(No part of this re/inter/view discussion may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and the individual posters.) --Full Copyright notice is at the end of each file.
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The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Jane Gallop, beginning January, 1998. The subject of conversation is/was Jane's Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment (Duke UP, 1997). |
Todd, I appreciate your appreciation of what I'm trying to do in my writing. Yeah, I've always been bugged by people who write ABOUT the wild effects of writing but write IN the most traditional way. Seems contradictory. I've always sought to write (& to teach & to live) in ways that took seriously the theory I care about. Glad you noticed. The answer to both of your questions is YES, but that seems somehow flat. Like I feel I should make a twist of the questions or something. They are in fact obvious, as is my answer. Does that make them rhetorical questions? My sense of writing as performance/spectacle is rooted in my understanding of Derrida. That writing is not a vehicle for ideas. That things happen in writing. Writing is also a time art and I always understand what I'm trying to do not as get something down once and for all but intervene in a particular context. Well, you should go back to writing your dissertation (is that what you're doing?) so I better stop now.
Best wishes,
I like VV's questions, but add a qualification. I don't recall Rorty ever saying that a liberal is someone who beieve the worst thing you can do is cause pain--instead the exact words are ""liberals are the people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do." There's a difference. Education in almost anyone's sense may cause a discomfort some would call "painful," but that does not automatically mean it is cruel. Schiappa
Dear Lizzy Poole,
You asked: I mean that writing is not like a car or a train that carries ideas from place to place. In that image, the ideas preexist their entry into the vehicle & emerge unaffected by the vehicle that transports them. The writing is secondary, there to allow the ideas to travel, but not intrinsically bound up with them. Whereas for me ideas are formulated int he process of writing, are not completely separable from the way they are expressed. I'm rejecting the idea of writing as external carrier. I think the relation between ideas & writing is much more interactive, each prodding, affecting, & smudging the other. Does that help? Jane ps what is Radical Journey? [wonder if your "Journey" prompted my image of travelling ideas? wonder if it prompted your question?]
Dear T.R., Well I completely share your "positive" sense of sensationalism. That's what I was trying to say in the final pages of the book. Trying to distinguish between a sensationalism that was hollow & one that transcended the splits you're talking about. I'm not so sure exactly how to answer your questions. Maybe the problem involves a split betweent eaching mastery of the code & teaching self-expression (I'm gonna use that as something connected to a sensationalist model of writing). In fact, as we know there is no self-expression w/o some mastery of the code & no point in mastering a code if you don't have anything to say. As to whether sensationalist teaching is marginal or not. Well it's missing from some of the discourse, but then very present in others. The trick is how to value teaching that is intellectually rigorous and passionate. Most divide into partisans of one or the other, either the bloodless theoretically correct or the student-centered touchy-feely. That split is the very split I was trying to decry in bad sensationalism. I believe, & experience repeatedly, that real intellectual discipline, hard thinking is exciting, energizing, yes even sexy. Jane
Ed, thanks. I picked up the book, as I should have done before, and found the precise passage on p. 146. RR's reference is to Judith Shklar (_Ordinary Vices_), whereas mine is to Scarry. I agree that there is a difference between causing pain and acting cruel towards someone. My question to Jane is informed by Scarry's views of the body in pain, which, yes, is not mere pain but humiliation (p. 177), not being able to reconstitute one's 'self.' After the agony! (And the Ecstasy?) Thanks. VV
Dearest Jane, A flirtation: This is a "yes!" to consensual amourous relations. As feminism turned you on in the 1970s, you turned me on the first time I encountered your work in 1992. Pedagogy is often erotically charged! Like T.R. suggested, writing, reading, thinking are all pleasurable both literally and methaphorically. However, Jane, I have been unfaithful! While you never demanded a monogamous relationship, I have to confess that I have left Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud for Deleuze, Guattari, and Nietzsche. What this means is that I can only go so far with you in your argument. As I noted, I do think that learning is very erotically charged. However, I make the distinction between this eros and the "transference" you speak of on pages 56 and 57. You note, "transference is the human tendency to put people in the position our parents once held for us. It is a nearly universal response to people whose opinions of us have great authority, in particular doctors and teachers. . . But transference is also an inevitable relationship we have to a teacher who really makes a difference" (56). My distinction is this: eros is based on plentitude and can transgress certain power relationships, whereas "transference" seems based on a lack, on a "you have what can make me complete." Jane, I don't deny that many faculty-student relationships are often transferencial, as are writer-reader relationships. Nor do I deny that these relationships have an erotic component. However, my experience with transferencial relationships is that they become ways of maintaining an unequal power dynamic. In addition, the object of love is just that--an object, a substitute for mommy or daddy. On the other hand, the "eros" you speak of--even the literal eros of having slept with your two committeee members--seems to attempt to transcend the lack and the objectness of transference. This eros, instead, attempts to make what has been an object into something human--to see them as flesh and blood. I will stop here, my dear Jane. However, I would like to essay this topic further, not only within your work but also within historical works such as Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium. Yours in the reader relationship of Luce I and Freddy N., M. Todd Harper
Prof Gallop: The distinction between transference and eros that Todd alluded to in his last post may have clarified some key issues for me. Let me see if I can explain what I'm thinking, and let me link to Victor's post about pain. I feel like I've just come to a better understanding of your book and feel like its worth sharing . . . Transference is about lack, about a relation with the one-that-makes-me-complete; Its about casting someone in the role of a parent. As such, transference is potentially a very volatile Oedipal theater where, if actual sex happens, things are likely to turn out very badly. Afterall, if connecting with someone with whom you have a transferential relation makes you no longer a subject of lack, then doesn't it make you a subject treading pretty close to what Lacan called psychosis? (No one involved in your case, I hasten to add, was literally psychotic in my view, but I think we can all agree there was some heavy confusion a-foot and that the Lacanian concept makes a useful metaphor here). An erotic realation is completely different from a transferential relation--eros isn't about lack but about surplus and excesss, a will-to-deterritorialize and transform, an openness to change and flights of becoming. A flexibility and strength. Something very like the erotic is at the heart of all great reading and writing and teaching and learning. (Hence the appropriateness of Todd's "love-letter"). Could it be that the whole mess with that grad student hinged on mistaking a transferential relation for an erotic one? In other words, where you were seeing eros, the grad student was actually doing transference. And thus the kiss touched off an explosion--and not the good kind. I think this links up to Scarry's ideas about pain. She argues that wherever there are unstable believe-systems, unanchored self-conceptions, there will be a corresponding will to re-inscribe these structures at a level where they will be most deeply felt--on the body. And so what I was referring to earlier as psychosis (a destabilized subject that has foreclosed lack) is also usually going to be a will to inflict pain . . . and make accusations and file lawsuits, etc. Again, I certainly DO NOT mean to imply that anyone involved in your case was literally psychotic, but I think these terms might be useful for getting a handle on the larger structure of your story. Is this stuff making sense? In brief, the whole problem blew up out of a confusion between tranference and eros---maybe? T. R. Johnson
Victor, I really don't think I can answer your question. It has two major parts, both of which I find extremely offputting, neither of which seem to correspond to my notion of talking to me as the author of my book. The first part is your lengthy discussion of Rorty/Scarry (with a sprinkling of other names, Feyerabend & who is Lakatos?) In that you have a description of your teaching. I cannot really connect to what you're saying; it's so ensconced in terminology that seems foreign to me. Are you interpellating me as a reader of Rorty? (I'm not really one) As a fellow teacher of theory? (I am one). The second part is a list of questions which seem pointed if not incriminating. Given the discourse around sexual harassment, the fact that I was accused of that, I do not look lightly at questions like do I cause students pain? In the context of my accusations, these cannot be theoretical questions, but tend to sound like an inquistorial trick. I mean you go out of your way (& even get a little lost) to get to the concept of pain. Just so you can ask me about causing students pain. Perhaps the most neutral question is the first: "What is teaching?" but that is way too big a question for me to tackle. And I think I have a basic deconstructive suspicion of the question "ti esti..." (just to throw some Greek around). Before I answer any questions about causing students pain, I want to know what you mean by pain, why you've chosen to use THAT word. Jane
Professor Gallop, You've strongly been on the defensive since your first post to this list. Why? You say your book is about "making knowledge" [your first post to this list]. Frankly, I disagree. In your book, "making knowledge" seems peripheral to a rationalization of the actions for which you are charged. I hope that you will: __ Elaborate on your notion of "making knowledge."
Jane, I've been out of town for about 36 hours and just returned last evening to about 350 messages. (I am on too many lists.) And so, I have just read your response to my questions. If you do not want to answer the questions, that's cool. There are questions that I myself refuse to answer publicly as well. I think that all questions can be read or be 'redescribed' as being "accusatory" and have repeatedly stated this in detail on the list for several years now. Your refusal and your reasons for refusing the questions tell us some things. One might be: 'Good fences make for good neighbors' ... but I would have to add ... as long as they are 'good' fences (partitions and limits). Let me respond to some of your points and then see where that might take us. And then, I will explain what I had in mind when using the word PAIN. You wrote: "Victor, I really don't think I can answer your question. It has two major parts, both of which I find extremely offputting, neither of which seem to correspond to my notion of talking to me as the author of my book." I don't understand this last statement at all. You must have a very different notion of what you are saying in the book than I have and perhaps others have. There 'are' places in the book where you 'stipulate' how you want to be read and, though I can see how this would be problematic for many readers, at least, I understand 'in those stipulated cases' what your intentions are. Moreover, I can understand how you might want to 'limit' the discussion. Instead of dealing with the "classic case [of sexual harassment]," you say, "I want to produce an understanding of sexual harassment based instead upon _the limit case_ of a feminist so accused" (7; emphasis mine). Some of your readers might say, "fair enough," but your attempts/motives at limiting the scope and kinds of issues are always going to be open to discussion and arbitration. And to being judged! It's very difficult for me to understand how you want "to speak from [a] sensational location" or let "spectacle speak" (6) and then want to claim that certain questions do not "correspond to [your] notion of talking to [you] as the author of my book." You can easily dismiss anything we ask by saying: "I do not authorize that question." And that would be fine. Such a response again would tell us a great deal!, which you cannot control or perhaps even overhear. Jane, as you must know, the issue--no matter how you deal with it and want to control it for the sake of "produc[ing] knowledge" (7)--*is volatile*! If you do not know--and even if you want 'strategically' to pretend that you do not know--then we are back to the issue of your being naive. If you wish to locate yourself in the center of being naive so as to learn from that subject position, as you claim, then, you have got to know, in turn, that you will be learning some things that perhaps you do not want to know about. Or hear about, even if only in the form of an apparently 'accusatory' question. I really and finally don't understand Why the questions concerning pain are inappropriate to you _as_ "the author of [the] book" that we are talking about. Is there a court order to remain silent? Has your legal advisor recommended that you remain silent on anything that might get you in trouble in terms of lawsuits? etc. If so, then I can understand these possibilities. But when we discussed doing this reinvw, you never mentioned to me that there are certain kinds of questions that would have to be avoided because of legal circumstances. We are having (i.e., beginning to have) a discussion about your book, which has a reference point in relation to human interaction in terms of pedagogy and I really don't know how to ask questions about the issues in the book that will not perhaps make you uncomfortable. Or perhaps make a number of us uncomfortable. I have no interest in causing you pain (discomfort) or causing you the other notion of pain (Scarry's notion of the agony that would prevent you from being able to reconstitute your integrity). You might reason from the fact--which I disclosed to you when I asked you if you wanted to do a re/inter/view and I disclose now to all on the list--that one of the students who brought charges against you was a former student at UTA and someone that I know, but whose M.A. committee I was not on. You might want to reason that I am out to get you for what you did to that student. If so, then, say so and I will happily respond to that issue or to any other comparable issue. The overall issue that you are dealing with is volatile. There is not going to be any STP (standard temperature and pressure) that will keep things from virtually exploding. I mean, you must have known from the very beginning (years ago), when you taught and when you now teach and when you wrote and continue to write about all this and when you designed a skirt made of men's ties, that the issue of sexual harassment or the battle between the sexes as you are attempting to deal with it (in your life, and in the lives of the students, and in the minds of your readers) was/is/will be a volatile issue. Right? Since volatile, the issue cannot be controlled. From what I can tell, you are reading my questions as accusations, and I do understand that they can be taken in that fashion. But Was it my intention to accuse you, incriminate you? No! That's already been done. That would be a bore to do here again online! But it is my intention to ask you questions about the nature of teaching as you yourself have wrestled with this angel or devil. It seems to me that these questions are of the utmost importance in relation to y/our book. And yet, I understand that you might not want to authorize such questions. If not, fine; but understand I will have to ask them. And people will draw whatever un/authorized conclusions they so desire. You wrote:
Okay, fair enough. One thing that I am interested in
(ethically-politically) is what is left out of the book Feminist
Accused.... You seem to be interested in yourself more than in the
accusers. (I am not really persuaded that you are interested in
"knowledge." Or in the students in any humane way.)
I cannot find in the narrative, in your musings, any moment of doubt about
what you are saying, except for your three references to perhaps being
naive. _____*Do you ever ask the question, Did I cause these students pain
(meaning the pedestrian notion of simple discomfort)? _____*Are you
concerned about that? Or _____*Is your life story (in a self-tabloid style)
the only important issue here? (Yes, these can easily be read as accusatory
or incriminating questions ... no doubt about it ... and therefore you may
judge that it would be best not to answer them. But they are also questions
that will allow you to correct "my" reading of what you say in the book.
And they are questions that can be self-accusing or self-incriminating.
Questions cut in many different directions.)
I am asking you a very simple (yet complex and volatile) question, which I
repeat: _____*Are you concerned about these students? while being concerned
about your career, about the issue of sexual harassment as a special "limit
case"? in your case? their cases? etc.
Now the above is a simple notion of pain as discomfort, which will vary by
and in degree from person to person. Now I want to turn to another notion
of pain as cruelity towards others in public or in private. RRorty focuses
on books as we are focusing on your book in our re/inter/view. (What
follows is a woefully inadequate description of what RR is talking about,
but it gets across at least a part of the issue of pain as cruelty.)
Social practices (sexual harassment) can be cruel. RRorty refers to the
typical examples of "books that help us to see the effects of social
practices and institutions on others" (e.g., Uncle Tom's Cabin or Black
Boy) (in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity 141). Does your book fit
into this category?
Private practices can be cruel as well. RR refers to "books that help us to
see the effects of our private idiocyncrasies on others" (141). By
identifying with a particular character in a book who is obsessed with a
particular kind of perfection or a particular idiocyncratic view or twist
on an issue, we might come to understand how our own obsessions cause
people pain and humiliation in the form of cruelity toward them. RR's
primary examples in chapters 7-8 are characters from Nabakov and Orwell. My
primary example would be KBurke's narrator in Towards a Better Life. Does
your book fit into this category?
RR is interested in books that make people less cruel not more cruel. And
so, I am wondering about a lot of books right now, but in this paricular
case y/our book.
But the question remains, What is pain as Cruelity? and in the Private
idiocycratic sense? I am going to stick with RRorty's 'appropriation' of
Scarry's notion so that you can better understand what I am asking you
about Pain:
Jane, your use of theory in investigating a practice is idiocyncratic; in
theorizing about the question of _feminist accused..._, you move from the
classic case to a "limit case," and again not just in theory but in
practice in relation to real human beings (the two students).
_____*Did you get yourself and the two students to do or say things
publicly that *you were able* to cope with having done (or thought) but
that *they have not been able* to cope with but remain now in silence
because unable to remake their world or any world in which to live?
_____*Are you able to cope because you wrote an elaborate, idiocyncratic,
theoretical piece of tabloid-expressive discourse called _Feminist
Accused..._ that would deflect what you had done and make it impossible for
the students to respond?
Your career thrives on the acts (real and theoretical acts) but we are left
with the questions Do your acts allow their lives/careers to thrive?
_____Have they been able to reconstitute themselves? _____Been able to move
toward a better life? _____*AS A RESULT OF YOUR BOOK? I don't know! I would
like to know. This would be 'knowledge' worth having.
Understand my concerns: The way that you set up your argument as a "limit
case" makes it impossible for the students to respond to your book. As I
alluded: 'good fences make for good neighbors.' But a "limit case" for me
in this instance is not a 'good fence.' While the "limit case" enables
*you* to speak and perhaps to deflect, the "limit case" scenario only
silences the students who found themselves in the "classic case of sexual
harassment." The "limit case" can only silence ... them ... gag ... them
... be offputting ... to them ... make it impossible for them to
reconstitute themselves. That's got to be painful in Scarry's sense of
PAIN.
The book appears to be really damaging to the students. _____*Is there
another possible place for them in your theory? ____*In your expressive
rendering of what happened and how it is to be judged? (_____*Should they
be like you were way back in 1971?) _____*If you had written the book in
another form of discourse--with the focus off of yourself and your
career--would you have thought about the problem differently, would the
book have been read or received differently?
Jane, perhaps you cannot answer these questions, since they are
'accusatory' (?) and in part questions that perhaps only the two students
can answer; but it is the case that you can attend to these questions in
your re/thinking and re/writing about the issue, instead of being oblivious
(_____*Are you oblivious?) to them?
If you cannot answer these question, then _____*Is it because I have been
cruel to you? _____*Am I aware of the cruelity that I might be practicing?
_____*Have I reset a "limit" for the discussion that makes it impossible
for you to respond? I don't think so. But _____*What do you think?
VV
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