Saturday, February 10, 2007
On Review, Harvard, Your Her Biatch
With further information it all gets more chemically comical. Harvard just didn't capitulate, in throwing the hapless Sommers overboard, the saw Opportunity to be on the winning side of Herstory. At some point, Red, Fem, and Green will realize they are so powerful that their alliance no longer is required. Then they will turn on each other like rabid dogs trapped in a putt-putt boat shimmering its away along "It's a Small World, After All". Until that day, they will be busy pissing on all the markers in the land.
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13 comments:
Good analysis, AA, but, uh, JJ had already pointed to this article. Oh, well, I guess he's on a roll now. He made me pay pack today some of the tab he claims I owed him (hmmmm...), but there must be a way ti get back at him. Maybe a stint at Hahvahd will do?
A stint at Harvard at the Radcliffe Institute. That would be a just dessert for ol JJ
Feminist politics have already grabbed hold of university, right? I guess I don't know anything about this Faust chick. I'll look into it.
What's to know? It's like asking who would become Soviet Party Boss in the 60s or 70s -- Brezjnev, Chernenko, Andropov -- what was there to know that one would not have known a priori?
Forgive me, AI: I've been trained to always consult the primary sources.
...for example, take this excerpt from this Faust interview:
Hackney: "The ambiguity of those new roles is one of the things that you lead to. If I had to describe the thesis or the theme of the book to an audience, I would say it is about how the antebellum gender roles that were prescribed for Southern women of the master class -- which is the subject of your book -- really disabled them from any useful wartime work. That's the first part of it. The second would be the experience of the war itself, the separation and deprivation, and how the roles into which they were thrust left them with a new but ambiguous notion of womanhood. Is that fair?
Faust: "That's very fair. Ambiguity is at the heart of it and sometimes makes it complicated to explain because it's really two things that I'm saying about these women. I'm not meaning either to condemn or celebrate them but rather to show how difficult the circumstances they faced were and how the kinds of expectations they'd been led to have of themselves made their lives difficult. The limited nature of the change that they were able to undergo is a product of those very forceful realities."
What's going on here, of course, is the victimization of Southern White women who were "prescribed" with a gender role by their husbands. A cultural construct, perhaps. Perhaps not. What is unfortunate is that Southern White women aren't interpreted as similar scum as the Southern white men for purchasing humans as property in the first place. Or, one could argue, Southern White men faced a similar prescribed cultural construct, and social inertia had everyone acting in a sort of predetermined fashion.
In any case, this interview is a gold mine!
Oh c'mon, enough diatribe, MFT. The point of her ambiguity is that PC is backed into a corner here. Women can't be anything but victims of men and Southerners can't be anything but oppressors of Blacks. If some woman back then (Master Class? I thought that was when a violinist gave mass lessons) gave an order to a slave, then she had to be a victim of that order too somehow in order for it all to work out.
JJ, you and I aren't diverging on anything. Diatribe? By that, we might as well call all of FCP enough diatribe too.
Also: if we -- from Classical Liberals or contemporary neo-cons -- want to reach anyone, or any newcomers, it'll be far easier to talk and perhaps convince them (maybe on mere singular issues) by using point-for-point examples instead of loaded political rhetoric. Both parties do it. My ears shut down when it happens. I know I'm not alone.
Let me know what you think about that little pedagogical theory.
Sorry. I reacted poorly to your note calling it a diatribe because I object to the ter 'scum' in describing people long dead and acting no worse than their peers. No biggie.
About the pedagogical theory, I'm not sure what you mean. You talking about the takeover of the Ed system by convinced wackos?
MFT, if you care to, it would be nice if you could go through more of this Faust woman's stuff and see if you can get a coherent picture of her thoughts. It's way too easy to portray her as a true believer of the PC mullah patrol and I am too inclined to do so.
Could you put together a post. You're the most professional humanities guy we have.
You're the most professional humanities guy we have.
Scary thought, I know.
In any case, I'll see if I can't set aside some time this evening to do so.
As for the pedagogical theory: I don't listen to Rush or Michael Moore or Bill O'Reilly because they tend to lump everything into two categories: Hard Left or Hard Right. If I don't listen to them for these reasons, I have to think others don't either. And I have a strong reason to believe that the others are more interested in thoughtful comment and critique rather than Right or Left or French political rhetoric. That's all. Hope it helps.
I don't like ideological purity either. It is most likely a pose, I always think.
I think what JJ means is that certain poses threaten the purity of his bodily essences
Here is a little review, certainly not up to graduate seminar standards, but capable of generating some real anger within the halls of humanities these days.
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