PRETEXT, a Re/INter/VIEW
       with Jane Gallop 11

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 18:14:25 +0900
From: dana@yaksi.eco.saitama-u.ac.jp (Dana Beckelman)
Subject: Rhetorical Harassment

It seems what we have here is a classic case of s/he said, s/he said, or, if you remember your "Cool Hand Luke," "a failure to communicate" (which no doubt Victor will say Nietzsche said first, but what the hell, Victor, I'm seduced. Since I'm long on time and short on libraries with books in English [and am still reading "The Dipshits Guide To The Internet"], in which book might I find "Homer's Contest"?). Suffice it to say unless Jane decides, after warming up on Victor at the MLA, to mud wrestle me on Oprah, you're just gonna have to wait for my book to decide who was the shit who hit the fan (and was it the fan's fault or did the shit have a reason?).

But since my favorite line in "When Harry Met Sally" is when Meg Ryan says, "I'm difficult!," I'll gladly accept being called so, and in that spirit I wanted to go back to Johanna's larger question, which I feel I erased, and ponder with y'all what might be "intellectual harassment" or "theory terrorism" or, following Byron's joke (or is that really you're next book, Victor?), "rhetorical harassment" and how it/they might be read/approached through theories of feminism (and/or power if you don't think feminism is inherently about power).

I don't have even the beginning of an answer in constant revision, but I think it might be an interesting question to pursue in terms of Jane's book, what has occurred in the r/i/v discussion thus far, teacher-student relations in general, and (and obviously for my own research purposes and retrospective understanding) how it is played (or laid, if you prefer) out in atmospheres that are sexualized (which may or may not include teacher-student "relations").

I was thinking this morning about this amazingly tall and broad professor I had once. I'm just guessing, but he must have been at least 6'6" and 250 lbs. and the first time I walked into his class I thought, Good goddess, would my father have made one hell of a tackle out of you, Son! Jump back, Mean Joe Green! But what was interesting to me (and more to the point) was how "the" dept. feminist, or the professor in whose class I was studying feminism at the time, seemed disturbed by him, not just for the "unfeminist" things he had supposedly said, but almost as if (though not like she really thought he was going to ring her skinny neck) his "presence" was a form of "harassment." And I saw the same phenomenon happen at a conference once when he kept banging on the podium and screaming about carrying a big stick and some people laughed, but some people looked like, Oh my god, he is going to ring our skinnny necks!

So I wonder, since I'm not as tall (unfortunately for my WNBA potential) but am closer to being as broad (unfortunately for my fem fatale potential), if that's the way people respond to me, too; if Jane found me difficult because I'm an in your face, in your space, bang on podiums and scream about big sticks intense kind of grrrl (though Jane is certainly as big as I am and not afraid to be in your face with her performances/book covers)? Or more generally, how does our physicality (and the emotionality it conveys) affect the way people respond to our rhetoric/theory/intellect? My lover calls my family the loud, argumentative, vehemente (though German, rather than Scillian) clan; does that mean every time I raise my voice, I'm perceived as angry; every time I'm argumentative, I'm perceived as stubborn; every time I'm a vehemente, I'm perceived as difficult? (Yes, Victor, this repression is a hard rope to hold, but it is "the" example on my mind at the moment)?

Oh what the hell. Wouldn't you, too, being me, given what you've seen of Jane on this list, have thought she would have been the perfect person to work with? I thought she was loud, argumentative, and vehement, and I would argue I kept working with her even when she was angry, stubborn, and difficult. What I didn't know was that when faced with her own "family romance" or her own "tapes playing back at her" (depending on your psychoanalytic or new age pop psych perspective), she trades romance for sex in order to "seduce" students to learn (i.e., see things her way). Were we supposed to be family or fuck buddies? Is using transference as a teacher/analyst as a way to fuck students/analysands "theory terrorism," Johanna? Because it would seem that she's not interested in enacting that particular theory at all. I'm the enemy and she's the hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Sounds like a bad break-up to me. So were we equals, in which case she would have had at least as good a chance to be fuck buddies as any other woman in the bar. You know what they say about closing time. ;) Or was she the teacher/mama to my student/child, in which case since I hadn't ever had to fuck my mama to get the car to go out on Saturday night with my girlfriend, why would I start now? In my family, all you had to do was your chores! (i.e., work/labor/what you are taught or have to do, but what is also valued for your having done it, even in your own unique mowing the lawn in nothing but your boxers--as long as you wait until the mail has already come--way).

What would have made Jane's book more interesting is for her to have addressed her culpability in that confusion, for her to have made a "case study" about an instance in which her desire and/or theory about sexualizing the transferential teacher-student relation didn't work and why? What were the issues of power involved? How might the way we enact our theories/rhetoric/intellects be forms of harassment? If sex has been forgotten in the emphasis on harassment by feminism(s), how might it be introduced AND STILL be aware of harassment? How might they co-exist rather then be pitted as either/or?

But as Terry noted, Jane's not interested in learning from her students or her experiences with them. And maybe that was my biggest shock. Watching Victor and Jane fence thoughout this discussion, I've had an advantage in having been a student in both Jane's and Victor's classes and I would say the way they've presented themselves here is the way they teach. Victor may say, You can believe whatever you want to believe and I can say if you believe that have I got a deal for you!, he may ask accusatory or inquisitorially tricky questions, but he also allows there to be a space for you to do the same to him. But Jane appears not to want to do so, perhaps because she did not take advantage of asking her own accusatory questions. And why would she? She has nothing to learn from us!

Maybe part of my culpability in what went wrong with Jane is that I had started my graduate studies in a "family" that fostered empowerment (see, Victor, it really is ALL your fault!); that said we as teachers have as much to learn from you the students as you do from us. Now we as teachers may not always get along and you may feel like you're in the middle of a divorced family, but you can't have everything! I learned a lot about "rhetorical harassment" from Victor and the Big Guy and "the" feminist and the "staggering" professor, about what our culpabilities are in the way we use rhetoric and the way we respond to students and to texts and enact it upon each other in our writing, and whether from a feminist standpoint or an ethical standpoint or making fun of carrying a big stick standpoint, the message was always the same: be aware of how you use your power. I have no doubt they, too, would call me angry, stubborn, and difficult. As I surely would have called them at times! And my experiences with my creative writing advisor at UWM were the same. But life went on and what was important was the power of the work, "our" work together as teacher and student, equally "harassing" each other ;) and being sharp, tough, and witty, too. (thanks, ddd!)

Dana

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 08:02:11 -0600
From: johanna@RedRiverOK.com
Subject: Re: post to Pretext

Jane wrote:

I'm trying to make a point about my labor and my sense of duty, not only b/c I've felt them misrecognized here, but b/c the situation is for me so completely reminiscent of teaching. In my daily duty to the list, I felt like the teacher -- not b/c I knew more or anything ridiculous like that, but because I was the one who had to show up everyday, who had to do the reading, no matter how busy I was or how tired, or how sick my kids were, who couldn't decide to cut class when I wasn't in the mood or had something better to do. That is probably the biggest difference btw the teacher & the student.

And I make this point b/c all the emphasis on the teacher's power in contemporary pseudo-political discourse on pedagogy neglects perhaps the most essential thing. And something we might not want to neglect in our politics. LABOR. Teachers labor for students. Students do not labor for teachers. Students benefit from our labor; we do not benefit from students' labor. Any application of the Marxist class model to our classes tends to neglect this very basic thing.

I realize you may not have time to answer this, but since your characterization of student labor has gotten you into more hot water I thought I'd give you the opportunity to swim out if you choose or even care. Maybe you can use the American spelling "labor" when you simply mean effort, the British "labour" when you mean it in the classic Marxist sense. As a grad student, I assure you I've done my share of labor "for" teachers, as I'm sure you did as well. ______I'm puzzled here about exactly who is applying "the Marxist class model to our classes." Where might you be headed in addressing the issue of labour in pedagogy? Is this simply a critique of views characterizing students as an oppressed class? A rejection of the Marxist class model in general? A revision of it? An argument for a better application of it? I'm not even sure if I've made the sources of my confusion clear--suffice to say I'm just confused. Thanks for sticking it out here, and sorry your first entry into this medium was here. (Surely, Victor, you can grant Jane a LITTLE naivete about what she was getting into when she signed on here?) Johanna

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 08:14:24 -0600
From: johanna@RedRiverOK.com
Subject: Re: Rhetorical Harassment

Dana wrote:

I wanted to go back to Johanna's larger question, which I feel I erased, and ponder with y'all what might be "intellectual harassment" or "theory terrorism" or, following Byron's joke (or is that really you're next book, Victor?), "rhetorical harassment" and how it/they might be read/approached through theories of feminism (and/or power if you don't think feminism is inherently about power).

I guess I'm interested why we automatically assume theory/rhetoric/intellectual activity should be "free" but debate about limitations on sex. What do we gain by putting the two into analogy w/ one another, and does the analogy fail when it comes down to issues of freedom, and if so why?

JOhanna

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 09:24:47 -0600 (CST)
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: Re: post to Pretext

On Tue, 10 Feb 1998 johanna@RedRiverOK.com wrote:

Thanks for sticking it out here, and sorry your first entry into this medium was here. (Surely, Victor, you can grant Jane a LITTLE naivete about what she was getting into when she signed on here?) Johanna

johanna, of course. and yet, it's more than the medium. it's having to deal in this medium, as steve suggested, with the time that people--all people subscribed--have to think through composing a question or questions and delivering them. and then time for followup questions. jane had as much time as everyone else. it's true that she was in the hot seat, but so has everyone who has ever been questioned in this medium or reinviewed. ten other people, including myself, have been reinviewed, and for a period stretching for as long as 3 full months in some cases.

we are all busy, many of us have children that require close attention, many of us get but 4-5 hrs sleep per night because of our labor, etc. but we go on and do what we do, and do not whine about it or ask for special sympathy.

we are still exploring this medium. we who tend to p/t-L have used, since 1994, different formats, with some very controlled, others wide open. and we are still exploring each other and trying to figure out what 'community' means in this environment. we do not want to sentimentalize it. to establish a community of diverse thinkers dealing with tough issues requires a lot of work, honesty, patience, tolerance, and an ability to put up with sibling rivalry and an ability to learn and change, no matter how painful they might be. in this medium there is no 'face,' but occasional attempts to save face. this is the house of dorian gray.

as to jane's comments about teachers/students, labor, enemies ..., johanna, i agree with you. i thought that the response was very revealing and damaging to jane. and i hope that she will respond to your questions and concerns. not to save face. but with the idea of moving towards a better community.

v

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:11:18 -0600 (CST)
From: Jane Gallop
Subject: jg>rh

Ron Hugar,

As far as I know I never said a feminist cannot sexually harass another feminist. I did say that a feminist sexual harasser was a contradiction in terms. But a contradiction is not a nonentity.

Jane

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:14:53 -0600 (CST)
From: Gary S Weissman
Subject: jg: labor

Students benefit from our labor; we do not benefit from students' labor. Any application of the Marxist class model to our classes tends to neglect this very basic thing.

For any teacher to claim this makes me very sad. I profit every day from my students' labour. Without them I would not have a job. Much more, however, I profit from them intellectually. I have never taught a class in which a student did not teach me something, and I have been doing this for twenty-five years.

Terry,

Well, I suppose I deserve your response and misunderstanding for trying to explain my thinking in impatient shorthand.

Without my students, I wouldn't have a job, but that doesn't mean I "profit from their labor," it means they are my clients, my charges, & that their tuition aids in paying my salary. This at the very least warps any application of the Marxist paradigm in which teachers are the bourgeoisie & students the proletariat.

Your final heartfelt testimony to what you learn from your students belongs to a genre. (I for example participated in that genre yesterday when I referred Collin to my student's work on feminist generations from which I had learned so much.) but the very existence of that genre of course bespeaks the special remarkable laudatory nature of learning from our students. The fact that we learn from our students (& of course we do) is a bonus. It is not necessary to the structure, not part of the job description. It is our job, our duty to teach them; it is not their job, not their duty to teach us. Our work is justified by its benefit to them; their work is not justified by its benefit to us. Their labor of learning is justified by its benefit to them.

I was wrong to say "we do not benefit from students' labor." I know that we do. but it is contingent, accidental. I was speaking in structures not experiences (w/o of course explaining that fact). I meant that it is necessary that our students benefit from our labor; it is not necessary that we benefit from theirs. And I meant to contrast it w/ the bourgeoisie/proletariat. The bourgeoisie benefits from the labor of the proletariat; the proletariat does not benefit from the labor of the bourgeoisie. The last sentence is a structural statement & is often contradicted by individual instances of charitable acts by the bourgeoisie. But those individual acts do not disrupt the structure, they support it.

Sorry if this too is too quick.

Jane

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:20:39 -0600 (CST)
From: Jane Gallop
Subject: ddd>jg: on clarity...and s'mo, plenty s'mo

ddd,

bye. You've been a decent and earnest interlocutor. I've really appreciated that.

Best wishes to you (or maybe we should all start to say fishes, in honor of Lizzy)

Jane

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:19:19 -0600 (CST)
From: Jane Gallop
Subject: A general post (another farewell)

Since today is my last day on this list, I've been doing some retrospective thinking about the experience. One thing in particular has become newly clear & I thought I'd write about it today.

For me the turning point (or the first one, b/c it's turned at least twice more since) of this discussion was Victor's second post to me. I don't believe I was sufficiently honest and open in my response to that post, and so I would like to attempt to say now what I should have said then.

The first half of that post was a discussion of Rorty (w/ a little Scarry thrown in). The second half was a battery of questions, all belonging more or less to the genre of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

In my response I tried to talk about the odd effect of these two different parts & their juxtapostion & I said something about not being addressed in the terms of my book. But what I said was vague & was not open enough, was defensive.

Because I did not then have the nerve to say that I had never read Rorty (or Scarry). I usually try to say as quickly as possible when I don't know something I am presumed to know, but here I felt unable to, somehow afraid to.

As I said a week or so ago (in a post to Johanna), I felt like I was being examined. I felt like it was assumed I SHOULD HAVE read the book & so I kinda tried to fake it (always a bad idea).

Why did I respond like a student at an examination? Is the answer in my psychology, in Victor's rhetoric, in the context of this interview of an author? I don't know the answer to that.

But I do know that my sense in the first half of the message of failing an examination, of panicking because I was being examined and didn't know the answer but had to cover, dovetailed perfectly with my sense of being interrogated in the second half of the post.

In the first half, I felt bad b/c I hadn't done what I was supposed to; in the second half I felt these were all trick questions to which it was impossible for me to give a right answer.

Given my inability to just come out & say, I don't know Rorty so I can't answer this, I did the best I could. I asked Victor what he meant by "pain" and said I couldn't answer the questions b/c I didn't understand the context. But maybe Victor's 3rd post would have been less of a barrage, had a simply said, I've never read Rorty, can we talk in the language of some text we share?

I'm hoping my reflections on this might be of some use. I suspect I'm not the only one who has found herself in a situation where she felt unable to admit she hadn't read a book it was presumed she had.

Jane

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 11:56:28 -0500 (EST)
From: malgosia askanas ma@panix.com
Subject: ma>jg: Request for Dumb Broad theory

Dear Jane,

I've noticed that when you do the Dumb Broad routine, you do it completely without the traditional elements of charm, eros or seductiveness. Now it could be that you're just not good at it. Or it could be that e-mail is the wrong medium for this particular schtick. Or it could be that you play it that way consciously and purposefully, in which case ___I would love to know how you'd theorize your commitment to doing it that way.

-malgosia

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 11:38:53 -0600 (CST)
From: Jane Gallop
Subject: jg>johanna

Johanna,

Yeah, as I said in my earlier post to Terry Goldie, I was foolish to introduce a brand-new subject, one tendentious, & think I could talk fast & be understood.

I'd like my point to be my emphasis not on the general theoretical point, but on the specific example I was speaking from, that is the structure of this list & the difference between my role & everyone elses & my attempt to characterize that difference in terms of duty v/ voluntariness.

You quoted two paragraphs but only comment on the second. It's the first I care about & was trying to use to explain what I meant by the second.

This was an example of too-careless writing. But a bad example of what I try to do in the book, take a structure from my experience & use it to make general theoretical interventions, to question certain presumptions.

As for my naivete about lists, well is it naive if one is literally ignorant and inexperienced. In our original negotiation as to whether I would do this, beside telling Victor that I didn't want to deal w/ being attacked, trashed etc., I also told him I'd never been on a list & never wanted to be. That was why I said I would only do this if my research assistant could subscribe rather than me.

This experience has convinced me that my ignorant suspicions of lists was right. Now I know I'd never want to be on a list.

I guess that is spiteful & actually it denies that there have been here & there moments of pleasure or learning in this experience for me. Of course there have been.

But I worked too hard & got too little recognition for my work, for the labor and the difficulty.

It was out of this sense of the invisibility of my labor (like the mother's labor, to go back to the mother/teacher analogy we were talking about) that made me go on about labor.

I've been working hard to address everyone's questions, to think about whatever was thrown my way, to give serious, thoughtful answers. And I've gotten little recognition for my devotion & much complaint about what I DIDN'T do, how what I did wasn't enough.

So I think the best way to hear my complaint about the teacher's labor is to remember the analysis of the mother's labor. The child sees the mother in terms of the mother's power, & in terms of the mother's frustration of the child's demands; the child simply does not recognize the extent that the mother labors for the child.

And that is how I've felt, some days, on this list.

However, Johanna, you deserve some recognition as a voice which always seemed able to draw me out. Thanks,

Jane