(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.
|
|
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). |
Gary, I baited the hook with precisely the kinds and flavor of questions I wanted to ask and I got from Jane precisely and unsurprisingly what I thought she would say and once again demonstrate. Right... you have mastery, you are in control, nothing could possibly surprise you. If your questions were poorly articulated theory-speak and typical guyish "peacocking," that was all part of the plan... Nothing Jane could say would ever surprise you because you've figured it all out already. I guess there's no reason to support or develop your claims because they are already so evident.
The questions were not supposed to be effective, sweet, ingratiating questions; they were not so-called balanced, diplomatic aristotelian questions. Instead, they were questions that arose from the dark and silent (in between the lines) sections of Jane's book. I was not aware that there are only two kinds of questions (sweet ones and irreverent ones). It's really great that you're on the right side of that dichotomy.
What Jane repeatedly demonstrates (on every page of her book and in every nonanswer to and deflection of the questions) is an apparent inability to sympathize with or have empathy with her two accusers. I would like to see some evidence that she can identify with them. Why? Because I am interested in the kind of politics and ethics that arise from this inability to attend to others as it is manifested patently in Feminist Accused.... I am interested in the kind of ethics and politics and pedagogy that come out of ap/parent forms of Narcissism, as manifested in Feminist Accused.... But evidently, all such concerns are irrelevant to Jane's book! It's a shame that until now you have not given this point such direct articulation. Maybe now list members can discuss the book in light of your argument and your argument in light of its own assumptions. That could be a good discussion.
But in the _facelessness_ of such Narcissism, Gary, I will continue to be irreverent. Keep fighting the good fight! You're the man, Victor. Gary Weissman
Gary, As primarily a lurker (and sometimes instigator) on the list, I don't see much difference in the way VV has approached Jane and the way he generally tends to approach "reviewees". Your post seems to indicate an attack specifically on Jane, but Victor rarely holds back. I invited Jane to stay in hopes that she would hang on and work through SOME of the questions and provide SOME answers. No one answers all of the questions posed. I understand why Jane is defensive, but I don't understand why she agreed to an interview without expecting to get "tough" questions. If a journalist does an interview and ignores the obvious tough questions, people tend to see that as an uninteresting waste of time. Gary, this post is directed at you, so please pass on the invitation to continue to Jane. Thanks, Byron.
Dr. Gallop, That is the first node of my question. The second node is this -- your book often seems to attempt a separation of sex and power, as if these are different. But, having read much of your other work, I know you know that this is not the case. So I find this curious, unusual -- that perhaps it speaks to a great deal that is not present in your book that nevertheless functions as the strange attractor giving it its particular form. Given the two nodes above, then, here are my questions -- _______Is *the disadvantaging of women* only possible through the actions and institutions of men (or conceivably, women) that correspond to what has come to be labelled patriarchy, phallogocentrism, etc.? Can feminists disadvantage other feminists? What would this mean for your definition of feminism? Since you probably believe that your definition of feminism is the best, what kind of power do you feel entitled (or any feminist in a similar situation) to exercise over others, including feminists, who might disagree, perhaps even vehemently so? _______Why is the issue of the relation between sex and power absent from your book? You acknowledge that you were in the power position as regards that kiss and all, but I see little examination -- little *making knowledge* -- of/from this. We are told by you that were exonerated by the university of the charge of deliberately grading them down on their work after these incidents, and we are further told by you that these students were merely seeking revenge out of sour grapes. Is it possible that a consideration of the relation between sex and power would re-entwine you in this power/sex field (ala Foucaults field of power/knowledge) that you have so effectively removed yourself from in your book? Would, then, the students silenced voices -- and they have as far as I can tell no voice in your book -- be given the conditions of possibility for speaking ? And would you -- and we -- want this to happen? I have another question about nostalgia, but I will save it for later...
Thanks,
Gary, This is a perfect example of the falicious thinking that we point out to our first-year comp students-- attacking someone's character as a diversion from the issues at hand. How VV writes, acts or what he asks has nothing to do with Jane's book or the issues it raises. I know Jane wants to discuss the book but SURELY you and Jane both know that a text doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is almost no way to discuss the book without dealing with its context and the variety of issues related to that context. Please, let's discuss them. I and evidently hundreds of others are here to listen in and perhaps participate. Byron
... just two itty-bitty of an observations. Forgive me Jane (and Gary) for not reading _Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment_. Not that I am "refusing" to read a book for some ethical/political reason-- it's just that I have about 40 some-odd first year and advanced comp essays to comment on right now and a bunch of other duties typical of a humble and new assistant professor at a small and regional opportunity-granting college. But as I was deleting mail from my in-box, I became intrigued with the argument. So, instead of watching _Dateline_ and yet another story about whether or not Clinton harrassed "that woman," I decided to read through the web pages of the thread as VV posted them. Quite interesting. I cannot help but be fascinated by what I called in my diss (long story, I'll skip it for now) "immediacy" and its relationship to rhetorical situations: the intimacy and chaos that comes from the sort of exchange possible in electronic forums like this. Perhaps this is why Jane (and Gary) have been a bit taken aback. I noticed in my cursory readings of the various web pages (and I apologize again for my incomplete study of the thread as it is documented there) that when the questions asked were more or less praising and the kind of questions I suspect she is used to fielding in f2f, physical space discussions of her work, the answers are a) almost always playful, smiling, flirting, and b) from Jane directly (though the directness of mail from Jane's e-mail could be something that VV is editing on the web pages). When the questions were of the opposite type, the reaction is the opposite, and usually posted through Gary. Now, like I said, my reading regarding the source of these messages could just as easily be the result of VV's editing on the web pages, and as Jane pointed out, she's new to this whole electronic thing. So if I am reading too much/too wrongly into this, my apologies. But if not, I have to wonder. Second, while Jane tries to make clear at the beginning and in other places of the re/inter/view that _Feminist Accused of Sexual Harrassment_ is not a defense, it's clear that much of what Jane (and, especially as of late, Gary) has had to say about the questions has been defensive. I suspect that that isn't the intent, but I would invite Jane, Gary, and anyone else to look through the dialog as it has progressed up to this point and see if it is possible to read the discussion that way. Back to lurking... --Steve
I have questions for Jane. As they are about the pretext discussion, rather than the book, they may be out of bounds. (Sorry, I can never remember the rules for these re/interviews.)
* Are you enjoying this?
* Do you think this matters?
* Why am I still listening to this? Jim Porter
On Tue, 3 Feb 1998, Steve Krause wrote:
===text cut=== Quite interesting. I cannot help but be fascinated by what I called in my diss (long story, I'll skip it for now) "immediacy" and its relationship to rhetorical situations: the intimacy and chaos that comes from the sort of exchange possible in electronic forums like this. Perhaps this is why Jane (and Gary) have been a bit taken aback. I noticed in my cursory readings of the various web pages (and I apologize again for my incomplete study of the thread as it is documented there) that when the questions asked were more or less praising and the kind of questions I suspect she is used to fielding in f2f, physical space discussions of her work, the answers are a) almost always playful, smiling, flirting, and b) from Jane directly (though the directness of mail from Jane's e-mail could be something that VV is editing on the web pages). When the questions were of the opposite type, the reaction is the opposite, and usually posted through Gary. Now, like I said, my reading regarding the source of these messages could just as easily be the result of VV's editing on the web pages, and as Jane pointed out, she's new to this whole electronic thing. So if I am reading too much/too wrongly into this, my apologies. But if not, I have to wonder. Steve et al., when I markup jg's messages for the Website, messages which are forwarded by Gary, I strip the "From" line of the header from Gary's post and insert jg's name because it can be confusing, especially later when people read the archives. I have to make sure that people will understand that jg is talking and not Gary. After all, jg *is* addressing the people on the list. When Gary has posted, I have not stripped the line with his name. Moreover, I put only jg's name and not her e-mail address, for she has told me repeatedly in our phone conversation and in e-mail that she does not want to receive a lot of e-mail. Of course, anyone can get her e-ddress by searching for it! (I think that I might have included her address once or twice initially. People must contact her if they wish to quote anything she has said.) v
I don't much like Victor's blame-game vis-a-vis the pain Jane may have caused and/or refuses to acknowledge in her students. And Jane has every right to ignore as many of Victor's questions as she wants, esp. insofar as she expects no pleasure from the encounter. But to travel, as Victor has led us, from questions of eros/pleasure/transference/whateveryouwanttocallit to questions of pain doesn't seem out of the *theoretical* bounds Jane's book implies, does it? Does the pain line of inquiry really violate the book's terrain? If Victor is "redescribing" the present re/interviewee's work--and he always does and probably will--redescribing begins with a text's own terms. And, setting Victor's reading practices aside, there are some obvious reasons we (teachers) need to address pain when we think pedagogy, if only because of the way grades drive the process. There may be different kinds of pain attached to teaching and learning, as Victor suggested with his pain/cruelty distinction--maybe even good pains (though I don't think this is where V was headed). Certainly there must be ways of addressing pain within the psychoanalytic framework Jane finds useful in explaining pedagogy to herself. And if we do address pain it doesn't always have to be the students' pain, does it? The empathy thing veers toward the gooshy maternal metaphors for teaching that many feminists have tried to disassociate themselves from. Johanna
... there is, btw, an additional source for archives, which includes all the info anyone could possibily want with very long headers, footers, etc., and which is more detailed in 'traffic info' than are the posts that we receive as subscribers to the list. the filters that are used to cut away all this info are used for all the lists at Spoons, not just for the list pre/text. ... this additional source is available at gopher pretext archives ... if you should need any help in obtaining info, drop me a private note. v
Johanna, I appreciate your locating my book w/in feminism, which of course is where it makes the most sense. and I think your point about utopias is well-taken. As to why the students sought to restrain my intellectual inquiry, well I do think it's about their perception that my power was located not in my institutional position but in my intellectual work. And they wanted to curtail my power. Actually I don't think the ideas of intellectual or theory terrorism or harassment apply. I don't think that's what they were doing & I find such ideas pretty dangerous. Anti-intellectual & anti-free speech. But in fact of all the weird things in the case, I found their request (unprecedented to my knowledge) that I be restrained from intellectual inquiry about the case the most puzzling, most fascinating, & most symptomatic. I can only guess & in fact cannot guess why they made such a move. In the book I really only address why the administration accepted such a move (that's where I see the threat to academic freedom). Thanks for asking me a question that comes out of a real reading of the book. Jane
Collin, Thanks for reading my book. I'm uncomfortable w/ the power femnism v victim feminism terminology tho I do indeed cite it in the book. In fact you're right that I'm troubled by the scenario of feminist against feminist. I'm really troubled when I see feminists focus on other feminists as their enemy of choice. I prefer to think that whatever our differences, our enemies are misogynists, anti-feminists, chauvinist pigs. And for me the power v victim feminism model implies that these are the adversaries, rather than alternatives. I was trying to inscribe them in a dialectic. Altho in fact I identify more w/ the quest for power than the embrace of the victim position, I see these two (and all their other avatars over history) as inextricably linked. I'm interested in understanding feminism as having a dialectic with these antithetical sides, even tho of course I identify with one side. But I believe feminism NEEDS BOTH SIDES, & needs their dialogue. I was not writing as a power feminist to an audience of victim feminists. I was writing as a pro-sex feminist to an audience of other pro-sex feminists trying to bring to their attention an issue that has been largely neglected by pro-sex feminism. So I was not speaking across a gap, but speaking to like-minded feminists who might have unthinkingly joined the consensus of silence around the monstrous expansion of the concept of sexual harassment. I was saying, sisters wake up, while we won the battle on pornography, it's because the battleground has switched to this other issue. That under the guise of the fight against sexual harassment, an anti-sex, MacKinnonite, victim feminism has managed to pass itself off as feminism tout court. My goal was not to defeat the other side but to restore the dialectic I believe to be necessary for a full & healthy feminism on an issue where one side had monopolized the conversation. Jane
Victor, I am so infuriated by your recent post to Gary that I'm sorely tempted to withdraw from your arena immediately. I remain only b/c there are others beside you who seem genuinely interested in discussing the ideas in my book. If I had known when you politely invited me to do this that you thought my book a monstrous symptom of narcissism, that you were simply setting me up, framing me, putting me in your duck barrel where you could take aim, I of course would never have agreed. But you so sweetly & ingratiatingly said you thought the book raised important intellectual issues (appealing I presume to my narcissism to lure me in). I remember specifically saying that I was hesitating b/c I had already dealt w/ a lot of trashing, attacks, aggression & I didn't want to do it if it meant having to deal with that. You assured me that, altho you couldn't guarantee what would be said, that sort of thing was unlikely. It never occurred to me that I was asking the question of the wolf himself, decked out like my host. I knew I would be running the risk of aggressive questions (there is no way to go public & be insured against them). But that is very different than finding out that my host was serving me for dinner. If in fact you have as much contempt and as little respect for me as you now reveal, it seems incredible to me that you would invite me for such an event, use my book to publicize your list. But what I find creepiest is that you chose to lure me in by pretending respect. Remarks are being bandied about that I have been evasive. Of course I get no credit for the fact that I have written long & thoughtful responses to each and every post (yours and others), trying quite sincerely to explain what I was doing, to clear up misunderstanding. Spending nearly an hour a day writing to total strangers. Because of my perhaps naive belief in dialogue. I feel like you have broken a basic contract of intellectual collegiality. Not by being critical, but by being deceitful. Had I known you thought (& you make it clear you thought it long before I appeared on your list) what you tell Gary you think, I would of course never have accepted your invitation.
Johanna writes:
"If Victor is "redescribing" the present re/interviewee's work--and he always does and probably will--redescribing begins with a text's own terms." J, I understand what you are getting at here in your carefully balanced post, but you have to understand that in redescribing the text I am giving a psychoanalytic reading. What psychoanalysis (Freud or Lacan) is all about is redescribing in such a way that there is a restretching or a casuistic stretching. Everything that I have read by Freud and Lacan (the hermeneuts of suspicion!!) and their various commentators indicates such reading practices. (RRorty did not invent 'redescription' as a reading practice.) If jg is into pschoanalytic and Derridean reading practices, she should feel right at home with my reponse to [her] text. And by "at home" I mean that jg should feel herself right in the midst of the "uncanniness" of her text. And her readers should as well. Now, where I really have problems with jg's statement and your echoing it--namely, that there is/are "a text's own terms"--is that this is a fallback to precritical thinking. jg--in responding to an ingratiating post to her--talks about how she is a born again 'writer of Clarity'! This is remarkable. After Freudian and Lacanian criticism, there is Clarity? After Derredian criticism, there is Clarity? As a value? If you do not agree with me on this point then good; let me say, in that case, that jg is bullshitting you *clear and simple.* And you are taking it hook-line-and-sinker. I do not think that jg's "terms" in her "text" are at peace with each other. At all. And I don't think that anyone's terms and text are, or can ever be. In addition to the volatile structure of the text, jg is spinning a lot of words and phrases in her text. One more question: What are the terms of silence in jg's text? v
Victor writes: jg... talks about how she is a born again 'writer of Clarity'! This is remarkable. After Freudian and Lacanian criticism, there is Clarity? After Derredian criticism, there is Clarity? As a value? If you do not agree with me on this point then good; let me say, in that case, that jg is bullshitting you *clear and simple.* And you are taking it hook-line-and-sinker. The many teachers of composition on this list must be interested to hear that there is no longer any such thing as writing with clarity--at least, not as a value. For those who have been teaching their students to try and write more clearly, take heed: after Derrida, there is no such thing as clarity of self-expression. I suppose this means that anything goes when it comes to writing: there's no need to revise or edit writing because any desire for clarity is terribly misguided. Anyone who suggests otherwise must be a real bullshitter. Gary Weissman
Yes, it's true, Gary: some of us "comp teachers" really do teach beyond the Enlightenment ideal for clarity. I highly recommend it. Roxanne
Gary: From Jane's _Daughter's Seduction_, which, btw, I read for the first time in one of VV's seminars:
[she's discussing Irigaray] "[A]ll clear statements are trapped in the same economy of values, in which clarity (occulacentrism) and univocity (the One) reign. Precision must be avoided, if the economy of the One is to be unsettled. Equivocations, allusions, etc. are flirtatious; they induce the interlocutor to listen, to encounter, to interpret, but defer the moment of assimilation back into a familiar model" (78). I don't think that jane's talking here about a willy nilly approach to writing--I don't hear her saying: 'Yo, no need to revise or work hard at writing anymore. No such thing as clarity.' What I hear her saying is that clarity is a political maneuver and that the desire for clarity has phallogocentric roots. This seems to me an important issue--one that I learned a lot about from Jane's work while I was still in grad school. Wrote a paper on "Flirtational Politics," in fact, and cited her all over the place. A ton of other scholars talk about the political implications of the drive for clarity and none of them are suggesting--any more than vv is or than jane is up there--that the answer is to just, wooo weeeeeee, stop editing those prose. I'm interested in how jane would discuss this issue now....that is, how she would discuss the politics of clarity at this point. Jane said that she thinks more clearly now that she is determined to write clearly.... But what does that mean with respect to this earlier descriptions of clarity? ____________Jane, in this section of _Daughter's_, are you simply offering a close read of Irigaray and not really agreeing or making an argument yourself? In which case, would you be willing to offer a response to Irigary for me here? Or, if this is a recent decision to embrace clarity, a move you've made sense _Daughter's_ (which was written a long time ago, after all), would you explain more fully what led you to that decision? ddd
On Wed, 4 Feb 1998, Roxanne Mountford wrote:
Yes, it's true, Gary: some of us "comp teachers" really do teach beyond the Enlightenment ideal for clarity. I highly recommend it. Before this sidetracks into a flame war based on assumptions, it might help to hear what is *done* in a classroom re: clarity or beyond clarity. This might move us away from the discussion's purpose for a moment, but since the turn's been taken, it would be nice to see something concrete--an example perhaps or illuminating anecdote from both sides. Nick Carbone
Hi, Nick. I don't think it's wise to get a side-track going until we're done with the interview. My goal wasn't to begin a new thread. --Roxanne
|
(Copyright. 1998. PRE/TEXT. Victor J. Vitanza and the posters to Pretext Re/In/View. All rights reserved. Anyone should feel free, however, to link to this page for educational purposes, but do not publish otherwise in part or whole without prior written consent from copyright holders. You may also establish a link to this or any REINVW discussion.)
To Part 1, Gallop Reinvw
To Part 2, Gallop Reinvw
To Part 3, Gallop Reinvw
To Part 5, Gallop Reinvw.
To REINVW Archives
To PRETEXT HP