific mind could reconcile lofty ideals of freedom with
practices of racial and sexual domination. You would think that an essay trying to convince you that racism is no big deal might not want to cite a slaveholder as an authority on freedom.<br />
<br />
But then again, Lukianoff and Haidt could be telling us that the trouble with politically correct students is that they are so preoccupied with Jefferson's racism and sexism that they fail to appreciate his vision of freedom. Students can be trained to see racism and sexism as less of a problem if they learned to think differently. To this end, Lukianoff and Haidt recommend confronting threats as a form of "exposure therapy," which is how you can get over something like an irrational fear of elevators: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a
distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension
begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the
lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new
association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear
during exposure is called habituation.) </blockquote>
With enough exposure therapy, students will learn that racism and sexism are not dangerous after all. The real problem is their irrational fear of nonexistent threats. To inoculate yourself from threats, Lukianoff and Haidt recommend a stoic approach in which you change yourself rather than attempt to the change the world around you:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they
will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip
students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot
control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism,
Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve
happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can
master your desires and habits of thought.</blockquote>
I am not sure exactly what sutras teach this nor am I persuaded that Stoicism and Buddhism contain interchangeable "great truths." But it is worth considering how this brand of positive thinking would work for someone like Bailey Loverin, a University of California, Santa Barbara student who sponsored a resolution on trigger warnings and <a href="http://dailynexus.com/2014-02-27/a-s-senate-passes-proposal-to-label-trauma-provoking-academic-content/" target="_blank">described</a> herself: "first as a student, second as a woman and third, as a survivor of sexual abuse." She does not seem coddled. But Loverin is coddled, according to Lukianoff and Haidt, because she fails to recognize that abuse is just a projection of the negative energies in her mind. No abuse really can hurt you if you realize that bodies are illusions, and that sentient attachments are the source of suffering.<br />
<br />
Paeans to stoicism are coming not only from popular magazines. The American Association of University Professors' <a href="http://www.aaup.org/report/trigger-warnings" target="_blank">statement</a> on academic freedom is a ringing endorsement of an exposure therapy approach to pedagogy. The AAUP characterizes the concerns of students like Loverin as "infantilizing and anti-intellectual" and asserts that they "threaten the academic freedom of teachers and students whose classrooms
should be open to difficult discussions, whatever form they take." As someone who feels comfortable within academic cultures of rigorous debate, I get where the AAUP is coming from. But I also have to consider the possibility that not everyone shares my sensibility. The AAUP, however, thinks that students are blank slates. The AAUP assumes that trigger-warning advocates cannot handle discussions about difficult topics because these are intellectual problems that students have never encountered before they stepped foot in a college classroom. But what students like Loverin are saying is that these subjects are all too familiar and real.<br />
<br />
The AAUP's Jeffersonian conviction that the truth will set you free might be less persuasive to those who have stoically endured different forms of social harm for a long time and have yet to see exposure make injuries go away. Rather than embrace classroom discussions in "whatever form they take," advocates for safer spaces assert that some matters are better dealt with in environments of care, precision, and a self-critical awareness of people's vulnerabilities. As Kelly J. Baker <a href="https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1030-dear-liberal-professor-students-aren-t-the-problem" target="_blank">explains</a>, her pedagogical approach "emphasized respect, dignity, and empathy in our discussions of those hard topics. Sometimes, students' feelings were hurt, and so were mine. I recognized the legitimacy of their feelings. More important, I modeled mutual respect and empathy."<br />
<br />
To be honest, I do not know what the right answers are for how to develop policies that can include the diverse teaching and learning styles that make up universities. But it seems unhelpful for the AAUP to tell a survivor of abuse to stop being such a baby. <br />
<br />
One thing that the ferocity of the AAUP's response to students makes clear is that trigger warnings are remarkably successful at making professors feel vulnerable. In a thoughtful <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/recrimination-and-ruined-hope/" target="_blank">reflection</a>, Rei Terada addressed Laura Kipnis's <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/My-Title-IX-Inquisition/230489" target="_blank">experience</a> of facing a Title IX complaint as an example of how a tenured professor had to face an unwelcome feeling of precarity: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I’m not unsympathetic to Kipnis’s experience of administrative
persecution, its protocols “under-explanatory in the extreme” (Kipnis,
“My Title IX”). Rather, it sounds all too familiar, like what people
lower in the hierarchy, people unlike myself, often experience. Faculty
continue to sound oblivious to the conditions in which others in the
university live. Kipnis’s original essay contends that “it’s just as
likely that a student can derail a professor’s career <i>these days</i>
as the other way around” (“Sexual Paranoia”; my italics), and at length
this turn-about seems to be much of the problem. It’s shocking to Kipnis
that due to the animosities, “a tenured professor on [her] campus”
might now lie “awake at night worrying” about losing her job (“My Title
IX”); but the novelty of the experience suggests that the tenured
professor does not lie awake worrying about others’ losses, and doesn’t
find them intolerable. </blockquote>
Kipnis's experiences point to real problems in administrative responses to student complaints, but they also point to some limits in how we think about those problems. Instead of talking about how social inequalities produce vulnerable people, anti-coddling manifestos identify other people's vulnerabilities as the problem. The vague sense that political correctness is on the rise is not caused by sheltered students but by assertive students willing to file legal complaints against professors. Professors feel vulnerable in the face of threats like stressful legal proceedings or conceivably losing their jobs. It is frightening to think that you might work your whole life to get to a position where you feel free and empowered and have all of that taken away by someone whose feelings you cannot anticipate and whose politics you do not share. What trigger-warning advocates are saying is that it is okay to be vulnerable, but focusing on the harm caused by Title IX proceedings without considering the harm that Title IX is supposed to address is a choice to privilege some vulnerabilites over others.<br />
<br />
Complaints about political correctness are always
responses to an experience of vulnerability that is novel. You thought
you knew what was offensive until someone
finds previously invisible forms of racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism in something you said. This feeling of being wounded by criticism informs Lukianoff and Haidt's warnings about college campuses or Trump's warnings of a nation of losers. Not long after decrying political correctness, for example, Trump attacked Kelly for not treating him nicely even though he had been very nice to her. While he had little time for the criticism from the many women he had insulted, he did ask us to consider his own hurt feelings.<br />
<br />
What this means is that the feeling that you have when you <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid" target="_blank">complain</a> about coddled college
students, that is the feeling of Trump for president. You get it.
There is some Donald Trump in you too. That feeling of threat, of vulnerability, that sense that others fail to appreciate your hard work and might take everything from you, that is
your inner Trump speaking.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-7911458468045903412015-05-26T19:12:00.001-07:002015-05-27T21:13:05.016-07:00Kind of a Big Fake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some cool looking data from LaCour and Green's study</td></tr>
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By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKiSPUc2Jck" target="_blank">scene</a> from <i>The Legend of Ron Burgundy</i>, the journalist Brian Fantana anoints himself with a special cologne made with "bits of real panther." The cologne's pungent gasoline aroma does not shake Fantana's confidence in its seductive powers. As he explains, "They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time." Fantana's data make no sense, of course, but this is beside the point. What matters is that "they" have done "studies."<br />
<br />
The seductive magic of studies hit the interwebs this past week when it was <a href="http://retractionwatch.com/2015/05/20/author-retracts-study-of-changing-minds-on-same-sex-marriage-after-colleague-admits-data-were-faked/" target="_blank">revealed</a> that a graduate student named Michael LaCour faked the data in an <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6215/1366" target="_blank">article</a> entitled "When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality." The study showed that canvassers working on behalf of marriage equality could change people's minds after relatively short conversations. The essay also compared the persuasive power of straight and gay activists, suggesting that contact with gay canvassers produced longer and more sustainable changes in political attitudes.<br />
<br />
LaCour co-authored the article with a professor of political science named Donald Green. While Green helped to write the study, LaCour gathered all of the data and snookered his co-author into thinking it was real. Green was not the only one fooled. The findings made their way to Ira Glass's <i>This American Life</i>, which discussed the article in a <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind" target="_blank">story</a> entitled "The Incredible Rarity of Changing Your Mind." The study was appealing because it confirmed liberal ideas about the sources of social conflict: that social divisions are caused by personal prejudices that can be dispelled if only people could get to know each other. In addition, LaCour's data assured us that people are persuadable. The takeaway from the study is that voters might be a lot nicer and reasonable then we might have thought. <br />
<br />
None of this necessarily means that the findings have been proven wrong. Ironically, activists who worked to pass a recent referendum for marriage equality in Ireland <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/marriage-referendum/personal-route-to-reach-public-central-to-yes-campaign-1.2211282" target="_blank">used</a> the LaCour and Green study as a template for their own political strategy. If LaCour had not been a quantitative social scientist, he could have simply
written the study without the data. If he was delivering a TED talk or writing an op-ed column, he could have said the same thing
and possibly received critical acclaim and invitations to lucrative speaking engagements. <br />
<br />
But LaCour inhabits an academic universe in which faking data is a cardinal sin. Some have concluded that the current scandal proves that the system <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/21/a-glass-half-full-view-of-academic-fraud-in-political-science/" target="_blank">worked</a> and confirms the importance of reliable data gathering. As David Brookman, one of two UC Berkeley graduate students who discovered to the fake data when they tried to craft a similar study, <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/230313/" target="_blank">explains</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The nature of the work that we do as quantitative researchers is that
you allow the data to tell you what you think the truth should be. You
don’t take your views and then apply those to the data; you let the data
inform your views.</blockquote>
Brookman's faith in data is itself an interesting datum. The LaCour affair seems to show that data themselves aren't what persuade people. LaCour recognized that he just needed to have some data, that if he could produce sophisticated charts, graphs, and numbers it was unlikely that anyone would check.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>For his part, Green <a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/05/co-author-of-the-faked-study-speaks-out.html?mid=twitter-share-scienceofus" target="_blank">affirms</a> Brookman's commitment to the purity of data: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I don’t really care how the study comes out, I just want to know how
the experiment comes out. It comes out the way it comes out — I just
want it to come out the same way twice, however it comes out, so that
other people will find the same thing I’m finding. Then they can do
replications and extensions and new directions. I guess there was this view that maybe you had to make the findings
especially spicy for people to sit up and take notice, but I don’t think
I — I hope I never conveyed that view to him. That’s one of the things
that’s a real head-scratcher now for me.</blockquote>
While this is an honest description of the professional ethos of a social scientist, Green's statement makes perfectly clear that he knows why his co-author did what he did. Like any talented confidence man, LaCour astutely exploited the gap between what people say they want and what they really want. Political scientists say they just want data. What they really want is a compelling story, especially with findings that have practical political consequences. A rising academic star like LaCour understood that few co-authors sign on
to projects that have accurate numbers but little significance. This is not to single out Green. LaCour hoodwinked far more than a single political science professor. His ability to "make the findings especially spicy for people to sit up and take notice" nearly got him a PhD and landed him a tenure-track job at Princeton University within six years of graduating from college.<br />
<br />
LaCour understood that the data themselves were less important than who authorized the data. This is why Green's name was invaluable. Invoking the legacy of Ron Burgundy, Ira Glass <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2015/05/canvassers-study-in-episode-555-has-been-retracted" target="_blank">reports</a> that Green is "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8OxKx6zKkQ" target="_blank">kind of a big deal</a>": <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
LaCour is a grad student but Donald Green is kind of a big deal.
Columbia Professor. Meticulous and respected. One professor told us “I
trust anything Don Green publishes.”
</blockquote>
In fairness, it is impossible not to <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/as-a-major-retraction-shows-were-all-vulnerable-to-faked-data/" target="_blank">depend</a> upon this sort of trust to some extent or another. When I accept scientific consensuses about global climate change or the efficacy of vaccines, for example, I trust the authority of scientists who are gathering and analyzing the data. There is good reason to do this because the data would be entirely unintelligible to me. I also marvel at the amazing things people can do with numbers. Anyone who remembers the predictions of <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/" target="_blank">538</a> in the last couple national elections can attest to the accuracy of statistical analysis of polling data.<br />
<br />
But as someone who dabbles in the study of American politics, I can also think of counter-anecdotes to the LaCour and Green study. One could point out that their findings conflict with much of what we know
about American history, which is full of examples where racial and
sexual discrimination existed among populations where people interacted
closely with those they feared or exploited. Not to say that this is
always the case. If I was to draw on my own powers of anecdotal
reasoning, I would say that some people might change their minds after a
short conversation while others might dig in their heels. I would also
hazard a guess that some canvassers are more persuasive than others for a variety of personal reasons. If
you were to ask me what I thought of LaCour and Green's findings, then, I would probably say something
wishy-washy like: "It would depend on the context." I would need to
know more information about particular people in particular situations
talking about particular issues.<br />
<br />
But a quantitative study like LaCour and Green's isn't interested in distinguishing among contexts. They seek to control for contexts through numbers. Before you can let the data tell you what to think, you need to decide what sorts of personal data you are going to ignore. To this end, the faked study's abstract describes the methodological work of counting gay or straight messengers as nothing other than gay or straight messengers:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A randomized placebo-controlled
trial assessed whether gay (<i>n</i> = 22) or straight (<i>n</i> = 19) messengers were effective at encouraging voters (<i>n</i> = 972) to support same-sex marriage and whether attitude change persisted and spread to others in voters’ social networks.
</blockquote>
For people to become statistical averages, they need to be randomized and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfy9ZqKUJjU" target="_blank">anonymized</a>. The ability to reduce messengers to gay or straight identities depends upon eliminating lots of relevant data so that you have something consistent you can measure. This invents datum like "gay messenger" or "straight messenger" in ways that conceal the anecdotal nature of these categories. Examinations of how short conversations change attitudes do not assess the cultural histories of systems of classification that produce singular datum like "straight" or "gay" or "conservative" or "liberal" or "conversation."<br />
<br />
To critical theorists who analyze these sorts of categories, LaCour and Green's data seem bizarrely naive, untheorized, and lacking in rigor. I'm not saying that these categories are naive, untheorized, or unrigorous; I'm saying they will look that way to people whose disciplinary orientation leads them to seek out complexity, nuance, subtlety, and difference. For scholars who seek to understand the cultural logic of systems of classification, measuring already existing classifications misses the most interesting part of the analysis.<br />
<br />
For the kind of scholarship that I do as a critical theorist and
occasional historian, a collection of anecdotes is more
useful than a data set because anecdotes contain a lot more
information.
I have the luxury of working with sources that are not randomized or anonymized. Because this approach
offends the axiom that "the plural of anecdote is not data" social
scientists would conclude that people like me have no data at all. They are largely correct; I have no measurable data I
could separate from my own analysis. To quantitative social scientists, therefore, critical theorists just string together a bunch of words signifying <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2013/09/steven-pinker-likes-you-he-really-likes.html" target="_blank">nothing</a>; we are all LaCour.<br />
<br />
I would accept the critique that I lack stable systems of measurement. But this is not because my work is any less rigorous or precise than quantitative social science. There are different measures for academic rigor because learning an academic discipline means deciding what sorts of things you are going to be imprecise about. This is why I am not so sure about Brookman's assertion that "you let the data
inform your views." Professions of faith that the data tell their own story ignore the culturally specific choices that inform what counts as a datum in the first place. Part of why LaCour was successful was because he was able to take advantage of uncritical beliefs that ignored how disciplinary knowledge is produced and authorized. But then again, I'm just making this up.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-25734524369870517382015-04-05T19:31:00.000-07:002015-09-22T10:47:52.452-07:00RFRA's Rocky Slope<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDPYOFZA3G6txjEbxtiQa5PSkQ5QhmffNUbCDaHaO7y8Ny1FLeA2wWI9RhwUtgH8OE16LyXq9ygi4I0xn-OnmbqP0NcTklqU1gQWDQQu_4vAkTiSzCf9KDagWLTionlPA4KVWSMpjf6iw/s1600/moguls_freestyle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDPYOFZA3G6txjEbxtiQa5PSkQ5QhmffNUbCDaHaO7y8Ny1FLeA2wWI9RhwUtgH8OE16LyXq9ygi4I0xn-OnmbqP0NcTklqU1gQWDQQu_4vAkTiSzCf9KDagWLTionlPA4KVWSMpjf6iw/s1600/moguls_freestyle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Wishing for a Vacation</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<br />
While Americans are divided about the meaning of religious freedom, at least everyone can agree that Governor Mike Pence has had a bad week. When Pence signed into law the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), he <a href="http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/25/gov-mike-pence-sign-religious-freedom-bill-thursday/70448858/" target="_blank">explained</a> that he wanted to protect the religious freedom of "every Hoosier of every faith." This seemingly innocuous proclamation was met with a flood of objections from voices ranging from the Hoosier-bred David Letterman to the Hoosier-beloved <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2015/03/31/nascar-comes-out-against-indiana-religious-freedom-law/" target="_blank">NASCAR</a>. The critics worried that the law would give Indiana citizens a religious right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Some Christian bakers, florists, photographers, and pizzeria operators confirmed these fears by announcing that they would refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.<br />
<br />
In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/us/religious-freedom-restoration-act-arkansas-indiana.html" target="_blank">response</a> to the national uproar, Pence insisted that the act be amended to make clear "that this law does not give businesses the right to discriminate against anyone." One irony is that the amended Indiana RFRA states more clearly than the federal or other state RFRAs that it cannot be used for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (this is not to say that such discrimination is now against state law, however, as it was not outlawed in the first place).<br />
<br />
So all good, then? Well, not so fast. Amending RFRA might actually highlight its power to erode the liberty of religious minorities. What Pence's amendment shows is that the legislature can clarify what counts as religious liberty. The problem is that what the legislature giveth the legislature can taketh away. In theory, constitutional religious liberty claims would be inaccessible to legislative meddling. As a state statute, RFRA would leave religious protections up to the whim of democratic majorities.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>This is not exactly what RFRA was intended to do. The federal RFRA hoped to instruct the courts to interpret the 1st and 14th amendments with the Sherbert test that the court used before the unpopular <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10098593029363815472" target="_blank">Employment Division v. Smith</a> decision. The court responded to RFRA four years later by insisting that interpreting the Constitution was their job. As Justice Kennedy wrote in <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8746804851760570747" target="_blank">City of Boerne v. Flores</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When the political branches of the Government act against the background of a judicial interpretation of the Constitution already issued, it must be understood that in later cases and controversies the Court will treat its precedents with the respect due them under settled principles, including <i>stare decisis</i>, and contrary expectations must be disappointed. RFRA was designed to control cases and controversies, such as the one before us; but as the provisions of the federal statute here invoked are beyond congressional authority, it is this Court's precedent, not RFRA, which must control.</blockquote>
So it would seem that Kennedy's logic would have rendered RFRA dead and buried. The effect of the <i>Boerne</i> decision, however, was to say that even though RFRA is unconstitutional you can sort of use it anyway through a legal back door. While congress cannot tell the court how to interpret the constitution, congress can tell the court how to interpret congress's own statutes. RFRA would not apply to state laws because the only way this could work would be for congress to tell the court how to interpret the 14th amendment, and Kennedy's decision ruled this out. RFRA continues to guide the court's decisions at the federal level, then, because these are matters of statutory law and not constitutional law. For this reason, states like Indiana needed to pass their own acts. <br />
<br />
In practice, RFRA rulings are constitution-like and is easy to confuse RFRA cases with constitutional cases. There are significant differences, however, between constitutional rights and RFRA rights. As legal scholar Gregory Magarian <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272662" target="_blank">explains</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Congress has two ways around Federal RFRA - repeal of the Act itself or exemption of a particular action from the Act's effects - either of which it can achieve by simple majority vote. Thus, Federal RFRA is far easier to abrogate than a constitutional provision.</blockquote>
This would apply to state RFRA's as well. If it is possible to clarify that religious liberty is not a reason to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, it is possible to clarify all sorts of things. In the short run, this appears to fix a problem for Indiana. In the long run, it empowers various and sundry state legislatures to develop their own classification systems for what counts as religious liberty.<br />
<br />
RFRA would not be the only time statutory law has sought to protect
minority rights. The Civil Rights Act would be a prominent example. But unlike the Civil Rights Act, RFRA was an obvious ploy by powerful groups who hoped to use minority protections as a front for their own interests. For one thing, the label "religious minority" raises lots of
questions about what exactly classifies a minority religious group. In the 2014 <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf" target="_blank"><i>Burwell v. Hobby Lobby</i></a>
decision, a large evangelical corporation <a href="http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2014/12/29/the-zero-effect-doctrine/" target="_blank">posed</a> as a religious minority
on
the grounds that its Christian beliefs required protections from
a hostile secular state. RFRA's political appeal stems from the
likelihood that it will be used primarily to protect
Christians who refuse to make accommodations for religious and sexual differences.<br />
<br />
For that matter, the RFRA debate glosses over the work of classifying
what is "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=U5X4N2exOsU" target="_blank">religious</a>" in the first place. The criteria of "sincerity"
takes for granted that Christian bakers who sincerely believe they
cannot bake cakes for same-sex weddings do so on religious grounds. But
there has been little explanation of what kind of religious exercise
this is. Presumably, sinners buy cakes all the time, and there are few
Christian doctrines which explain why sin has transitive properties that
attach themselves to neutral market transactions. <br />
<br />
One
explanation for why Christians might refuse to bake a same-sex
wedding cake is that they distinguish between private sinful
behavior and the public endorsement of such behavior in a legal
wedding. This is an important distinction because it demonstrates that Indiana's RFRA arose not because private
religious exercise was under threat but because Christians felt like
they were losing their grip over public sexual regulation. This means that the Indiana RFRA's primary purpose was to shore up Christian consensus. The public pushback had less to do with abstract principles of religious liberty than with political pressure from powerful corporations. Without corporate pressure, it is unlikely that minority groups would benefit from amendments to RFRA.<br />
<br />
Making RFRA rights contingent on corporate support might bode poorly for the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/03/30/the-first-church-of-cannabis-was-approved-after-indianas-religious-freedom-law-was-passed/?wprss=rss_national" target="_blank">First Church of Cannabis</a>'s well-publicized request for a religious exemption under Indiana's new law. It would be possible to imagine that Indiana could amend RFRA to clarify that it did not apply to drug laws. After all, there are no constitutional exemptions for drug use on religious liberty grounds, only statutory protections under RFRA.<br />
<br />
This is ironic in light of the Smith case that started it all. In his <i>Smith</i> decision, Justice Scalia worried that a religious exemption for consuming
Peyote could create a slippery slope in which all kinds of practices would require religious liberty protections. In
logic, slippery slopes are a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/02/why-we-should-avoid-the-slippery-slope" target="_blank">fallacy</a>.
But the possibility of legal slippery slopes can sometimes impose
analytic discipline. That is, you have to think about different
possibilities that might arise from any legal precedent. Of course,
this supposes that abstract tests like "compelling interest" or "least restrictive means" somehow provide stable guidance. In practice, judicial interpretation is subject to the same kinds of political calculations that legislatures might make. For example, it is entirely possible that the majority in <i>Hobby Lobby</i> would have found a way to grant a constitutional exemption if RFRA had never been passed. <br />
<br />
But tests like Sherbert and Smith do at least force justices to <i>pretend</i> to apply consistent principles. This pretense tends to rule out unapologetic cherry picking of religious liberties. State or federal RFRAs have none of these constraints. The amendments
to RFRA pose a new problem: a <i>rocky slope</i> in which legislatures
have the ability to pick and choose which sorts of things religious
liberty protects. It is unclear what this will mean for the future of religious freedom, but it is likely to make for a bumpy ride.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-36565037041426052192015-03-22T15:05:00.003-07:002015-06-04T14:19:31.680-07:00Kids Today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhap2TnrzFNj8NGC9aNM3L_9awNklMy3jtakiciE8sfNaQ8_qqI1vquOdcuaVUAYvvdr5YUgxN5smoXXGO_aNiRnH13p5wpJ6l5L6d-Y6Wtzm5U0j9y9ayMylCf6ShyGXfMmTL2_TtsOMI/s1600/Kids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhap2TnrzFNj8NGC9aNM3L_9awNklMy3jtakiciE8sfNaQ8_qqI1vquOdcuaVUAYvvdr5YUgxN5smoXXGO_aNiRnH13p5wpJ6l5L6d-Y6Wtzm5U0j9y9ayMylCf6ShyGXfMmTL2_TtsOMI/s1600/Kids.jpg" width="318" /></a></div>
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
During the <a href="http://variety.com/1995/film/features/excalibur-to-appeal-nc-17-of-kids-99130412/" target="_blank">controversy</a> surrounding the 1995 film <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113540/" target="_blank">Kids</a></i>, I remember seeing my Uncle Eamonn on<i> </i>television defending the movie's release. While he wanted an R instead of an NC-17 rating, he did warn that "This movie isn't for kids." The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) gave the film an NC-17 rating because of its "explicit sex, language, drug use and violence involving children." My uncle's objection was not based on his desire to get kids to see <i>Kids</i>; the problem was that movie theaters would not show NC-17 films. This amounted to de facto censorship because many people would not be able to see the film and it would fail to make any money. <br />
<br />
One remarkable feature of this controversy is how unremarkable <i>Kids</i> would be today. While its ability to shock still holds up, it now exists in a media landscape with such a proliferation of explicit sex, language, drug use, and violence that it would be hard to imagine its release making national news.<br />
<br />
This observation seems to be at odds with a slew of recent essays that tell us that the current generation of college students are fragile, protected, and sheltered. Judith Shapiro <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/12/15/essay-importance-not-trying-protect-students-everything-may-upset-them" target="_blank">calls</a> this phenomenon the "self-infantilization" of students. Laura Kipnis <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Sexual-Paranoia-Strikes/190351/" target="_blank">worries</a> about how students "cocooned from uncomfortable feelings" will deal with the harsh realities of the real world. Judith Shulevitz <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html" target="_blank">reports</a> that students in the past were "hardier souls" who would have resisted intrusive supervision:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Only a few of the students want stronger anti-hate-speech codes. Mostly
they ask for things like mandatory training sessions and stricter
enforcement of existing rules. Still, it’s disconcerting to see students
clamor for a kind of intrusive supervision that would have outraged
students a few generations ago. But those were hardier souls. Now
students’ needs are anticipated by a small army of service professionals
— mental health counselors, student-life deans and the like.</blockquote>
One feature of this current climate are requests for "trigger warnings" on course syllabuses. These warnings alert students to content that could cause psychological harm. A trigger warning is not unlike the MPAA's movie ratings.
Trigger warnings do not for the most part require material to be removed
from the course; they alert students to some themes and give
them the choice about whether they want to expose themselves to this content. It is this request for an exemption that feels like a kind of
de facto censorship to professors. It offends our sense of free inquiry
and the necessity of confronting difficult subject matter.<br />
<br />
Concerns about overprotection are not all that new. Many generations have lamented that kids today are spoiled and need to toughen up. For this reason, I tend to be suspicious of theories about generational essences. Such theories often draw heavily on nostalgic recollections of youth and tend to generalize about an entire era based on personal experiences.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, trigger warnings on college syllabuses are a novel development that asks for an explanation. I wonder, however, whether we can do a better job of analysis than we find in jeremiads against kids today. My goal here is not to defend or criticize trigger warnings, but to try to offer some more satisfying explanation about what is going on.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In some ways, Michelle Goldberg <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/201585/laura-kipnis-melodrama" target="_blank">points</a> to a key issue when she observes that trigger warnings cannot be explained by increased levels of sexual conservatism on college campuses. It could be the case that increased protections feel necessary when it is less clear what rules should limit human behavior. As she writes,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The politics of liberation are an uneasy fit with the politics of
protection. A rigid new set of taboos has emerged to paper over this
tension, often expressed in a therapeutic language of trauma and
triggers that everyone is obliged to at least pretend to take seriously. </blockquote>
I am less convinced that this is such an uneasy fit. The politics of protection could very well grow out of the politics of liberation. We find similar relationships between liberation and protection when people improvise rules to deal with novel social interactions. This is particularly evident in the habits of consumers of social media. <br />
<br />
I would suggest that calling for a trigger warning on a syllabus is something akin to blocking someone on Twitter or Facebook. Blocking is not a sign of fragility, necessarily. It is a way of exercising some measure of control over a chaotic flow of information, a mechanism for dealing with the many images and interactions that show up on a screen without warning. If someone chooses to show graphic violence, or threatens you, or makes a racist comment, you can block them. This doesn't infringe on their legal rights to say whatever they please, but it does assert your right not to have to deal with them. Blocking works differently from censorship. It does not seek to control public access to information but tries instead to protect against potential exposure.<br />
<br />
While many people have never personally blocked anyone, it would be impossible to consume media without blocking in some form or another. It would be psychologically exhausting, and at times even personally dangerous, to expose yourself to everyone and everything that was out there. This could be what people have in mind when they invoke PTSD triggers. PTSD language vexes many professors who point to some cases in which those asking for trigger warnings have not themselves experienced the trauma they seek to protect themselves from. Psychological language might make more sense if we understand blocking not as a response to past experiences (although it can be), but as a mechanism to protect yourself from new ones.<br />
<br />
To grow up with social media is to learn blocking as a habitual method of dealing with negative information. A more persuasive explanation for trigger warnings, then, is that we are seeing a clash between some people raised on the internet and some people who were educated in a culture of books, feature films, magazines, and television programs. Reading a book requires sustained attention to material in which we expect to occasionally encounter objectionable material. This is part of what gives books their moral complexity and ambiguity, and it is the ability to deal with this kind of complexity that professors see as a crucial feature of education. <br />
<br />
While I cannot speak for others of middle age, I can say that I didn't learn blocking when I was a kid because the blocking was done for me. What I have in mind is not legal censorship but the work done by institutions like publishers, editors, or organizations like the MPAA. While Americans prize free speech, it is easy to overlook all of the forms of regulation and protection implicit in the production and distribution of mass
media.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, I had little access to forms of media in which anyone
at anytime could choose to gratuitously insult or threaten me. What this means is that many people do not distinguish between intellectual and physical danger in the way that seems self-evident to professors. Understanding that texts are things that can cause you physical harm if
you are not careful leads to a different experience of reading. <br />
<br />
To be clear, my purpose here is not to defend or attack trigger warnings. I'm just hoping to offer what might be a better explanation for what is going on. It is also important to keep in mind that most students do not ask for trigger warnings. Not everyone develops the same blocking habits. While it is impossible to quantify sensitivity, my guess is that many students are less shockable than ever. Therefore, telling kids today to toughen up misses the point. Trigger warnings are not a symptom of an over-protected generation. They are the exact opposite of this. Trigger warnings are demands of people who have come of age in a mediated world with very few protections and have responded by learning to protect themselves. Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-71569367125120288482015-02-06T15:50:00.004-08:002015-02-09T00:33:08.694-08:00Pardon the Interruption<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS83cfDj6qktF5AQaBXZm6J3RkR2-YAgpKk21h2r5lmT-e6tGf3r4OffFtlZUEibMeI_rx5CLPpYmuBPJSwuchyWhzyTbsbGf1jttf_HoUZvzfxPQ1iplMoebjp53UCDaQ-BFPnyC_Ak4/s1600/Walker+Thinker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS83cfDj6qktF5AQaBXZm6J3RkR2-YAgpKk21h2r5lmT-e6tGf3r4OffFtlZUEibMeI_rx5CLPpYmuBPJSwuchyWhzyTbsbGf1jttf_HoUZvzfxPQ1iplMoebjp53UCDaQ-BFPnyC_Ak4/s1600/Walker+Thinker.jpg" height="385" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Governor Scott Walker, Thinker</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a> <br />
<br />
Defending his recent proposal to cut 300 million dollars from higher education in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker instructed professors to work <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/scott-walker-higher-education-university-professors-114716.html" target="_blank">harder</a> to make up the difference. Many tried to correct the governor by <a href="https://contemplativemammoth.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/an-open-letter-to-gov-scott-walker-stop-perpetuating-the-myth-of-the-lazy-professor/" target="_blank">noting</a> all of the work that college professors do. For my part, I have already <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-humanist-as-producer.html" target="_blank">written</a> about how an education in the humanities is useful because it teaches students how to work. The reason that I won't repeat this here is that it seems beside the point in the Wisconsin kerfuffle. That is, when Governor Walker says that college professors need to work more, he doesn't mean that they need to spend more hours in the office. As someone who <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/31/1096344/-Scott-Walker-college-drop-out-or-kicked-out" target="_blank">did not do much work in college</a>, Walker is aware that it takes a lot of effort to succeed in school. Indeed, the students who became college professors were the kind of nerds who worked a whole lot harder than him.<br />
<br />
What Walker really means is that the work that scholars do might be interesting to them but doesn't perform any practical economic function. The harder that professors work, the lazier they are. The lazy professor is destined to become an austerity archetype in the tradition of the surfing food-stamp <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GVP7dmcHBQ" target="_blank">glutton</a> or the welfare mom. Archetypes like welfare abusers or lazy professors persist not because they explain anything about social reality, but because they provide assurances that difficult structural problems can be fixed by reforming the personal habits of people who depend upon public resources. <br />
<br />
I could list the many reasons why Walker is wrong. But in this post I want to consider why his image of the lazy professor resonates with so may people. It seems to me that the way that professors talk about their own work might contribute to popular perceptions of their laziness. To this end, I would like to revisit the portrait of professorial labor found in Professor Laurie Zoloth's 2014 address to the <a href="https://www.aarweb.org/" target="_blank">American Academy of Religion</a>. In her <a href="http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/sites/default/files/article/file-attachments/Laurie%20Zoloth%27s%20speech.pdf" target="_blank">address</a>, entitled "Interrupting Your Life: An Ethics for the Coming Storm," Zoloth called on the AAR to take an occasional <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/setting-aside-a-scholarly-get-together-for-the-planets-sake.html" target="_blank">sabbatical</a> by canceling its annual meeting. Her hope is that by canceling the conference every seven years, the AAR could reduce the carbon footprint caused by thousands of academics flying from around the world to stay in hotels and eat meat.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>It is fair to say that the majority of AAR members shared the environmental concerns that animated Zoloth's proposal. Some <a href="http://religiondispatches.org/can-religion-professors-save-the-planet/" target="_blank">objected</a>, however, to Zoloth's assumption that scholars of religion should be in the business of telling people the proper way to be religious (she asked the AAR to fashion its policy by reference to the biblical concept of shmita as if it were self-evident that the Hebrew Bible was an authoritative text for all). I am not interested in revisiting this argument except to say that it makes sense for the AAR to think about sustainability not because it studies religion but because all organizations have an interest in avoiding ecological catastrophe. <br />
<br />
So I accept Zoloth's premise that faced with the existential threat posed by global warming, responsible citizens should think about ways to live sustainable lives and make the places where they work into more sustainable places. This also means, however, that the sabbatical idea could be applied to anything. Many would welcome the prospect of canceling one-seventh of our classes, or one-seventh of our football games. We could publish one-seventh fewer books and chop down one-seventh fewer trees.<br />
<br />
Some of these might not be bad ideas, necessarily. The problem is that they are not going to happen. These are not realistic proposals that will make work more sustainable. Zoloth knows this and does not expect that the AAR will actually cancel itself every seven years. There are too many practical reasons why the conference will take place. For this reason, I will take Zoloth's address for what it is: a symbolic statement that hopes to make us reassess our priorities. <br />
<br />
In my view, Zoloth's symbolism is the sort of thing that feeds into Governor Walker's stereotype of the lazy professor. In most ways, Zoloth and Walker inhabit different universes. Whereas she hopes to convince us to reduce our carbon footprints, he wants to drill for more oil. Nevertheless, Walker's call for professors to work harder resonates with Zoloth's list of
more productive things that professors could do with their time. Take the way in which she describes why academics resist interrupting their work: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Is it a surprise that we understand interruption as a problem, the distraction of being in a world of necessary order? The chaos of utter otherness of being—all that is not-self, coming at your door, all that is not-work, come calling, just when you are writing your big idea.</blockquote>
The trouble with academics, then, is that they are self-absorbed people who write about big ideas and see everything else as an interruption. In other words, what Zoloth describes as academic work is the very thing that Walker thinks is
not work. Mostly, this is because Walker is wrong. Zoloth works hard
when she thinks and writes. Part of why Walker disdains this kind of
labor is that he himself puts very little effort into sustained
thinking. The kinds of ideas he proposes for governing are
appealing because they take so little thought to understand. <br />
<br />
Where both Walker and Zoloth are in agreement, however, is in their shared view that professors are people who expend
resources doing things that give them personal satisfaction. The image of scholarship as a solipsistic enterprise informs Zoloth's list of things that academics supposedly find distracting: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
From what are we interrupted? There are the thousand small serious interruptions, there are the questions of students, and their needs, there is the constant interruption which goes by the name of "administration," there are the petty cascades of email, the sense of news constantly on a crawl beneath the actual work of our lives. There are bodies that need ordinal tending: children, the old, everyone who needs us to look at the drawing, to attend to the wound, to life them up in our arms, now.</blockquote>
To be clear, Zoloth is being ironic here. She hopes to show that professors have their priorities out of whack. To do this, she chides professors for immersing themselves in self-absorbed
contemplation to the point that they neglect their students, their
families, their communities, and even their own bodies. For whom is this a
problem exactly? Who has the kind of job where the interruptions Zoloth describes would be felt as an intrusion into their ordinary work?<br />
<br />
To answer this, we would have to imagine a university professor who is awash in resources. These
resources would support a life of deep contemplation, allowing a professor to ponder big questions
in the solitude of reading and writing. I would suggest that this is exactly what Walker thinks that professors currently do all day long. Zoloth and Walker share the belief that professors have so many resources at their disposal that we need to think about ways of putting those resources to better use. <br />
<br />
Walker's and Zoloth's visions of the life of a professor do not resonate in the place that I work: a cash-strapped public university in which professors do what they can with the limited resources they have. Answering the questions of students is not an interruption from my work. It is my work. Similarly, an academic conference is a place where I get a chance to work with other people and engage in conversations that can help me to do my work better. Rather than defend the importance of academic work to a skeptical public, Zoloth affirms Walker's suspicion that we already have more than we need. <i></i>In her explanation of what professors can do instead of attend conferences, for example, she recommends an program of professorial <i>noblesse oblige</i>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What if, on that day, we taught the poor, in local high schools, community colleges, or the prison, the
hospital, the military base, the church, mosque, synagogue or temple.</blockquote>
One reason why Zoloth's call to lecture at community colleges might be jarring to many professors is that they already teach at community colleges. Her call to reach out to the poor might also confuse the majority of university professors who work as contingent faculty and struggle to pay their bills. Ironically, Walker's budget cuts are likely to hit hardest at precisely the kinds of schools that are already struggling with decades of shrinking public funding. This is not an accident. Walker is fine with professors indulging their intellectual passions as long as this is paid for with private money. His budget cuts to higher education will have the effect of every policy he pursues: they will redistribute resources from public to private institutions. The rich will get richer and everyone else will work harder.<br />
<br />
None of this is what Zoloth intends, of course. In fairness to her, she is asking what she can do as a tenured professor in an elite private research university. I am citing her sabbatical proposal not to single it out as exceptional, but because it serves as an illustration of how professors often talk about what they do. My concern is that proposals to suspend our work provide rhetorical fodder for the Governor Walkers of the world who are all too happy to interrupt higher education. Instead of interrupting our work to perform acts of private <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g" target="_blank">charity</a> in places like high schools, prisons, and hospitals, then, we might be better served to give people who work in these institutions the resources that they need <i>to do their jobs</i>. Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3606922504581811826.post-29562128785757013202015-01-17T19:06:00.003-08:002015-02-09T15:07:35.330-08:00It's a French Thing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9p7nmoyUGkzZPPFKfhn_MqsAFW0gbolSrvCrqwlz1nUZyR6EbF2x19ARldMe6ojSCQa8-6erAGz_kCLxOFAntEofo4t2K8Y-PHcFmErpBcrz5eqLNiQ_b83rWVl6FtHFsWE0hEl8KY0/s1600/Georgia+Foucault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9p7nmoyUGkzZPPFKfhn_MqsAFW0gbolSrvCrqwlz1nUZyR6EbF2x19ARldMe6ojSCQa8-6erAGz_kCLxOFAntEofo4t2K8Y-PHcFmErpBcrz5eqLNiQ_b83rWVl6FtHFsWE0hEl8KY0/s1600/Georgia+Foucault.jpg" height="400" width="285" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We readily imagine that we are a very tolerant civilization, that we
have welcomed all forms of the past, all the cultural forms foreign to
us, that we welcome also behavior, language, and sexual deviations. I
wonder if this is an illusion.</i> - Michel Foucault </blockquote>
By <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/finbarrcurtis/" target="_blank">Finbarr Curtis</a><br />
<br />
The proliferation of essays following the Charlie Hebdo massacre confirmed Roland Barthes's observation that "Every national shock produces a sudden flowering of written commentary." Most rallied behind the slogan "Je suis Charlie," but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg8Y0WpbfZw" target="_blank">some</a> offered other views. In this vein, I wrote <a href="http://leviathanandyou.blogspot.com/2015/01/je-ne-suis-pas-charlie_8.html" target="_blank">something</a> that resisted conventional wisdom. While I supported Charlie Hebdo's right to free speech and protection from murder, I was less convinced that I needed to applaud Charlie's heroism. Many <a href="http://67-tardis-street.tumblr.com/post/107589955860/dear-us-followers" target="_blank">lamented</a> how hypersensitive, humorless Anglophone academics like me ignored the French context. As Olivier Tonneau <a href="http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends" target="_blank">explained</a>, if Brits and Americans knew more we would realize that these cartoonists were precious friends and allies: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Even if their sense of humour was apparently inacceptable to English
minds, please take my word for it: it fell well within the French
tradition of satire – and after all was only intended for a French
audience. It is only by reading or seeing it out of context that some
cartoons appear as racist or islamophobic. Charlie Hebdo also
continuously denounced the pledge of minorities and campaigned
relentlessly for all illegal immigrants to be given permanent right of
stay. I hope this helps you understand that if you belong to the radical
left, you have lost precious friends and allies.</blockquote>
In Adam Gopnik's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/satire-lives" target="_blank">description</a>, the French have a "savage tradition" of satire that would shock most American sensibilities:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The staff of the French magazine <i>Charlie Hebdo</i>, massacred in an
act that shocked the world last week, were not the gentle daily
satirists of American editorial cartooning. Nor were they anything like
the ironic observers and comedians of manners most often to be found in
our own beloved stable here at <i>The New Yorker.</i> (Though, to be
sure, the covers of this magazine have startled a few readers and
started a few fights.) They worked instead in a peculiarly French and
savage tradition, forged in a long nineteenth-century guerrilla war
between republicans and the Church and the monarchy. </blockquote>
These reported national disagreements recall the 1971 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8" target="_blank">debate</a> between Noam Chomsky and Michel
Foucault, which began as a discussion of human nature and developed into an argument about justice, inequality, and freedom. Except in this case, the parties have switched sides. The French line up with Chomsky to defend enlightenment ideals while some Americans see freedom through the lens of discursive power.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>This comparison with Chomsky and Foucault is admittedly superficial, however, and Chomsky himself <a href="http://stopwar.org.uk/news/noam-chomsky-on-charlie-hebdo-one-man-s-terrorism-is-another-man-s-war-on-terror" target="_blank">affirms</a> "Je Suis Charlie" only with strong qualifications. To bring Foucault's comments from that debate into the contemporary moment, we would have to think about the class struggle in a way that has not been the focus of current discussions of free expression. Foucault and Chomsky wouldn't neatly line up on either side because national typologies usually don't hold up well under criticism. For this reason, I am unpersuaded that there is some Anglophone gene that causes folks like me to resist identifying with Charlie. For one thing, the "Je ne suis pas Charlie" crowd is a minority in the United States. The overwhelming sentiment in American popular media supports recent rallies for free speech, especially when the threat to freedom is perceived as coming from violent Muslim extremists. Furthermore, essays like Tonneau's rehearse familiar arguments that are made in the
United States all the time. After all, the discussion of the recent
tragedy brought together subjects that are familiar features of American
life: free speech, religious dissent, and wanton gun violence.<br />
<br />
For my part, I am perplexed by the claim that people like me did not know the context for Charlie Hebdo; Tonneau's arguments were the very thing I was talking about. The focus of my analysis was the distinction between hate speech and respectable satire. The brief commentary that I wrote did not address questions about legal rights of free speech or the moral imperative not to murder. The reason for this is that I do not believe that 3.7 million people ever march to make a point about abstract legal principles. I was curious about how the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre was framed as a matter of identification, and I was convinced that what informed the proclamation "Je suis Charlie" was a sense of wounded nationalism.<br />
<br />
There has been little to persuade me that my intuitions were wrong. Instead of restricting Charlie Hebdo to a matter of legal rights, the "Je suis Charlie" slogan doubles down on
nationalism. Charlie Hebdo
is not just tolerated; it is quintessentially French. Not only is it in French, you have to <i>be</i> French to get the jokes. If learning to laugh at images of the Prophet Muhammad is part of learning to be French, this
has important implications for French Muslims who take offense at images designed to offend them. To take offense is to mark oneself as a foreigner, as someone insufficiently assimilated into French society. To presume that context will exonerate Charlie Hebdo is to take as self-evident that the proper context is European history. As Russell McCutcheon has <a href="http://edge.ua.edu/russell-mccutcheon/context-matters-sometimes/" target="_blank">noted</a>, there is a great deal at stake in deciding who gets to have a context:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The message? We have a history but they do not. We are nuanced and
context is therefore needed to properly understand what we’re up to, but
as for them….</blockquote>
While I will not repeat all of my previous argument, I still think a publication like Charlie Hebdo enjoyed the privilege of finding other, less sophisticated people's racism and Islamophobia to be a laughing matter. Laughing at someone else's bigotry is a way of making oneself comfortable. This brand of satire says, "Ha ha. Look at those backward, ignorant bigots
over there. It is a good thing we are nothing like them." Ironic racism is one way that tolerant, secular liberals congratulate themselves for their moral and intellectual superiority. <br />
<br />
I am not saying that it needs to be like this. Satire can also make us uncomfortable about our own racism and xenophobia. If "Je suis Charlie" was a way of saying "I am a bigot" and the demonstrations pointed toward a conversation about the many social divisions that confront <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks" target="_blank">us</a>, then this would be an interesting <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/i-might-be-charlie-hebdo-paris/384501/" target="_blank">discussion</a> to have (and it is possible that this is the conversation that Charlie Hebdo's writers might prefer that we have). But this is the direct opposite of how affirmations of "Je suis Charlie" ask us to feel. We hear adamant assertions that Charlie Hedbo is <i>not</i> racist and <i>not</i> Islamophobic. The problems come from foreigners who don't get the joke. It is only those who take offense who introduce bigotry where no bigotry previously existed.<br />
<br />
I would concede that there is a context for my remarks, and that I am shaped by my belief that stereotypical representations have social consequences that go beyond hurt feelings. In a way, Leigh Phillips <a href="https://ricochet.media/en/292/lost-in-translation-charlie-hebdo-free-speech-and-the-unilingual-left" target="_blank">sees</a> this correctly when he charges that Anglophone academics have brought their own politics into debates about Charlie Hebdo:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But this episode is about more than just the willful ignorance of a
unilingual left luxuriating in its whipped-up dander; there are deeper
worries about how such left and liberal critics are approaching freedom
of speech in general. The whole affair is quite the nadir for the
identitarian left, an object lesson in how its current tendency toward a
censorial, professionally offence-taking prudishness is limiting the
left’s advance, cutting us off from how most ordinary people live their
lives and navigate prejudice, and a breach with hundreds of years of
leftist thought and practice with respect to the enduring question of <i>freedom.</i></blockquote>
Phillips is probably right that if you find contemporary criticism of sexism and racism to be oppressive forms of political correctness, then you will see Charlie Hebdo as courageous. I lack such courage.Leviathan And Youhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10213789897609101731noreply@blogger.com0