(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). |
Jane, thanks for your note; it strongly and 'clearly' recommends again the old adage, 'the style is the woman.' Let's reprint it below, so that it can be ready at hand. And enjoyed fully. If things are not for you as you intended, I am not sure what I am to say to you. The questions that I asked after the first general question developed proleptically out of your attempt not to answer the first question I asked. I had no preconceived ideas about your book; I had preconceived ideas about your writing but nothing particularly hostile. We all at one time or another have different opinions on issues. After reading your posts to all of us, however, things changed very dramatically in my mind. I think that there is a very serious problem in what you are saying; I think that I have made this point in detail. But for me nothing is fixed or predestined in a conversation online. If I think that you restart responding to the questions in some 'honest' way, I am sure that things will turn around. About your playing to the audience with statements that I tricked you or deceived you into doing this reinvw, all that I can say is NO. I see myself asking you questions in your best interest; obviously you do not. If you do not like the questions I ask, ignore them. Or rewrite them. I gave you every possible opportunity and I will continue to do so. Moreover, I warned you privately--and I did not have to--that a writer from the Chronicle of Higher Education was on the list for this Reinvw; I sent Gary a full list of all the other subscribers, even those subscribed to the di*gest format. I explained that I did this because in all fairness I thought that you needed to know who was on the list. Who was in the audience! Given who is in the audience, Jane, I am asking you questions with your best interest in mind! It is very difficult to read your post, or at least it is for me, because it "reads" like a summary of your book The Daughter's Seduction. What is it with you, Jane, either you are being wrongly seduced or wrongly accused? Is it possible to ask you a question that is not totally ingratiating? Is it possible to send you a love letter in your best interests? (Yes, I am going against Lacan, as you yourself are, and I am presuming to know what I know.) As for responding to Gary, I responded once to make a point that wanted to be made; I have ignored his other two posts. I understand what it's like being in the so-called hot seat. I am there all the time, and I have done a reinvw with many of the people on this list. They invited me ... they expected me to ... I followed through, not liking all the questions, not answering all the questions. So I can have empathy for your position. BUT what I want to know from you is whether you can have, in your pedagogy and in feminist accused (after the fact), empathy for the two students. Again: Believe me, for I ask this question with your best interest in mind. Bestest, V
Dear Jim Porter, Thanks for asking. Of course I don't know why you're asking or what you feel. But I find myself glad someone wanted to know. No, I am not enjoying it. I am very close to deciding to pull out definitively. I usually attempt to avoid volunteering for abuse. I have never been on a list, & probably couldn't imagine this. Thought it might be like the q & a period after a lecture (which I almost always enjoy & find very productive -- of ideas & exchange). This feels like I've volunteered to be the clown they dunk at the carny, but w/o getting paid. I don't feel this discussion is productive. In the beginning I attempted to give thoughtful answers, imagining I would learn more about the things I was exploring in my book from the exchange & maybe teach someone something, help someone understand something better. But it seems that's not why people are doing this. I feel I have nothing to gain from this. I have not yet quit only out of an abstract sense of duty (I agreed to do it). It's making me very angry & I find anger extremely unproductive as it blocks thought. You may not care what I'm feeling, but I decided to be naive enough to read your questions as if you did. Jane
ddd, I believe that the value of any position is its intervention in a moment, its ability to disrupt people's assumptions. When I wrote the D's S (in the late 70s) post-structuralism was an outsider discourse in the American academy, with the power to disrupt assumptions (like the kind of academic writing based in clarity). But by the mid-80s a certain kind of theory-speak had become standard academic discourse (in the fields I trod). And so it felt necessary to disrupt that. I cannot connect back up to that statement w/ Irigaray b/c I made it in a different moment, a very different context. It may well be that in our era of comfy post-poststructuralist assumptions clarity may well have the kind of disruptive edge that Irigarayan writing once had. I don't believe there's any practice which can be disruptive whatever the situation. I try to figure out how to intervene in a specific context and moment, so as to disrupt assumptions (in myself as well), produce new configurations (in myself as well), keep the process of learning alive by resisting its inevitable move into acquired knowledge. In the 70s the guys who dominated the field of English resisted theory w/ their investment in clarity. By the 80s the guys who dominated the field of English paraded their theoryspeak & mocked those naive enough to want to understand & be understood. By the 90s naive began to look pretty refreshing, cutting through reigning assumptions. Jane
Johanna, I appreciate your reference to the "gooshy maternal metaphors" for teaching. I've tried very much to apply the feminist critique of the institution of motherhood to teaching. As for "pain," I have for several days now been regretting that I did not respond to Vitansky's original introduction of the term by confessing I have read neither Rorty nor Scarry. My response to that post, I'm afraid, was to act like a student at an oral examination who finds herself asked about books that were not on the list, but is afraid to admit she hasn't read something the examiner is talking as if she ought to have read. I'm not sure why I'm confessing this in a response to you in particular. But I want to do whatever I can to deflate the bullshit I feel myself swimming in on this list. (sorry for this mixed metaphor, this re/interview seems to be rendering me pretty incapable of writing) Jane
Among other things, Jane writes:
No, I am not enjoying it. I am very close to deciding to pull out definitively. I usually attempt to avoid volunteering for abuse. I have never been on a list, & probably couldn't imagine this. Thought it might be like the q & a period after a lecture (which I almost always enjoy & find very productive -- of ideas & exchange). But I must say I find this response utterly fascinating. There are oh so many ways to interpret this discomfort, but I'll stick to two: * It's amazing to me the difference between this rhetorical situation/space and the situation Jane suggests that she expected. I for one am not interested in making you or anyone else a target in a virtual dunking tank, but I have to say that this re/inter/view is one of the clearest examples I've seen in a long LONG time as to why electronic discourse communities are not simple reproductions of physical, f2f discourse communities as so often folks not familiar with these environments assume. If you were expecting the sort of discussion that follows a presentation at a conference or university lecture, then it is no wonder that you are interpreting this as abusive. Think about it for a second: would even a third of the questions posed by a wide variety of participants even been _allowed_ in a f2f q&a session? Is it not likely that the dimensions of a traditional lecture situation would have made it too difficult, embarassing, uncomfortable, etc. to ask the same types of questions? I interpret this as part of the intimacy and chaos fostered by forums like this, which, when not recognized, can certainly be volitile and dangerous as I think has been demonstrated here. But I would also suggest that the extreme intimacy and chaos (perhaps even means of production?) inherent in electronic forums exposes the extent to which exchange following a f2f q&a can acutally be productive and for whom. * On a related note, I also have to wonder the extent to which yours and Gary's discomfort with this discussion doesn't boil down to a rupture in the ideological sphere of good ol' fashion academic power. I don't mean to be disrespectful or to throw gasoline on to a flame war that I see as coming out of a misidentification of the situation and a certain amount of fear and suspicion. But in a f2f lecture, you would indeed be Distinguished Professor Jane Gallop, literally "up there" on some sort of platform, projecting forcefully through a microphone, holding the audience still and accountable. Here you are Jane, and literally anyone (including lil' ol' me or VV's grad students or some guy/gal who is a janitor cleaning offices in the English department by night, computer geek by day) can pretty much write and say whatever they want, regardless of the agenda you or anyone else has set forth. It doesn't take a prominent literary critic to recognize that the sort of extreme disruption of power and control nearly inherent in electronic forums like this one (and almost always present in this particular discussion forum) has obviously been jarring for you. I think that's unfortunate on a number of levels actually, but for the time being, I will say that I simultaneously feel bad that you feel you've been abused in this discussion, and that I have learned a tremendous amount about how the assumptions of power and authority can be exposed in rhetorical situations that are mediated through communication technologies like this one. --Steve
Jane, I've been seduced out of my semi-lurk and have two questions. 1) In your book I can't seem to find a compelling reason for "limiting" sexual harassment to exclude the possibility of a woman harassing another women except for the fact that it doesn't fit your definition of feminism. You see a "gender-neutral notion of power... to be a serious departure from feminism" (24). I can't see why/how "the feminist insight that the most destructive abuses of power occur because of widespread, deeply rooted social and psychological reinforcement" (25) restricts other non male/hetero abuses of woman that can also be destructive, even if not the most destructive. Certainly the image _Disclosure_ portrays is highly problematic and I understand your concern about the potential for the "right" to "colonize" sexual harassment in the name of "traditional values." But as you say, "Sexual harassment is a feminist issue not because it is sexual but because it disadvantages women" (9). Why would feminists, assuming they are working toward the right for any woman not to be disadvantaged, not want a definition that included a woman being "disadvantaged" by a man, woman, or any other sexual possibility or possible sexuality? I agree that "sexualizing the workplace is [not] automatically disadvantageous to women" (11) but what happens when it is disadvantageous? Just because feminism ignited your sexual and intellectual desire in a positive way, it does not automatically mean it will have the same effect on all students in all contexts/situations. To bring this to a single question-- How is feminism necessarily a flight away from a master/slave relationship rather than containing the possibility of reversing that role? I believe this question has already been asked in other ways, but I'm still unsure of the answer. I can see how in your youth feminism did seem to be a flight away, but as you acknowledge in your book, the context has changed. Doesn't the possibility of a power reversal exist in feminism in its new "institutional" context?-- Or could it be that we have surpassed each of these two possibilities and are on to a third- one where you exploit the student for a paycheck and s/he exploits you for knowledge, each of which has a variety of potential advantages and disadvantages? OK, the single question now becomes-- aren't these three possibilities and some more possible? And if not, why? [And I'm sensing a possible connection, here, to your distinction between victim and power feminisms and their at least potential dialectical relationship.] And given your most resent post, I'm quite interested in this second question... 2) In light of your attempts to turn adversity into the making of knowledge, could you not take the differend displayed in this discussion and this medium as a kairotic opportunity to make knowledge rather than become defensive? This is not a condemnation of your defensive strategies, but an invitation to think through our collective experience. Remember, the subtitle of Scarry's book is "The Making and the Unmaking of the World." You certainly have the power and opportunity, here, to make rather than unmake. (Perhaps VV will take this moment and turn it toward knowledge making in his new book _Sophist Accused_ ; ). Why let him, or us, be the only maker(s)? To bring this to a single question-- Jane, what knowledge can you make from the differend in this conversation? Thanks in advance, Byron
Jane, Thanks much for the thoughtful reply. I especially appreciated this line: "I believe that the value of any position is its intervention in a moment, its ability to disrupt people's assumptions." [ddd nods vigorously] Including our *own* assumptions, as you suggest. But I'd like to see if you'd connect the idea that a kind of clarity might be more politically savvy in this particular climate with the ideas you expressed earlier on this list about authorial intention and such. For example:
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. I get you, I think, that clarity and spectacle are both *performances*--I don't hear you suggesting, that is, that 'clarity' in the Enlightenment sense is REALLY possible...that writing is ever a simple tool. (I agree with VV--once you've experienced that gestalt turn, there's probably no going back.) What I hear you suggesting is that another style, one that performs a sense of 'plainspeak' is, at this moment in time, more politically valuable and "disruptive" than the "flirtatious" performance that worked in the 70s. If what I heard seems to you to be what you said--something I'm not taking for granted, so feel free to revise this--then that approach to the issue is one that I can respect, big time. It is homo-rhetoricus in action, the capacity to switch codes quickly depending on the situation. But, at the same time, I'm not sure that I agree that the climate calls for this kind of performance. That is, I'm still way more apt to be moved to remember *that* any position is always already performative, to remember my own finitude, to remember that "landing" is not an option---I'm more likely to remember all of that when I interact with--read/write--performances that *point* to it. To perform the notion that one has landed, that the matter, any matter, is finally settled, still--even in 1998--seems to me to encourage the very dangerous hubris of metaphysical 'man.' Instead of performing a sense of closure, which inevitably [?] is all bound up with fascist impulses, why not just keep moving? _________That is, when a particular kind of "theory-speak" turns into the same old phallogocentric *norm* (which means it thinks it has landed, thinks things are clear yet again), why not set the language in motion again rather than perform it as having settled....settled elsewhere. Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this, Jane. I appreciate it that you're taking the time to respond to these questions, especially given that you have not felt comfortable on this list. best, ddd
People,
At 10:41 PM 2/4/98 -0600, you wrote: Johanna, This is interesting to me. When you apply that critique to teaching, what happens? In theory and in practice (the classroom)?
As for "pain," I have for several days now been regretting that I did not respond to Vitansky's original introduction of the term by confessing I have read neither Rorty nor Scarry. My response to that post, I'm afraid, was to act like a student at an oral examination who finds herself asked about books that were not on the list, but is afraid to admit she hasn't read something the examiner is talking as if she ought to have read. Oy. It's VitanZA. Italian, not Slavic. As to your "confession"--perhaps you sense in me a former traveller in feminist lit crit. "We" would have some general hearsay sorts of knowledge of Rorty, Lyotard, possibly Scarry, but would have bracketed them off as irrelevant to our concerns, non-canonical. In comp/rhet, however, particularly rhetoric, many people who want to consider themselves "theory-literate" (and there are far fewer of these here than in lit) would more likely view these as required reading, and would see terms like Lyotard's "differend" (sorry, Byron--it was a good question, though, and I hope Jane takes it up) as central to their inquiries. Victor's been a big part of constructing this particular theoretical canon in comp-rhet, and I think sometimes he forgets this. Steve's analysis of the dynamics of the exchange on this list are on-target, I think--if you've never been on a list, the power reversals, the anonymity, the absence of nuanced give-and-take complete w/ facial expressions and body language, the simple flood of language, all make for unusual exchanges--and lots of "flaming." (Gary's "You da man" post to Victor was a perfect example of this, and I thought it was pretty funny, actually. If he knew Victor or this audience, that post would never have happened, but he didn't, so it did, and as Martha Stewart would say, "And that's a GOOD thing.") The dynamics of this exchange are also attributable to different disciplinary assumptions, though, not just the parameters of discourse in this particular medium. As rhetoricians, we (and now I'm placing myself in the other camp) use things like this to "make knowledge"--about argument, communication, etc. Not to say we necessarily start fires, but that when they happen it becomes an opportunity, not a shutdown. Johanna
Victor wrote: "As for responding to Gary, I responded once to make a point that wanted to be made; I have ignored his other two posts." Ouch! And this after you wrote me: "If you have additional comments or charges, send them on. I would love to respond to them." Golly Victor, what happened to that love? Was it something I said? Anyway, you've given me a swell idea about ignoring posts. Thanks for that. Gary VVeissman
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